Daredevil Villains #42: Death-Stalker
DAREDEVIL vol 1 #113-115 (September to November 1974)
“When Strikes the Gladiator!” / “A Quiet Night in the Swamp!” / Death Stalks the City!”
Writer: Steve Gerber
Penciller: Bob Brown
Inker: Vince Colletta
Letterers: Artie Simek (#113), Charlotte Jetter (#114-115)
Coloursts: Linda Lessmann (#113), Stan Goldberg (#114), Petra Goldberg (#115)
Editor: Roy Thomas
For our purposes, this is the end of Steve Gerber’s run. It doesn’t actually end until issue #117, but the last two issues are an Owl story. Gerber’s contributions to the rogues’ gallery end here, with the Death-Stalker.
Technically I’ve covered the Death-Stalker already. In issue #158, he will be revealed to be the Exterminator, a villain who had appeared in a single storyline in 1968. I haven’t read that issue yet, but since it’s removed from Death-Stalker’s debut by four years and three writers, it seems like a safe bet that Gerber intended the Death-Stalker to be a new character. So that’s how we’ll treat him.
The story emerges from a subplot which has been building for a while now, involving Foggy Nelson’s younger sister Candace, the token liberal in her family. Candace is a journalism student and she’s stumbled upon some documents about an abandoned research project involving Ted Sallis. None of the Daredevil characters know what Sallis is up to now, but we know that he’s the Man-Thing, and that Steve Gerber is writing that book too. This storyline isn’t a crossover, but it is an excuse for the Man-Thing to guest star.
The X-Axis – 19 December 2024
ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #3. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. Ah, the Infinity Comics, where you can get away with doing a spotlight issue on Lewis Guthrie. Which one is Lewis Guthrie? Well, that’s kind of the point. It’s basically a flashback issue explaining how Lewis has become a radicalised anti-mutant type during the Krakoan era, in which he sees his side of the family being ignored and left behind, while taking the flak from everyone else for the mutants doing unhelpful things like making telepathic announcements to the whole world. There is actually a story back in the 2000s where Lewis tries to get his hoped-for mutant powers to activate, which is about the only thing he’s ever done to stand out; it winds up with him almost getting killed by Dark Beast, so I can see why we’re downplaying that in favour of a more mundane (in the best sense) back story. It’s a straightforward story but quite convincingly handled. I suspect it might be read in some quarters as another sign of the current editorial office having an aversion to Krakoa. But for me, Hickman was always setting up the idea that there was a degree of hubris that wouldn’t turn out well, so I have no issue with this sort of thing.
PSYLOCKE #2. (Annotations here.) So after I spent last week’s X-Axis going through variations on “this isn’t really working”, here’s one that’s growing on me. When issue #1 came out, I wasn’t convinced that they had a hook for Kwannon as a solo lead, beyond recycling ideas about being raised as a living weapon that had already been done with Wolverine, X-23 and Elektra. And yes, that’s kind of what this book is doing too, but maybe with a lighter touch and a bit less brooding. Sure, Psylocke’s got strong feelings about rescuing kids from abuse, but Shinobi Shaw works nicely as a foil for her, and she’s given a deadpan sense of humour at the same time as not quite understanding the more normal characters (which is still a relative concept in this book, but the idea’s on the table). There’s some decent action sequences too, and while I’ve never been sold on the “underground gladiatoral arena for the rich” trope, I’m kind of coming round to the idea that maybe there’s enough unexplored territory in Kwannon that this can work?
Hellverine #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
HELLVERINE vol 2 #1
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Raffaele Ienco
Colour artist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Mark Basso
This ongoing series follows the miniseries of the same name from earlier this year, which brought Akihiro back as a Ghost Rider mash-up. This, by the way, is the problem with Marvel’s current convention of distinguishing between volumes by the year in which the first issue came out: there are two Hellverine (2024) #1s.
Fun fact! If you try to search for this issue on Amazon, it thinks it’s a typo and gives you results for Wolverine instead.
Although it’s coming from the X-office, this series seems to be basically Ghost Rider, so I probably won’t continue doing annotations for it, but hey, it’s the first issue. Chances are I’ll be dropping some other lower-tier books in the new year – otherwise we’re going to have weeks coming up with seven books requiring annotations and that’s just not realistic.
Psylocke #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
PSYLOCKE vol 2 #2
“Ladykiller”
Writer: Alyssa Wong
Artist: Vincenzo Carratù
Colour artist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editor: Darren Shan
PSYLOCKE.
The previous issue ended with her bloodily defeating the villains and feeling disturbed by her lack of emotion about it. This issue picks up from that by going into a flashback to her childhood training – possibly a direct continuation of the training flashback on page 15 of issue #1, or at least another training session in the same location. In that flashback, she’s killed some low-level Hand ninja and seems quite relaxed about the whole thing until her friend Mitsuki snaps her out of it. (“Sometimes you go so far away.”) More of Mitsuki below.
As usual, Psylocke feels very strongly about anything involving the brutalisation of children and thinks that everyone involved “deserves to die”. Naturally, she refuses to hurt the kids who have been forced to fight her. She also shrugs off the shock collar that the Cleaver Club try to use to control her.
The X-Axis – w/c 9 December 2024
Since we were running late last week, I already covered Astonishing X-Men Infinity Comic #2. This doesn’t leave us short of books. It’s an absurdly heavy week.
UNCANNY X-MEN #7. (Annotations here.) This is part 2 of the “Raid on Graymalkin” crossover with X-Men, although much of it covers the same material from the perspective of the Uncanny cast. That’s not as redundant as it might seem, since the good parts of this story are largely the character material, particularly with Calico. The actual plot still leaves me unconvinced – the prison villains feel both one-dimensional and too close to Orchis, and the fight between the two X-Men teams feels forced. Generally, the prison stuff feels like a distraction from what this book really wants to be doing – and the fact that this is the issue that gets partial fill-in art kind of reinforces that. It’s still not a bad issue on the whole, but the book does other things better than this.
X-FACTOR #5. (Annotations here.) This isn’t working. It ought to work – there’s nothing wrong with the idea of the US government sponsoring its own mutant team who sign up in good faith and find themselves answerable to shallow self-publicists and military incompetents. And Mark Russell seems like he should be a good person to write that book. But what we’ve wound up with is a book that’s too wacky to take seriously without actually being funny, and that’s the worst of all worlds. There are moments where it comes together – the Polaris subplot is maybe the one thread in the book that really works, perhaps because it’s been insulated from everything else. But five issues in, this is floundering.
Laura Kinney: Wolverine #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
LAURA KINNEY: WOLVERINE #1
“All the Places You Will Go”
Writer: Erica Schultz
Artist: Giada Belviso
Colour artist: Rachelle Rosenberg
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso
This is the first ongoing series with the title Laura Kinney: Wolverine, but Laura previously had ongoing titles under the name X-23 during 2010-12 and 2018-19, plus All-New Wolverine in 2016-18. Hence the legacy numbering of issue #69.
WOLVERINE:
Laura struggles to understand Kamala’s optimism or even Sophie’s ability to adjust to the fall of Krakoa. She refers here to “the few times I let them talk me into hanging out”. That doesn’t really fit with her arc in NYX, in which she starts hanging out with the rest of the cast in order to get allies against Mojo.
On learning that young Ivan has been abducted to Dubai, Laura’s back story naturally motivates her to address this tale of child exploitation. Much of this story involves her expecting all mutants to be on her side and humans to be against her, and being surprised when neither of those turns out to be true. Logically, the existence of mutant villains shouldn’t come as a massive surprise to her, but to be fair, Laura is still in the mutant nation mindset of Krakoa.
At least at first, Laura is deeply unimpressed by Polly; she seems to regard Polly’s decision to stay closeted during the Krakoan era as a moral failing and takes it as read that Polly will see it the same way. She also regards even willing performers at the Delta as being exploited. But by the end of the story she decides that Polly just has a more balanced view of mutants and humans.
Laura leaves it to Kamala and Sophie to arrange Ivan’s reunion with his sister, the implication being that she feels uncomfortable with handling this sort of emotional moment herself – she watches from nearby, so she clearly could have done it in person.
SUPPORTING CAST:
Kamala Khan and Sophie Cuckoo both appear at the start and end, mainly to play up the contrast with Laura. Laura is hanging out with them, but Sophie still has her telepathic powers, so we’re probably somewhere between NYX #2 and #4.
Ivan is a mutant with mood-altering sweat who’s been abducted to Dubai, and Emery is his sister, apparently a mutant but with no powers beyond an unusual appearance. Emery’s approach to getting help for Ivan, a little oddly, is to write a letter and hide it at the Treehouse, apparently in the hope that someone from the X-Men will find it. Remarkably, she turns out to be right. According to Emery’s letter, she and her brother are Moldovans; she says they were both abducted from there, but it’s not clear how she escaped (or maybe got dumped), or how she got to New York. They’re both new characters.
Polly is a Dubai-based mutant who can detect other mutants. Since she’s white and blonde, presumably she wasn’t born in Dubai. She runs Oasis, which she describes as a “safe place” for mutants, funded by a “benefactor” whom she doesn’t identify. Maybe we’ll come back to that in future issues. After the Madame is defeated, Polly invites her human trafficking victims to come to Oasis as well; she never actually said that Oasis was mutant-specific, just that it was safe for mutants.
According to Polly, she chose to live as a human and was reluctant to out herself by moving to Krakoa; consequently, she missed the whole thing. She regrets this, which motivates her to create Oasis. She’s still very uncomfortable with anything illicit and has an unnamed “cop friend” who she talks to. Much to Laura’s surprise, the cop turns out to be completely legitimate and although we never see Oasis, all signs are that Polly was telling the truth about it.
Elektra – as the second Daredevil – shows up at the end to tease issue #2.
VILLAINS:
The Madame is a mutant based in Dubai and dealing in trafficked mutants. She also has ties with the Delta Disco, which employs low-level mutants as entertainers; several characters claim that these mutants are there willingly, and even Laura seems prepared to accept that, although she still regards them as being exploited.
The Madame turns out to be Cybelle, a bit part character from Uncanny X-Men #211 who was one of the first mutants killed in the Mutant Massacre. We already knew that Cybelle had been resurrected on Krakoa; she appears in Hellions #1.
Cybelle doesn’t ascribe her motivation to the fall of Krakoa. Rather, she points out that Laura doesn’t even know her name, and says that she was “just another random mutant resurrected to fill up the island”. She claims that once she was resurrected she was determined never to be a victim again, and she sees the Massacre as having happened because “the heroes let it happen”. Basically, she doesn’t buy into mutant identity as an organising principle; all this does somewhat fit with the Morlocks being generally unhappy with Krakoa and wanting to go their own way.
An unnamed bouncer at the Delta Disco is also a mutant with size-changing and strength powers. He knows what the Madame is up to but doesn’t much care as long as he’s okay. He puts up an impressive fight against Laura, but she does attack him first, so it’s not entirely clear whether he’s actively involved in the Madame’s activities or just turning a blind eye to them.
MISCELLANEOUS:
Page 3. The narration is a straight recap of Laura’s established back story and the fall of Krakoa, at a very high level.
Page 5. The Treehouse was the X-Men’s New York headquarters during the Krakoan era. The plaque reading “Dedicated to those who paid the ultimate price to fight fascism” was added as a memorial in Invincible Iron Man #20.
Storm #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
STORM vol 5 #3
“Impending Doom”
Writer: Murewa Ayodele
Artist: Lucas Werneck
Colour artist: Alex Guimarães
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort
STORM:
Dr Voodoo summarily cures her radiation poisoning by making a bargain with an ancient spirit called Eégún, in exchange for her not using her powers for a week. We’ll come back to Eégún. However, according to Voodoo, she continues to be surrounded by “death sprites”, who are drawn to her because she’s about to die.
Storm correctly points out she’s gone without her powers for far longer than this in the past – specifically, when her powers were removed by Forge’s Neutralizer device between Uncanny X-Men #185 and #226. However, since the other prices that the spirit offered were essentially lethal, the strong implication is that the spirit expects it to be impossible for Storm to get through the next week without using her powers. From her dialogue, it seems that Storm still has her powers, but would be breaking the deal with she actually used them.
Phoenix #6 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
PHOENIX #6
Writer: Stephanie Phillips
Artist: Marco Renna
Colour artist: David Curiel
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Annalise Bissa
PHOENIX
Jean’s attempts to go into space and perform cosmic acts of heroism have simply set off a chain of events that led to Perrikus escaping and Thanos gaining control of the Galactic Council, and she’s starting to think that maybe this was a mistake.
Thanks to Thanos, Jean is now hated around the universe, partly for genuine reasons and partly thanks to his use of the Warlock’s Eye (see below).
SUPPORTING CAST
Adani. In the previous issue, Phoenix met Adani, and “created a psychic barrier” to block out the voices of people around the universe in need of help, which were overwhelming Adani. Their scene ended with Adani threatening to kill Phoenix, but evidently she agreed to tag along back to Phoenix’s ship after all. As Phoenix suggested in the previous issue, Adani’s dreams indicate that she’s torn between Perrikus and Phoenix; she also has visions of herself as an innocent trying to persuade her to follow Jean.
X-Factor #5 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-FACTOR vol 5 #5
“Prisoners of the Fun Room”
Writer: Mark Russell
Artist: Bob Quinn
Colour artist: Jesus Aburtov
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Darren Shan
X-FACTOR:
Despite their underwhelming performance so far in the series, Havok, Pyro and Frenzy all draw the line at being asked to support the new Mutant Surveillaince Act (supposedly prompted by X-Term). They also object to having their phones searched in an attempt to find the X-Term informant, though to be honest, given their jobs, it seems pretty remarkable that this is only coming up now.
At any rate, Pyro is so annoyed at this treatment that he unilaterally declares that the team are going to walk out, and threatens to fight the military. Havok tries to calm the situation, but moments later X-Term attack anyway.
Uncanny X-Men #7 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #7
“Raid on Graymalkin, part 2: No Walls can Hold Us!”
Writer: Gail Simone
Pencillers: David Marquez & Edgar Salazar
Inkers: David Marquez & Victor Olazaba
Colourist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
This is the second part of the “Raid on Graymalkin” crossover, which started in X-Men #8 and continues in X-Men #9. In fact, the action of this issue heavily overlaps with the previous chapter, with some scenes appearing in both issues.
Roughly speaking, the sequence of events goes like this.
- X-Men #8 pp2-3. Beast wakes up in Graymalkin Prison.
- Uncanny #7, pp3-6. Cyclops and Rogue have a phone call and he fails to convince her to stand down. The Louisiana X-Men use the Eye of Agamotto to teleport north.
- X-Men #8 pp5-6. Cyclops briefs the Alaskan X-Men and tells them to “gear up, we’re moving”.
- X-Men #8 pp7-17. Warden Ellis talks to Calico, Jubilee and Beast in the meal hall; Beast is beaten up by guards. In this version, the conversation is interrupted by the Marauder teleporting in and taking out the primary generators, and by a Limbo demon atacking.
- Uncanny #7, pp8-10. Warden Ellis and her men take Jubilee to the cells; Ellis instructs Ezra to release Calico, which he does; and Beast is dragged back to his cell. The Alaskan X-Men are shown on the Marauder. This version is written as if the attack is about to start, but if you squint a bit you you pretend that it’s already started and it’s just not being mentioned on the page.
- X-Men #8 p18 and Uncanny #7, p11-p12pn1. Cyclops, Temper and Psylocke teleport into Graymalkin; Cyclops calls Juggernaut to check he’s in place.
- X-Men #8 pp19-22: Cyclops, Temper and Psylocke fight their way through the building.
- Uncanny #7, p12-p15pn2: Meanwhile, Calico returns with Ember and breaks into the building; the rest of the Lousiana X-Men (who have been stuck outside) follow her in. Jubilee escapes. Kid Omega locates Beast.
- X-Men #8 pp23-25 and Uncanny #7 p15pn3-p16pn1. Psylocke declares that Graymalkin is a “place of horrors”. Blob attacks, but is immediately defeated by Rogue as the two X-Men teams meet.
- Uncanny #7 p16pn2 onwards then play out uninterrupted.
