Daredevil Villains #50: The Mind-Master
DAREDEVIL ANNUAL #4 (1976)
“The Name of the Game is… Death!”
Plotter, editor: Marv Wolfman
Scripter: Chris Claremont
Penciller: George Tuska
Inker: Frank Chiaramonte
Letterer: Anette Kawecki
Colourist: Bonnie Wilford
Once again, we’ve skipped a few issues. Issues #134-137 resolve a long running subplot about conspiracy theories being spread by deepfake TV broadcasts created by what sounds awfully like an LLM. It’s the highlight of Wolfman’s run, but the villain is the Jester, so it’s outside our remit here. Issue #138 is a crossover with Ghost Rider, with Death-Stalker as the villain.
That brings us to Daredevil Annual #4. The previous two annuals were reprint books (the first is Daredevil versus a team of established villains), but this one contains an original story. How successful was this issue? Put it this way: Marvel didn’t publish another Daredevil Annual for thirteen years. And when they did, they numbered it as a second Daredevil Annual #4, because they’d literally forgotten that this one existed.
This issue slots neatly into the ongoing storyline between issues #138-139, but it’s something of an afterthought. Wolfman only plotted it, leaving the script to Chris Claremont, and the whole thing is basically an excuse to have Namor and the Black Panther as guest stars. It does have a new villain, but he exists simply to drive the plot rather than to be a focal point of the story in his own right. And when he does get around to doing something, it’s… um… well, look, I’ll explain what happens.
Charts – 18 April 2025
Coming up – a new answer to a chart trivia question!
Five weeks. It’s down slightly from last week, but only marginally – it’s still beating the number 2 single by 78%. Now, what wonders does the music industry have in store for us this week?
21. Jack Black – “Steve’s Lava Chicken”
Yes, that’s the whole thing. The video has been padded out with the entire scene, but the audio track on streaming services is 34 seconds long. And three of those are silent. There is also an “extended version”, which runs to 65 seconds and is unlikely to be of any interest to anyone at all.
The X-Axis – w/c 14 April 2025
ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #18. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. And so we reach the end of the second arc by this creative team, with the long term game seeming to be a very slow reunion of the cast of Generation X in order to take on the grass roots allies of 3K. This issue, Emma Frost wanders by as a guest star, and Skin heads off to hang around with Sean and Paige some more. At the same time, the story is trying to illustrate how basically sympathetic characters can be radicalised, which is basically what the first arc did too. All this sounds like it ought to work, but in practice it feels like we’re treading water – it’s basically the same as the first arc with added Skin, and it hasn’t really found a compelling angle on the characters. It’s okay but it needs to kick up a gear in the next arc.
EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN #8. (Annotations here.) Even as someone who appreciates the languid pace of this book, I can’t help raising an eyebrow at devoting the first third of the book to a Mr Sinister monologue that doesn’t really advance the plot much, and then spending the rest of the issue on the rest of the cast figuring out that there’s a crisis they ought to be doing something about. You have to admire the book’s commitment to not letting itself be rushed. And yet it does work – certainly once it gets past Sinister’s monologue. Carmen Carnero’s art does a lovely job with the malfunctioning Axo clone as it ambles awkwardly through his life, while Trista and Thao trying to summon Emma by thinking really hard at her is a neat spot. Still, things have to come to some sort of head next issue… right?
X-Factor #9 annotations
X-FACTOR vol 5 #9
“Lost Causes”
Writer: Mark Russell
Artist: Bob Quinn
Colour artist: Jesus Aburtov
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Darren Shan
X-FACTOR
Archangel. He’s now being pushed as the star of the team. Back in issue #1, Broderick seemed to think that the whole point of X-Factor was to build around Archangel’s popularity, and told Warren that “they are your supporting cast. You don’t need competition.” Since he returned from hospital, Warren (and X-Factor’s military backers) seem to be acting according to that agenda. Obviously, Warren’s behaviour remains out of character.
He seems to be regarded as the most truly loyal team member, and is sent to personally deal with Polaris while most of X-Factor are packed off on a nicer mission to keep them out of the way.
Wolverine #8 annotations
WOLVERINE vol 8 #8
“Adamantine Unleashed” / “This is Your Life”
Writer: Saladin Ahmed
Artist: Martín Cóccolo
Colour artist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso
This issue is legacy number #400. The numbering ignores the original miniseries because the legacy numbers are supposed to represent the number that the ongoing title would have reached if it had never been rebooted.
To celebrate, we get a very odd issue which opens with a ten page story resolving the Adamantine storyline (or at least ending its first act), followed by a 30 page story resolving the Wendigo storyline and setting up the next arc. Since both of those stories are by the same regular creative team, I’m treating them here together.
There’s a break in the action of “a few days” before the end of the second story, but it seems we still haven’t reached a point where Wolverine can go off and appear in any other X-books – and so this whole series is still apparently set back before X-Men #1.
Exceptional X-Men #8 annotations
EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN #8
Writer: Eve L Ewing
Artist: Carmen Carnero
Colour artist: Nolan Woodard
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort
THE CORE CAST
Axo. He spends the entire issue as a prisoner of Mr Sinister, and so he doesn’t actually do or say anything. According to Trista, it’s out of character for him to enjoy Dazzler songs.
Bronze. She’s the only one observant enough to recognise that Sinister’s Axo clone is an impostor. She uses her powers in public to contain the guy who’s panicking in the shop fire.
Melée. She absolutely isn’t observant enough to recognise that Sinister’s Axo clone is an impostor, although she understands the clues immediately when Trista points them out. She’s open to Trista’s fashion advice (which does indeed seem to be appropriately tailored to her tastes). Her first reaction to a crisis is to try and contact Kate, followed by Emma – nobody seems to think of contacting Bobby – but she does correctly figure out that something has happened at Verate and decide that they’re going to have to do superhero things and get inside.
House to Astonish Episode 212
It’s not the biggest of weeks for comics news, but we have our fun regardless, as Paul and I talk you through the new UK comics industry trade body, the end of Immortal Thor, Werewolf By Night: Blood Moon Rise, the upcoming The Shredder series, Archie’s crossovers with Minor Threats and Jay & Silent Bob and Hellboy and the BPRD: Professor Harvey is Gone. We’ve also got reviews of Amazing Spider-Man and Fire and Ice: When Hell Freezes Over and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe is batting 100. All this plus Mr Darkevil Godman, a really good wheel and a bag of pre-blitzed wolf.
The podcast is here, or available via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think in the comments, on Bluesky, or via email, and while you’re here at the computer anyway, why not navigate over to our Redbubble store and snaffle yourself a lovely t-shirt? Look, I’ve put a link in there for you and everything.
Charts – 11 April 2025
Well, I was expecting a new number one, but…
Four weeks, and still growing (slightly). It has a massive lead – beating the number 2 and 3 singles combined. Which is all the more surprising, since…
3. Ed Sheeran – “Azizam”
The X-Axis – w/c 7 April 2025
ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #17. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. There’s not much more I can say about this arc that I haven’t said already. I completely get why we’re doing stories about radicalisation and how the understandable worries of normal people can be turned to hate while they believe they’re acting in self-defence. it’s a fairly natural theme in the USA right now. But it’s making for rather repetitive stories, and using it as the vehicle for a partial Generation X reunion isn’t adding much spark to it – Skin’s a nice enough character but there’s not really that much interest in seeing him reunited with Husk. It’s a perfectly competent story in plot and artwork but there’s nothing lifting it above that.
UNCANNY X-MEN #13. (Annotations here.) Crossover season is in the rear view mirror and David Marquez is back for the first part of “The Dark Artery”. Obviously, that means the issue is worth your time for the art alone – okay, the dragon looks more stone than ice, but that panel of the Outliers approaching the Dark Artery through the swamp is wonderful, and the flashback pages of Henrietta Benjamin is lovely throughout. There was a time when the X-books worked on the principle that mutants had only started to appear in serious numbers at the start of the Silver Age once the post-nuclear generation hit puberty – that was the point of the “children of the atom” tagline – but that’s been downplayed for many years and doesn’t really make sense anyway given the sliding timeline. So embracing that change and doing stories about the secret history of underground mutant communities is a nice idea. Yes, it begs the question of why we’ve never heard of this pre-X-Men mutant history before, but… well, the current state of continuity does that anyway. I’m not quite so sure how I feel about doing the actual history of racial segregation at the same time – it risks equating the real with the fictional, and has the odd effect of presenting the mutant experience right next to the very thing that it’s a metaphor for – but I think the first chapter gets away with it.
Laura Kinney: Wolverine #5 annotations
LAURA KINNEY: WOLVERINE #5
“Brother in Arms, part 2”
Writer: Erica Shultz
Artist: Giada Belviso
Colour artist: Rachelle Rosenberg
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso
WOLVERINE
After telling us last issue that she enjoyed fighting robots because she didn’t have to hold back, she seems to be losing patience with them. (“Robots, automatons, whatever! They’re all dead to me.”)
She dissuades the Revolution from killing Schneider on a fairly standard speech that he doesn’t have to be a killer any more – and then kills Schneider herself. This is a fairly standard Logan trope, where he regards himself as the X-Man who’s already corrupted and keeps doing these things in order to let his teammates stay heroic; Laura seems to be extending it to other characters who are also already corrupted. She tells Revolution that she’s “trying to be better, but some people need to be stopped permanently”. There’s no suggestion, however, that Schneider couldn’t be stopped by simply arresting him; she means simply that he deserved to die.