Daredevil Villains #29: The Tribune
DAREDEVIL #70-71 (November & December 1970)
“The Tribune” / “If an Eye Offend Thee…”
Writer: Gary Friedrich (#70), Roy Thomas & Lein Wein (#71)
Penciller: Gene Colan
Inker: Syd Shores
Letterer: Sam Rosen (#70) & Artie Simek (#71)
Colourist: not credited
Editor: Stan Lee
This is the third story in a row to deal with political radicals. In issue #68, Phoenix were so vague as to be meaningless; in issue #69, the Thunderbolts were a clumsy stab at social relevance. So a third extremist story might sound less than promising. And when you find that the first half is by a fill-in writer, and the second half has two credited writers, neither of whom worked on the first half… you could be forgiven for not getting your hopes up.
But this story has neither the timidness that sank the Phoenix story, nor the over-earnestness of the Thunderbolts. It’s absolutely mad.
The Tribune is movie star Buck Ralston. Despite being enormously famous, Buck likes to give soapbox speeches to passers-by on the streets of Hollywood. “It’s about time patriots like us stopped being a silent majority!” he says. Karen Page is up for a part in his next film, but to the horror of her agent, she tells Ralston to his face that he’s an extremist. Ralston naturally concludes that she’s a commie. “Gotta watch anybody that says you can be too patriotic!”
The X-Axis – w/c 24 June 2024
X-MEN: FROM THE ASHES INFINITY COMIC #3. By Alex Paknadel, Diógenes Neves, Arthur Hesli & Clayton Cowles. The first arc turns out to be just three parts, which is fine – that feels like the natural length of a fairly straightforward ghost story. The ghost turns out to be mostly preoccupied with his wife, a mountaineer whom he assumes must have died on the mountain for no particular reason beyond sexism. That comes somewhat out of the blue as a plot point in this story, which hadn’t really hinted very much about what the ghost was up to, but it does dovetail nicely with Scott’s discomfort about how his relationship with Jean can survive their power disparity in the long run, which is the idea that Paknadel really seems interested in. It’s a solid idea for an Infinity Comic short, nicely illustrated for the most part (though some of the vertical scrolling feels a bit clunky in this one). A pretty good little story.
DEADPOOL VS. WOLVERINE: SLASH ‘EM UP INFINITY COMIC #2. By Christos Gage, Alan Robinson, Carlos Lopez & Joe Sabino. Well, yup, that’s an extended fight scene. There’s not much to this in the way of plot. Wolverine has a vaguely interesting motivation: he’s helping a old man who, as a kid, used to help him out in Madripoor, until he forgot about the boy due to memory wipes and abandoned him. But it really is just an extended fight scene, even if it’s done with a bit of wit.
X-Men: Heir of Apocalypse #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN: HEIR OF APOCALYPSE #2
Writer: Steve Foxe
Penciller: Netho Diaz
Inkers: JP Mayer with Sean Parsons
Colour artist: Alex Sinclair
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
APOCALYPSE
Despite being the title character, Apocalypse is barely in this issue. Aside from more brief flashbacks to show how he selected some of his twelve contestants, he doesn’t show up until two pages from the end, where he confirms that he did indeed lure Genocide to Egypt as part of his test – although Genocide isn’t in on it.
Apocalypse is unimpressed by his candidates’ performance against “my most despised child”. We’re not told why Apocalypse feels that way about Genocide – I don’t think the two have ever met – but the idea from the original Uncanny X-Force storyline which introduced Genocide was that Apocalypse viewed him as a threat. It might also be that Apocalypse views Genocide as a moron who hasn’t understood his philosophy at all.
Apocalypse’s new base on Mars is an Egyptian-stye pyramid, albeit with more modern construction in the grounds.
Daredevil Villains #28: The Thunderbolts
DAREDEVIL #69 (October 1970)
“A Life on the Line”
Writer: Roy Thomas
Artist: Gene Colan
Inker: Syd Shores
Letterer: Artie Simek
Colourist: not credited
Editor: Stan Lee
No, not those Thunderbolts.
This story is set in Harlem, and there are multiple black characters with speaking parts. It’s Marvel in 1970, so that can only mean one thing: it’s time for an improving exercise in social commentary.
Daredevil stops two black gang members from robbing a warehouse. A third tries to escape, only to crash their van into a brick wall. He turns out to be a 15-year-old boy. The Black Panther shows up, and the heroes race the kid to hospital. His unspecified injuries call for a top surgeon, which Daredevil and the Panther are able to sort out. Although the story doesn’t labour the point, the clear implication is that the kid would otherwise have died thanks to the wonderful American health care system.
While our heroes wait for the outcome of the surgery, the Black Panther fills in some back story with an extended flashback. This is the period where the Panther had a civilian identity as school teacher Luke Charles. The kid is his brightest student, Lonnie Carver. Lonnie idolises his older brother Billy, who has just returned from Vietnam. Despite having become a pacifist as a result of his experiences, Billy wears his army uniform around the streets of Harlem, just in case we were in any doubt as to his status as a saintly veteran.
The X-Axis – w/c 17 June 2024
Well, this is quiet…
X-MEN: FROM THE ASHES INFINITY COMIC #2. By Alex Paknadel, Diógenes Neves, Arthur Hesli & Clayton Cowles. Don’t ask me what the schedule is for this book – the first two issues were released, um, twelve days apart. But it’s a nice solid story. It’s simple – something is possessing a bunch of people and making them march off through the snow. Scott is one of them, and he needs to find a way of getting Jean’s attention (because while she could easily keep track of him whenever he’s out of sight, she doesn’t). It’s basically a ghost story, and it’s got some relatively detailed character work, certainly for an Infinity Comic. Neves has always been a solid artist and he has some good uses of the vertical scrolling format here, with merging panels and the occasional interesting perspective trick. It’s pretty good!
WOLVERINE: BLOOD HUNT #2. By Tom Waltz, Juan José Ryp, Guru-eFX & Cory Petit. Um. Well, this is mostly extended fight scenes. There’s a little bit suggesting that Maverick has a more complicated agenda than the first issue implied but… no, mostly it’s just Wolverine and Nightguard fighting a zombie horde. Sorry, vampire horde. But it’s the same thing to all practical purposes. I see why we’re doing Blood Hunt tie-ins this month – it’s a very handy buffer between X-seasons. But this is the sort of issue that makes my heart sink at the thought of reading the rest of the crossover. Even the core titles participating in this event are only doing three issues each. The X-books are doing eight! And while Jubilee at least has a hook to do vampire stories with, there’s a real diminishing returns element to tie-ins taking place in the margins of a crossover like this. How many different stories can you really do about vampire hordes roaming wild? Because by my count there are 48 tie-in issues to Blood Hunt not counting the core series, and I’m willing to bet that the answer to my question isn’t “48”. In isolation, this is a competent action issue but… god, how much of this?
Daredevil Villains #27: Phoenix
DAREDEVIL #68 (September 1970)
“Phoenix and the Fighter!”
Writer: Roy Thomas
Artist: Gene Colan
Inker: Syd Shores
Letterer: Artie Simek
Colourist: not credited
Editor: Stan Lee
No, not that Phoenix.
After four issues in Hollywood, Daredevil is back in New York, but without Karen Page in tow. She’ll be back, but she’s out of the picture for the moment. In the meantime, Daredevil moves on to something else entirely.
Daredevil arrives at the DA’s office to find Foggy in a shouting match with three guys from an extremist group called Phoenix. The only one who gets a name is called Kragg. The Phoenix members wear brightly coloured tunics with logos on the chest – Kragg’s costume has a phoenix head, and the others have a sort of stylised flame thing. They generally look like they’ve wandered out of a Buck Rogers story and left their ray guns at home.
Kragg is trying to get Foggy to stop “hounding” his group. After Daredevil shoos the extremists away, we learn that Foggy is investigating them because they’ve mysteriously bought the contract of middleweight boxing contender Kid Gawaine. The Kid has an upcoming title match at Madison Square Garden, and his trainer, Pop Fenton, once trained Battlin’ Jack Murdock. For obvious reasons, a story of boxing corruption piques Daredevil’s interest, and he decides to look into Phoenix himself.
The X-Axis – w/c 10 June 2024
“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters.” – Antonio Gramsci
X-MEN: HEIR OF APOCALYPSE #1. (Annotations here.) This is a truly weird month for the X-books. Krakoa is finished, but the new X-Men titles don’t start until July. In itself, that’s no bad thing. I’m all for a season break. But you can’t really pause the line for a month, and so we have a month of… what? Well, there are Blood Hunt tie-ins, and that event is nicely timed to provide X-filler. There’s a ludicrous number of Wolverine side projects. And then there’s this.
I’m not sure the scheduling has done it any favours. It makes it seem less like the X-event for June and more like it was so inconsequential that you could ship it before X-Men #1 without spoiling the launch. Yet it picks up on Apocalypse’s storyline from X-Men #35 so… apparently not? There are mixed messages here. It’s puzzling.
X-Men: Heir of Apocalypse #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN: HEIR OF APOCALYPSE #1
Writer: Steve Foxe
Penciller: Netho Diaz
Inker: JP Mayer
Colour Artist: Alex Sinclair
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Annalise Bissa
And on we go. X-Men: Heir of Apocalypse is a four-issue miniseries shipping over June and July. It has a weird position on the schedule. On the one hand, this is one of the first X-books from the new office, it picks up a major plot point from X-Men #35, and the premise generally seems as if it ought to be significant. On the other hand, the fact that it appears between the end of Krakoa and the launch of the new X-Men titles – alongside a bunch of Wolverine minis and Blood Hunt tie-ins – positions it as a decidedly second-tier release. Still, it’s as significant as X-books are going to get in the remainder of June.
As I said in the post about Free Comic Book Day 2024: Blood Hunt / X-Men, I’m thinking of altering the format of these posts in what I expect to be a less inter-connected line going forward. Besides, the new regime seems to be much more relaxed about doing its own footnotes. So let’s see how the approach I used for the FCBD issue works out here…
THE STATE OF MUTANTKIND
We’re after X-Men #35 but before any of the relaunched X-Men titles, and so this is another book which is awkwardly coy about the status quo of the mutants from Earth.
Daredevil Villains #26: Brother Brimstone
DAREDEVIL #65-66 (June & July 1970)
“The Killing of Brother Brimstone” / “…And One Cried Murder!”
Writer: Roy Thomas
Penciller: Gene Colan
Inker: Syd Shores
Letterer: Artie Smiek
Colourist: not credited
Editor: Stan Lee
Once again, we’ve skipped a couple of issues with returning villains. Issue #63 is a Gladiator story, and issue #64 is the return of Stunt-Master. There have been some developments in those two issues.
After months of pestering Matt to quit as Daredevil, Karen Page has lost patience and walked out. She was expecting Matt to stop her at the airport, but he was too busy being Daredevil to show up. So Karen is now living in Los Angeles with her old college roommate Sally Weston. And Matt has followed her out there, which means we get four issues in Hollywood. In issue #64, Daredevil fails to locate Karen, who is avoiding him. Instead, Daredevil gets sidetracked by Stunt-Master.
Now, obviously, Daredevil has pursued Karen to the other side of the country because he’s a romantic lead. It’s not like he’s some sort of stalker! So in issue #65, he breaks into Karen’s bedroom to find out where she’s working.
As it happens, Sally Weston is the assistant director on gothic daytime soap opera Strange Secrets, and she’s got Karen some acting work on the show. Readers at the time would have recognised Strange Secrets as the ABC daytime soap Dark Shadows, which ran from 1966 to 1971. Accordingly to Wikipedia, it “became popular when vampire Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid) was introduced ten months into its run. It would feature ghosts, werewolves, zombies, man-made monsters, witches, warlocks, time travel and a parallel universe.” By early 1970, the show was past its peak, which is in fact how Strange Secrets is presented here.
The X-Axis – w/c 3 June 2024
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #142. By Steve Foxe, Steve Orlando, Nick Roche, Yen Nitro & Travis Lanham. Well, at least this is finished. Clocking in at a ludicrous 22 issues, this really does seem to have been nothing more than a bunch of side quests to occupy the C-listers. There’s no interesting concept in here, and it’s ultimately just self-indulgent sprawl. The book wraps up by annoying me one last time by having the X-Men gratuitously torture their defeated prisoners, and actually express regret that they can’t do the same thing to Selene. This was terrible.
X-MEN #35. (Annotations here.) On the other hand, this is much more like it. The final X-book of the Krakoan era (well, except for the other one that comes out this week) is a massive epilogue issue, and with Gerry Duggan, Kieron Gillen and Al Ewing co-writing the main story. A price tag of £8 is somewhat alarming, but at 88 pages in digital format, that’s not such bad value. It still triggers the involuntary “Blimey, how much?” reaction, though.
