And--I also have to admit--my interest is pretty limited. While some later works have caught my attention, I am mostly settled into the Silver Age classics, as well as some Golden Age books I used to own as a collector, and a minor interest in the old EC line.
The first comic book I can actually remember buying for myself was Avengers #4 (the revival of Captain America). I still own that copy in VG+ condition, more than forty years later. It's one of four or five out of a collection of nearly 2,000 that didn't bite the dust paying for my graduate education.
Daredevil was one of my first fascinations, and the first comic to which I ever subscribed. I was really bummed when the first issue arrived in the mail box. First off, I never knew that the good old USPS folded the damn books right down the middle of the front cover to mail them. That ticked me off no end.
Then there was the matter of the first issue: Daredevil #43: DD takes on Captain America in one of the more contrived superhero crossover fights of that decade. At Marvel during that period (early 1970s) there were certain artists associated for long, looonnng stretches with the same character. Steve Ditko followed by Johnny Romita on Spider-man. Jack Kirby on Fantastic Four. Gene Colan on Iron Man ... and most especially on Daredevil.
So I was really distressed to discover a bad (and, as far as I know, still unattributed) Jack Kirby cover:
Nor did Colan's style--at least at that point in his career--really do justice to Captain America. Later, when the Captain got his own book, Colan did the pencils (remember the Falcon?) and he was adequate if not brilliant. But I have to admit that my first issue in the mail depressed me.
Possibly it did so because the early legacy of Daredevil contained some important issues. Daredevil #32 ("To Fight the Impossible Fight") concluded a three-issue battle between DD and Mr. Hyde teamed up with the Cobra. Again, the plot of the whole series was, even by Marvel's standards at the time, a Rube Goldberg concoction that didn't bear too much scrutiny. But the schtick of this issue was that DD had actually been blinded by this potion, so he's at the bad guys' mercy. For reasons I can't remember (or would rather forget) they take him out to this lighthouse on an isolated island, and DD manages to kill the power, putting everyone in the dark.
Gene Colan did the ensuing multi-page fight in deep shadow, which the colorist (probably Sol Brodsky, but I'm not sure) complimented with a range of subtle dark blues. It was a chilling, tense segment, one done no justice whatever by this cover...
... but gripping in a way that few issues of the day managed to be.
The early issues of Daredevil have been Wally Wood illustrations: sound but not brilliant. The flowing lines and quirky, impressionistic Colan style fitted him a lot better. At least in costume: some of the law office scenes with Mike Murdoch (sometimes appearing as his own brother Matt), Foggy Nelson, and the ever-too-virginal Karen Page were as painful to look at as they were to read. But two other artists--at least briefly--were associated with early Daredevil, and are worth mentioning.
Johnny Romita (mentioned above in relation to Spider-man) penciled three, maybe four issues in the late teen numbers, including a two-issue story co-starring Spider-man. It was this audition that apparently suggested Romita to Stan Lee as Steve Ditko's successor for the wall-crawler, and this is very likely the first Romita Spider-man image that Marvel fans ever saw:
Likeswise, Barry Smith (before Conan, and before he became Barry Windsor-Smith) did two or three issues when he was in his brief I'm not sure if I want to be Jack Kirby or Jim Steranko, but I don't draw as well as either of them period. (He had already done a single of issue each of X-Men and Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD to almost universal disdain; I can still remember pre-publication howls against his assignment to draw Conan.)
In Issue #54 the Black Panther made an appearance, finishing out a particularly convoluted story-line (made incomprehensible by Smith's lay-outs and poor drawing) that included a villain named Starr Saxon, whom Smith later admitted he intended to draw as flagrantly gay, but lacked the skills to put the gag across. The cover is worse than the interior drawing--but not by much:
The Black Panther always bemused me. Marvel took the name of a radical 1960s civil rights/revolutionary group and turned it into the hero-name for a poor-man's Phantom knock-off, enlightened African King of the Wakanda, the all-around good house Negro. Might as well have called him Captain Sambo.
As I write this, I ask myself, Why in the hell did I like Daredevil? Even then, I knew the writing was bad. The Gene Colan artwork was good, but only on rare occasions great. By the time I subscribed, DD had been pretty much reduced in the Marvel line to second-string Spider-man status.
But I loved that radar sense better than the Spider-sense (Aunt May also creeped me out, if the truth be told), and I liked the red outfit.
More to the point, Daredevil was an adult, not a teenager. I was a teenager when I was reading Daredevil, and frankly I aspired to being an adult with a real job (good-paying, too) like Matt Murdoch. I mean, if you were going to have a secret identity, wouldn't you rather be a successful attorney than geek-boy skulking around the high-school gym?
(I never identified with Robin, either. I think I always knew Bruce was banging him.)
This is more or less what you'll get from me: semi-random and often pretty damn heretical observations on the comics of about 30-40 years ago. Maybe it'll bring back memories, if you are an old fart; or maybe it will help you realize that something really important did happen to comics during the Silver Age, that we hopefully won't forget.
4 comments:
Marvel took the name of a radical 1960s civil rights/revolutionary group and turned it into the hero-name for a poor-man's Phantom knock-off, enlightened African King of the Wakanda, the all-around good house Negro. Might as well have called him Captain Sambo.
Hmm. I never saw it that way. I included a bit about the Panther in this post.
Yeah, that cover of Daredevil vs. Cap is pretty awful. Cap's big "sausage fingers" are about as bad as I've seen on any of Kirby's lazier efforts...but I guess considering the guy was pencilling practically every Marvel title at the time, I can cut him some slack.
For the record, I also disagree on your assessment of the Black Panther...primarily from a timeline perspective. The comic book character made his debut in Fantastic Four #52, cover-dated July of 1966, which means (in the vagaries of cover dating) it actually hit the stands earlier in the spring.
The radical Black Panther organization wasn't founded until mid-October of 1966 out in Oakland, CA. Sure, it's likely their activities were on the radar before that, but it's unlikely a couple of forty-something Jewish guys in New York were aware of such a radical movement or, even more unlikely, would glorify it in their comic book. Further, once the Black Panther group had made the national scene, Marvel changed their hero's name to "The Black Leopard" for a time to avoid the association.
I'm also going to part company on the "house negro" assessment of T'Challa. What I recall from his first and early appearances was that he was a fiercely proud, protective RULER of his people who defeated the F.F. in almost no time flat. That's hardly the subservient, go-along to get-along stance of the so-called house negro (God, I hate that term).
To be clear, comic book creators have been guilty of including some incredibly racist characters and attitudes in their stories, but the Black Panther really can't be lumped in with them. T'Challa was a huge step forward for "Comic Book Civil Rights"...and I'm pretty taken aback by your characterization of him as a purely racist creation.
Regarding Colan, his earlier DD work I thought WAS great. His later stuff suffered from sloppiness, however. And while some of the Stan Lee plots were silly, I think 'ya still gotta hand it to The Man for the witty dialogue seen in DD. I mean, just check out those classic "Mike Murdock" stories -- the dialogue is priceless!!
It's a common mistake, but T'Challa's Black Panther (cover date 7/66) came before the Huey Newton and Bobby Seale Black Panther Party (started 10/66) by a few months.
I reviewed that three-parter with DD, Mr Hyde and the Cobra about a year ago; I agree it was great fun but a ridiculous and thoroughly unbelievable story. BTW, the premise there wasn't so much that Daredevil was blinded (he was blind to begin with, rememeber) it was that their potion took away his special senses that he used to compensate for his blindness.
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