DAREDEVIL #243-244 (June & July 1987)
“Don’t Touch Me” / “Touch Me”
Writer: Ann Nocenti
Penciller: Louis Williams
Inkers: Al Williamson, Danny Bulanadi & Tony DeZuinga
Colourists: Christie Scheele & Paul Becton
Letterer: Joe Rosen
Editor: Ralph Macchio

(Note: I skipped this post by mistake last time, so it’s appearing out of sequence. For #78, see here.)

After a string of one-off villains, most of whom are mentally ill serial killers, Ann Nocenti goes in a different direction: magic. Specifically, voodoo.

The last time Daredevil did voodoo was in issue #130, cover date February 1976. That’s a story by Marv Wolfman, Bob Brown and Klaus Janson, in which a voodoo priest called Brother Zed uses his illusion powers to convince his followers that he has real magical power, and then exploits their belief for his own gain. The basic concept isn’t too bad when taken in isolation, but the story came out at a time when black characters were largely absent from Daredevil, and if your sole representation of black America is to have them decapitating chickens in Central Park, then that’s a problem.

Eleven years have passed, since then, but in terms of the diversity of its cast, less has changed in Daredevil than you might think. The generic bystanders certainly have a lot more variation than they used to. But the book’s most prominent black character is still Turk, a comic relief character, and even he hasn’t appeared in Nocenti’s run. The Hell’s Kitchen supporting cast is small, and consists of Karen Page and a group of street kids called the Fatboys – they aren’t all white, but the ones with developed personalities are. Rotgut and his mother were black, to be fair, although Rotgut himself was an albino. So while things have changed in 11 years, this still stands out as a Story With A Lot Of Black People In It.

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DAREDEVIL #245 (August 1987)
“Burn!”
Writer: Ann Nocenti
Penciller: Chuck Patton
Inker: Tony DeZuniga
Letterer: Joe Rosen
Colourists: Christie Scheele & George Roussos
Editor: Ralph Macchio

(Note: I’ve skipped a story and posted this out of order by mistake; we’ll come back to #77 next time.)

The 1980s was not a great time to be a Black Panther fan.

His last solo series ended in 1980. He made a few other appearances later that year (including the Marvel Team-Up back-up strip that would later be used to justify pairing him up with Storm), but in 1981, he didn’t appear at all. He made a single appearance in 1982, and that was in Marvel Graphic Novel #1, which had everyone in it. In 1983, he didn’t appear at all. In 1984, he was in the Assistant Editors Month issue of Avengers and had a back-up strip in the Marvel Team-Up Annual. In 1985, he didn’t appear at all. In 1986, he was in West Coast Avengers Annual #1. And in 1987 he was in this issue of Daredevil.

Things picked up for him in 1988, when he got a four-issue miniseries. But as of Daredevil #245, his Marvel Knights series was still over a decade away, and the shift towards a more Afrocentric interpretation was further away still.

Aside from the Panther, though, the focus of this story is Wheeler, a Hell’s Kitchen resident heavily in debt through his gambling habit. At one point, he worked for the government of Wakanda as one of a group of guys in flying suits of armour, who were heroes of some sort. Wheeler isn’t Wakandan himself. “What a rich little African empire that was,” he muses. “I sure got paid well to protect that place.” There’s no explanation of how he ended up there, but in 1987, Wakanda was still the sort of place that would bring in some American mercenaries to prop up the military.

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DAREDEVIL #242 (May 1987)
“Caviar Killer”
Writer: Ann Nocenti
Penciller: Keith Pollard
Inker: Danny Bulanadi
Letterer: Joe Rosen
Colourist: Max Scheele
Editor: Ralph Macchio

To be honest, the Caviar Killer is a pretty marginal inclusion in this feature. He’s a serial killer who appears in one story.

But Ann Nocenti’s run opens with Daredevil taking on a string of one-off characters (plus one guest), all of whom are mentally ill in one way or another, and most of whom are homicidal – Jack Hazzard, Sabretooth, Rotgut and the Trixter. The Caviar Killer completes the set before we move on to something else. And this issue is something of a turning point, since the real focus of the story isn’t on the Killer at all, and it’s also the first time that Nocenti starts to branch out beyond Hell’s Kitchen again. This story involves rich people – and, as a result, class conflict.

The opening scene isn’t subtle. Joe, who seems to be some sort of union representative, shows up at the home of the rich man who owns the chemical plant we works. The man lets him in, and gives him a complacent lecture about ambition and trickle-down economics while eating his one-man banquet. He’s massively unsympathetic and condescending, but evidently considers himself to be eminently reasonable. He claims to have worked his way up from poverty himself (and nobody ever tells us otherwise), and seems to genuinely believe that anyone else could do the same. When the man brushes off his pet dog breaking a “pre-Columbian burial urn” and starts feeding it steak, Joe snaps. He yells a bit about the distribution of wealth, then assaults the plant owner and starts shoving caviar down his throat. Somehow or other, this proves fatal – presumably it’s meant to be a heart attack.

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DAREDEVIL #241 (April 1987)
“Black Christmas”
Writer: Ann Nocenti
Penciler: Todd McFarlane
Inker: Al Milgrom
Letterer: Joe Rosen
Colourist: Christie Scheele
Editor: Ralph Macchio

With Daredevil still lacking a regular artist, this issue features guest art from a pre-stardom Todd McFarlane. Not all that pre-stardom, mind you – he’d been working for Marvel and DC for a couple of years by this point, and his run on Incredible Hulk started the same month. He’s still not an obvious fit for an Ann Nocenti story. But this is fill-in work, so it’s quite conservative and largely in line with Marvel house style. (The generic cover art, which is by Mike Zeck and Klaus Janson, looks nothing like the interior.)

It’s Christmas Day in New York, and the Trixter is spending it alone in a 42nd Street hotel room. According to his monologue, he’s a world famous magician and master of disguise, whose real name is a secret. He implies that he doesn’t even remember his own real name, having spent so much of his life subsumed in his Trixter persona or his various disguises. He finds his life empty. He’s fascinated by Daredevil, who he regards as “a bit of a trickster, a stuntman” – but who chose to be a hero instead of an entertainer. So, apparently hoping to learn something, he decides to meet Daredevil and let him “decide my fate.” He seems to be contemplating suicide depending on how his meeting with Daredevil goes.

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DAREDEVIL #239-240 (February/March 1987)
Writer: Ann Nocenti
Artist:Louis Williams
Inkers: Al Williamson & (#239 only) Geoff Isherwood
Colourists: Christie Scheele (#239), Bob Sharen & Petra Scotese (#240)
Letterer: Joe Rosen
Editor: Ralph Macchio

We’ve skipped another couple of issues. Issue #237, as I mentioned last time, is the one issue that Steve Englehart wrote before quitting, and appears under his “John Harkness” pseudonym. It features Klaw as the guest villain, so it doesn’t concern us. Issue #238 is the official start of Ann Nocenti’s run (since issue #236 was meant to be a fill-in), but it’s a Mutant Massacre tie-in, and the guest villain is Sabretooth.

So that brings us to this two-parter, where Nocenti starts to get into her stride. She’ll be working with rotating artists for the first year or so, until John Romita Jr finally comes aboard with issue #250. The most frequent contributor is Louis Williams, who also drew the Englehart issue, and returns for another two-parter in issues #243-244. Daredevil was his first work at Marvel, and his other credits seem to be fairly limited. I’m not sure why – he was certainly up to the job. He’s a good fit for this story, with plenty of atmospheric detail and suitably seedy and horrific qualities to his work.

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DAREDEVIL #236 (November 1986)
“American Dreamer”
Writer: Ann Nocenti
Penciller, co-inker: Barry Windsor-Smith
Co-inker: Bob Wiacek
Colourist: Max Scheele
Letterer: Joe Rosen
Editor: Ralph Macchio

“Born Again” completely upended the series. By the end, Matt has lost his licence to practice law and started a new life in Hell’s Kitchen as a diner chef, happily reunited with Karen Page for a fresh start. Oh, and the star name creators from “Born Again” have left. So how do you follow that?

Well, this is Daredevil, so the short-term answer is “with fill-in stories”. The first two don’t concern us. Issue #234, by the improbable creative team of Mark Gruenwald, Steve Ditko and Klaus Janson, features Madcap (from Captain America) and the Rose (from Amazing Spider-Man). Issue #235 is a Mr Hyde story by Danny Fingeroth, Steve Ditko and Danny Bulandi. Both acknowledge the new status quo, but don’t really attempt to do anything with it.

That brings us to issue #236, by the book’s new regular writer Ann Nocenti and guest artist Barry Windsor-Smith. Nocenti was the editor of Uncanny X-Men and New Mutants at this point, and would remain so for another couple of years. As well as various fill-ins and anthology contributions, she’d written the final four issues of Spider-Woman, the Dazzler/Beast miniseries Beauty and the Beast and one of her signature works, the Longshot miniseries. Daredevil was her first substantial run on an ongoing title, and turned out to be by far her longest run on any book.

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DAREDEVIL #232-233 (July & August 1986)
“God and Country” / “Armageddon”
Writer: Frank Miller
Artist: David Mazzuchelli
Colourist: Max Scheele
Letterer: Joe Rosen
Editor: Ralph Macchio

We’ve skipped a few more issues here, including the tail end of Denny O’Neil’s run. The villain in issue #225 is the Vulture, on loan from Amazing Spider-Man. Issue #226, O’Neil’s final issue, is a Gladiator story. And that brings us to issues #227-233: a seven-issue return for Frank Miller as writer, and the end of David Mazzuchelli’s run as artist. This is “Born Again”, one of the best known stories in Daredevil‘s history. The main villain is the Kingpin, and we’ve covered him before. But he brings in a hired gun for the final two issues, and Nuke is absolutely within our remit.

Before we get to Nuke, though, we need to take a look at what’s already happened. In part, that’s because “Born Again” is important – not just in the sense that it’s an acknowledged classic, but because it makes sweeping changes to the character and to the book’s status quo that will be important going forward. But we also need to look at it simply to figure out what Nuke is doing in this story at all.

The basic idea of “Born Again” is very simple. Although it’s only seven issues long, the story covers an unusually long time frame. By modern standards it’s extremely compressed, but it’s for the best, since the plot calls for long stretches of Matt doing very little and being wholly ineffective – told at a modern pace, it would be glacially depressing.

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DAREDEVIL #224 (November 1985)
“Abe”
Writer: Jim Owsley
Pencillers: Daniel Jurgens & Geoff Isherwood
Inkers: Mel Candido & Bruce Patterson
Letterer: Janice Chiang
Colourist: Ken Feduniewicz
Editor: Ralph Macchio

We’re only two issues away from the end of Denny O’Neil’s run, but there’s still time to squeeze in one more fill-in. It’s a weird story, and not in a good way.

Daredevil is investigating Continental Trucking, a transport firm which is secretly a front for the mob. He fights his way into their warehouse, planning to interrupt a drug deal. But moments before he reaches the real bad guys, someone else gets to them first, incinerates them all, and disappears. Naturally enough, Daredevil turns his attention to this vigilante killer.

The one survivor of the massacre is the building’s janitor, Abe. Abe is an old blind man who has been working at Continental since the days when it was a legitimate business. He was kept on as janitor after he lost his sight, but he doesn’t know anything much about the mob – in fact, he assumes that he was kept around precisely because he wouldn’t be able to identify anyone.

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DAREDEVIL #220-221 (July-August 1985)
“Fog” / “Behold My Vengeance”
Writer: Denny O’Neil
Artist: David Mazzuchelli
Colourist: Christie Scheele
Letterer: Joe Rosas
Editor: Ralph Macchio

We’ve skipped another a couple of issues. Issue #218 is a Jester story. Issue #219 is a small-town crime story by Frank Miller and John Buscema where Matt only appears as a silent, unnamed stranger. As a straight crime story with one-off villains, it doesn’t get an entry in this feature, but it’s an intriguing oddity that has more in common with Sin City than it does with Miller’s previous Daredevil stories.

That brings us to issues #220-221, which will be our final entry for the Denny O’Neil run. He stays on the book for a few issues more, but issue #222 involves some people fighting over a sample of Mr Fear’s fear gas, and issue #223 is a Secret Wars II tie-in, with the Beyonder as the antagonist. Issue #224 is another fill-in (which we’ll be covering), issue #225 is the Vulture, and issue #226 is the Gladiator.

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DAREDEVIL #217 (April 1985)
“The Sight Stealer”
Writer: Denny O’Neil
Artist: David Mazzuchelli
Colourist: George Roussos
Letterer: Joe Rosen
Editor: Ralph Macchio

We’ve jumped forward a year since the last entry, so let’s get up to speed.

Issues #206 and #210-214 are the remainder of the Micah Synn storyline. Issue #207 is HYDRA. Issues #208-209 are a fill-in story by guest writers Harlan Ellison and Arthur Byron Cover, and they involve robot assassins sent by the Death-Stalker’s mother. I’m not giving her an entry, because she’s barely in the story. Issue #215 sees Daredevil team up (kind of) with the Two-Gun Kid, Marvel’s western hero who was also a lawyer; Two-Gun’s segments are told in flashback, with Daredevil tying up the loose ends in the present day. The villains are just your standard issue corrupt businessmen, though. And issue #216 was the second Gael story.

William Johnson left as penciller after issue #207. His replacement is David Mazzuchelli, who’ll be with us through to issue #233. This is Mazzuchelli’s first major assignment for Marvel after a few fill-ins, and it’s the only lengthy run he’ll do on a superhero title in his career. Oh, and the book has changed editors once again: as of issue #212, it falls under Ralph Macchio’s office.

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