DAREDEVIL #258 (September 1988)
“I Heard The Jungle Breathe”
Writer: Fabian Nicieza
Penciller: Ron Lim
Inker: Jim Sanders III
Letterer: Diana Alberts
Colourist: Bob Sharen
Editor: Ralph Macchio

We’ve skipped issue #257, which is a crossover with Punisher. Technically the villain in that story is a guy called Alfred Coppersmith, but his story plays out mostly in Punisher, so we’ll pass him over. That brings us to issue #258, which is a fill-in story by Fabian Nicieza and Ron Lim. Inevitably, it bears little resemblance to the Nocenti/Romita issues that surround it. But it does introduce a new supervillain, and one who actually comes back.

This issue brings back Willie Lincoln, a short-lived supporting character who hadn’t appeared since issue #59. In the original stories, he was a Vietnam veteran who had been blinded in action. Daredevil helped him to clear his name after he was framed by a mobster, and finally he got his old job back with the NYPD. It’s an overcoming-adversity story. After that, he occasionally popped up to help out, before being quietly forgotten about.

That was the 1960s. This is 1988, and American attitudes to the Vietnam War have moved on. Willie remains anchored to late 60s Vietnam despite the floating timeline, with other aspects of the original story being retconned accordingly. We open with a flashback to Willie serving in Vietnam in 1968, as the panicky soldiers in his patrol start killing innocent villagers. This turns out to be the mission on which he got blinded. Nicieza doesn’t quite throw Willie under the bus here – he’s at least dithering about what he can do to stop it, before the question is taken out of his hands when the enemy shows up. Daredevil assures us later on that Willie isn’t to blame. But his blinding is still recast as an ironic punishment for Lincoln wishing that he didn’t have to watch this happen.

In the present day, the surviving members of Willie’s patrol are being attacked and killed in their homes by the Bengal – a man wearing a tiger-themed costume and carrying a sai. He’s a child from the village, who survived the massacre, charged after the departing Americans’ helicopter, grabbed onto the skids as it took off, and got booted off, presumably to fall to his death. But he survived and dedicated his life to revenge.

He doesn’t have a huge amount of personality beyond that, aside from being something of an ascetic. The only things he actually says in the issue are variants on “Did the jungle breathe?”, either in Vietnamese or in broken English. He doesn’t speak English, and can’t interact with the other characters except through violence. Even his origin flashback is delivered via the narrator, rather than by giving his voice in translation. His catchphrase refers to what the American soldiers were panicking about – they thought they could hear enemy soldiers in the trees. Come to think of it, given how quickly they get attacked, they were probably right, though that obviously doesn’t justify them killing the villagers.

Willie is next on the Bengal’s list, and Daredevil is there to protect him. We get five pages of mostly silent combat before Daredevil wins. Then Daredevil brings the unconscious Bengal back to Willie’s apartment so that they can lament the futile cycle of violence. Somehow, the Bengal is somehow convinced of Willie’s innocence when he comes round and sees that Willie is blind. I suppose the idea is that he has a blinding realisation that at least some of the Americans were also victims. So the Bengal hurls himself out of a window, and Daredevil declares him dead. It’s all a bit of a mess and reads like something got changes late in the day.

In itself, this is an awkward story. The ending doesn’t work, and the story feels like it’s trying too hard to exonerate Willie. The bengal tiger imagery is a puzzling choice for a Vietnamese avenger, too – Bengal is nowhere remotely close to Vietnam. I realise the Indochinese Tiger doesn’t have the same ring to it, but even so.

Still, you can see why someone might have thought he was worth another go. The costume design is strong, and there’s room for developing his vendetta into a broader retaliation against American interference. Nonetheless, he won’t return in Daredevil. Instead, Nicieza will keep coming back to him for a few years to come.

Within a year, the Bengal returns in a short Red Wolf story in Marvel Comics Presents #15, which isn’t available online, but seems to have been some sort of prequel. Then, in 1991, Nicieza brought him back again for New Warriors #7-9. In that story, the Bengal is still on his mission of revenge. We learn that the officer in charge of Willie’s platoon was court martialled, found God and became a priest. Once again, the Bengal is a non-speaking character, and once again he backs down after seeing how his target has changed. It feels like Nicieza taking another crack at getting the story right.

In 1992, Nicieza brought him back again in Night Thrasher: Four Control #1. This time, the Bengal has moved on to seeking revenge on atrocity-committers more generally, include the North Vietnamese general who was in charge of the other forces involved in the destruction of his village. This is all a bit weird, since in the original story they don’t do much more than attack the Americans who are already attacking civilians. The fact that he barely speaks contributes to the idea that this is a character hollowed-out by his obsession, rather than an avenger.

After that story, Bengal passes out of Nicieza’s control. In Marvel Knights #11-12, Chuck Dixon writes him as a generic martial artist working for Tombstone. Then, in a bemusing turn of events, he shows up in Avengers: The Initiative, where he has a wife and child and seems to have become a hero. At the end, he retires to open a martial arts dojo. Most recently, he showed up in Spider-Boy as a martial arts type with his son in tow as a sidekick.

None of that has anything to do with the original concept. He’s meant to be a monomania character, a vehicle to lament the destructiveness of obsession and the cycle of violence. There’s a limit to how far you can take that, although it could have been developed into a broader mission of revenge on America, or something on those lines. Even in Nicieza’s stories, he doesn’t really work, because his two main character traits – a lifelong obsession with revenge and a willingness to entertain forgiveness when he actually meets his victims – don’t feel like a coherent if conflicted whole. They just feel contradictory.

As a result, the Bengal has wound up as a generic martial arts fighter with an unusually good costume. If he has anything else these days to make him stand out, it’s the fact that he used to be an obsessive and got over it. But the potential was there to do something more.