Daredevil Villains #40: Kerwin J Broderick
DAREDEVIL #104-107 (October 1973 to January 1974)
“Prey of the Hunter!” / “Menace From the Moons of Saturn!” / “Life Be Not Proud!” / “Blind Man’s Bluff!”
Writer: Steve Gerber
Penciller: Don Heck (#104-106), Jim Starlin (#105 Titan sequence), Bob Brown (#107)
Inker: Sal Trapani (#104, #106), Don Perlin (#105), Sal Buscema (#107)
Letterer: Charlotte Jetter (#104, #107), June Braverman (#105), Shelly Leferman (#106)
Colourist: Petra Goldberg (#104, #107), Janice Cohen (#105), George Roussos (#106)
Editor: Roy Thomas
Throughout Steve Gerber’s run, a mysterious shadowy figure has been giving super powers to oddballs like Angar and the Dark Messiah. Now, it’s time for Daredevil to meet this arch villain. It’s Kerwin J Broderick, the senior partner of the law firm of Broderick, Sloan and Murdock.
Until now, Broderick hasn’t been seen on panel, but Gerber has been building him up in a subplot. Matt is hired to defend a group of kids who are charged with robbery, and Jason Sloan keeps telling Matt that Broderick wants him to enter a guilty plea. The expectation seems to be that Matt Murdock, of all people, won’t merely persuade his clients to plead guilty, but will actually ignore their instructions. It’s a strange arc, since Gerber seems to think that this sort of thing would be classed as “slightly questionable” rather than “completely beyond the pale”, meaning that Matt reacts to it as simply a troublesome work problem.
Charts – 18 October 2024
Well, if you’re going to be number one for this long, you might as well go for the record.
1. Sabrina Carpenter – “Taste”
That’s eight weeks, which means that Sabrina Carpenter has now spent twenty weeks at number 1 this year. Only Frankie Laine’s 28-week total in 1953 stands in the way of that being an all-time record. You could make a case that Sabrina has benefitted from a low turnover of hits this year, and so a lower number of challengers – but then again, she held “Good Luck Babe” off the top for months on end, and that’s a huge hit in its own right.
7. Charli XCX featuring Ariana Grande – “Sympathy is a Knife”
The remix version of “Brat” – “Brat and It’s Completely Different But Also Still Brat” – is out this week, but since it also includes the entire original album, the OCC is classing it as a deluxe edition of “Brat” rather than a free standing album. The remixes are extensive. The original version of “Sympathy is a Knife” doesn’t sound much like this version at all, but for chart versions both versions count towards this streaming position – it’s just that the Ariana Grande version has now been nominated as the lead, so that she gets co-credit.
The X-Axis – w/c 14 October 2024
X-MEN: FROM THE ASHES INFINITY COMIC #19. By Alex Paknadel, Diógenes Neves, Arthur Hesli & Clayton Cowles. Well, here’s something I wasn’t expecting: a Lifeguard story. Lifeguard is a character who appeared in X-Treme X-Men in 2001-2002 and has essentially done nothing since then. As in, she had a minor speaking part in one issue of Excalibur in 2004 and had two background cameos during the Krakoan era, and that’s literally it. Her brother Slipstream is in the same boat, but he’s quietly packed off to White Room Krakoa in a flashback, leaving Lifeguard behind on Earth to look after their ailing stepmother. The story is basically Heather trying to resume a normal life in Australia despite the awkward gap in her CV, while people keep going down with a weird skin condition in her presence – I guess we’re meant to be wondering if it’s a threat that her powers are reacting to, or something that she’s actually doing to defend herself against the outside world. I’m quite happy to see obscure characters get an outing in the Infinity Comics, but it’s not really clear yet where all this is heading. And the art is unusually wonky – it really feels a bit rushed, with strange neck angles and fixed grins.
UNCANNY X-MEN #4. (Annotations here.) The penultimate issue of the “Red Wave” arc, and it’s built mainly around Sarah Gaunt fighting Rogue to build her up as a top tier physical threat. She’s starting to click for me as a villain – straight mystical threats don’t always fit in the X-books, but while Sarah has a lot of the magical trappings, it’s not actually clear quite what she is. And it feels like a deliberate piece of mystery, which the story can carry, since it’s starting to give us a clearer idea of what she actually wants. She strongly implies that Charles Xavier abandoned her with his child, but she’s also clearly mad, and there are at least some indications that there’s more to the story than that. I’m also pleasantly surprised to see the Graymalkin Prison characters – who have been decidedly one-dimensional so far – show a bit more range, and start to distinguish themselves from Orchis a bit more. Marquez’ art has enough cartooning to carry off Sarah’s exaggerated design (I suspect some artists might struggle with her in future), but the flashbacks are nicely pitched too. Good issue.
Wolverine #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
WOLVERINE vol 8 #2
“Blood and Debt”
Writer: Saladin Ahmed
Artist: Martín Cóccolo
Colour artist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Tom Brevoort
WOLVERINE:
Wolverine has accepted Nightcrawler’s argument from the previous issue that he can’t leave the world behind, if only because the things that he’s trying to avoid will just follow him. Nonetheless, for the moment he’s still hanging around in the wilderness, presumably because Cyber is still out there. Cyber doesn’t appear in this story, but the plot is driven by the murders he committed in issue #1. Nightcrawler doesn’t appear either: presumably he was taken to hospital after the end of the previous issue.
Wolverine decides to help the new Wendigo (see below), after reminding himself that he used to be an animal and that other people helped him to regain his humanity – a familiar Wolverine trope. He takes this idea to the point of fighting off the Department H soldiers who are trying to capture the Wendigo; he claims that he’s trying to avoid a fight in which the soldiers would just get slaughtered. Despite his dislike of Department H, he regards this squad as legitimate (if underwhelming) footsoldiers and tries to do minimal harm to them – but he suggests that he also fears that drawing blood would affect his self-control too. He seems to take it as read that Department H either wouldn’t or couldn’t help the Wendigo.
Uncanny X-Men #4 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #4
“Red Wave, part 4: The Eye of a Hurricane”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: David Marquez
Colourist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
THE X-MEN:
Rogue confirms that there’s no logical explanation for her suddenly becoming aware of Wolverine’s injuries at the end of the previous issue. The suggestion seems to be that Sarah Gaunt deliberately lured her there after learning about Haven (and the Outliers’ presence there) when she defeated Wolverine in the previous issue. For some reason Rogue decides to stay and fight Sarah alone; maybe some more compulsion is at work, or maybe she just underestimates Sarah’s power even after seeing how badly she thrashed Wolverine.
Nightcrawler is now referring to Rogue as “sister”. When asked for some good news, he replies “Krakoa yet lives”, presumably meaning the spirit of the place rather than anything literal.
Charts – 11 October 2024
In which we have Netflix to thank for avoiding another completely dead singles chart.
1. Sabrina Carpenter – “Taste”
Seven weeks. This brings her total to 19 for the year, across her three number one singles. This either matches or beats Ed Sheeran’s total from 2021 (depending on how you feel about the chart announced on 31 December that year). The only solo act to spend more weeks at number 1 in a calendar year is Frankie Laine, who was number one for most of 1953. To match him, she’d have to stay at number one for another eight weeks, which seems wildly unlikely. Sales figures suggest a lot of the top 10 is about to be hit by the downweighting rule, so we might finally be due for a clearout.
14. KSI featuring Trippie Redd – “Thick Of It”
First time we’ve seen KSI this year. His last couple of singles both entered fairly strongly and plunged in the second week, which might suggest he’s becoming a fanbase act – but this single seems decent enough. He and Trippie Redd had a single in early 2020, “Wake Up Call”, which got to number 11; Trippie Redd’s only other top 40 single was his own “Miss the Rage”, which had a single week at number 32 in 2021.
The X-Axis – w/c 7 October 2024
X-MEN: FROM THE ASHES INFINITY COMIC #13. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. This is the end of the Beast/Blankslate arc, which feels a bit too high concept and abstract to quite work. There’s a reasonable idea in here: Beast is worried that something about his powers inevitably drives him mad, Blankslate copies his powers and seems to immediately go down that line. But ultimately Beast gets reassured that apparently he does have self-control. But if the Beast’s concern is that he’s going to go mad in the long run, what does a couple of weeks with Blankslate actually tell anyone? And more to the point, Blankslate never feels like a functioning character – the very nature of the concept almost prevents him from being one. So it’s a hard story to really connect with. But it’s a nice idea in theory.
EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN #2. (Annotations here.) We’re still at the stage of introducing the cast, but this seems like a fun series so far. Thao and Alex get their debuts here, and while they’re certainly recognisable types, there’s enough in the details to make them feel more fully thought out than that. And the cast dynamics seem promising: Trista wants mutant friends, Thao wants to be a mutant activist, Kate and Alex would both quite like a normal life, and who knows yet what Emma’s up to. It’s clearly a character-driven book, but the art can carry it, and I’m happy to see a bit more mundanity in the X-books, both here and in NYX. Okay, it stretches credibility at times – how many newly activated teen mutants can Kate stumble into while wandering around Chicago? Does Thao, the wannabe activist, really not recognise Kate Pryde even after hearing her name and seeing her powers? But I can let that sort of thing slide when I buy the characters.
Phoenix #4 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
PHOENIX #4
Writer: Stephanie Phillips
Artist: Alessandro Miracolo
Colour artist: David Curiel
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Annalise Bissa
PHOENIX:
Jean has volunteered to help out Captain Marvel, presumably as part of her ongoing efforts at rehabilitation. Instead, Carol invites her to a festival. Carol thinks Jean is overworking herself in an attempt to atone for something that wasn’t really her fault anyway. Carol argues that while Jean seems to have control of the Phoenix, she’s still afraid of it and needs to overcome that in order to really have control
GUEST STAR:
Captain Marvel is basically here to serve as a sounding board and warn Jean not to burn herself out. She mainly references rebuilding her own life after losing her identity to Rogue, but her concern about burnout and self-control might resonate more with her late-90s alcoholism storyline.
SUPPORTING CHARACTERS:
The Galactic Council – basically an intergalactic diplomatic talking shop – is mainly a Guardians of the Galaxy thing, though several of the diplomats also showed up in X-Men Red. Their base, the New Proscenium, appears here for the first time – the original Proscenium was another diplomatic conference centre, and was destroyed in the last run of Guardians.
X-Force #4 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-FORCE vol 7 #4
“Two Seconds Later”
Writer: Geoffrey Thorne
Artist: Marcus To
Colour artist: Erick Arciniega
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Mark Basso
X-FORCE:
Forge is still refusing to remove his telepathy blocking headband, something that gets quite heavily stressed in this issue. As in the previous issue, he’s puzzled that the information he’s getting from the Analog doesn’t seem to match with the actual location of the problem. He concludes that something’s interfering with it but doesn’t seem inclined to depart from his blind faith in it. He still gets fazed by seeing even an alternate reality Storm.
Captain Britain and Askani are getting increasingly impatient with Forge’s secrecy. Betsy uses her Captain Britain role for the first time in the series by letting the team travel through Otherworld in order to reach the Nexus of All Realities in Florida as quickly as possible; normally she can only go to Otherworld and return to where she came from, but the Nexus is a special case because it’s already connected to Otherworld in its own right.
Exceptional X-Men #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN #2
Writer: Eve L Ewing
Artist: Carmen Carnero
Colour artist: Nolan Woodard
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort
THE MAIN CAST:
Kate Pryde is still “Kate”, despite giving her name to Trista as “Kitty” in the previous issue. She doesn’t want to get dragged back into the mutant world by mentoring Trista, and when she stumbles upon some more mutant teenagers, she decides that the solution is just to introduce them to one another and leave them to get on with it. Such is her enthusiasm for the mundane world, she actually wants to go and watch a complete stranger’s high school soccer game. When asked about her own interest in sport, she defaults to talking about dance, but awkwardly acknowledges “some martial arts stuff”.
Kate does step in to calm the situation and get Thao and Alex to safety when a fight breaks out, but immediately gives Thao a dressing down for escalating the situation.
Trista Marshall is pestering Kate to remain friends with her, and seems to be looking for a mutant mentor.
Thao and Alex are the two new members of the core cast, making their in-story debut (though they were on the cover of issue #1). Thao is playing in the Senn High School soccer team – remarkably, this is a real school, shown in its actual colours, although they stopped short of using its bulldog logo. She’s unwilling to tolerate Alex being bullied, and starts frantically making the “Midnight M” sign at him. When he doesn’t respond – and doesn’t seem to want her help – she charges in anyway to fight the bullies. This is apparently fairly normal behaviour for her.
