Daredevil Villains #6: Mister Fear
DAREDEVIL #6 (February 1965)
“Trapped By … the Fellowship of Fear”
Writer, editor: Stan Lee
Artist: Wally Wood
Letterer: Sam Rosen
Colourist: uncredited
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out the thinking behind this one. Daredevil is the Man Without Fear. It says so on the cover. So clearly his natural enemy is someone who inspires fear. Hence, Mister Fear. Job done. Pub?
Even without Daredevil’s gimmick to play off, fear is a fine motif for a villain. After all, over at DC, it’s the Scarecrow’s whole thing. But that’s hindsight. At this point, the Scarecrow is a villain who appeared in two stories during World War II and was never seen again. He won’t be revived for another couple of years. The fear motif is open for use. So once again, Daredevil gets in first with a version of an idea that another character will get right in a few years time.
But Mr Fear doesn’t stick around. The identity doesn’t get revived for years, and even then, it’s someone else under the mask. So what went wrong?
We might start by asking whether Daredevil’s “Man Without Fear” tagline is anything more than a tagline. Is the idea really central to the character? Is Daredevil noticeably more fearless than any other superhero? Well, not really. His central gimmick is his blindness and the way he works around that with his other senses. There are moments in the early issues which really play down how much he’s getting from his radar sense and suggest that he’s taking incredible risks on the information available to him, to be sure. There’s one in this issue, where he jumps from a rooftop to attack some bad guys and, if you take the dialogue literally, he’s just hoping that there’s going to be a lamppost to grab hold of.
Even those moments don’t position Daredevil as a Man Without Fear, though, so much as a Man Without Common Sense Who Gets Lucky A Lot. So maybe Mr Fear’s problem is that he doesn’t mesh with Daredevil as neatly as you’d expect. Or maybe the problem is that this particular story is muddled – much of Mr Fear’s plan has nothing to do with fear at all, and fear becomes just a random weapon that he happens to have available to him.
Or maybe there’s a more fundamental problem: Mr Fear is positioned as a loser from the word go.
Stan Lee can usually be relied upon to hype up any new villain, no matter how questionable. He told us before that the Matador was the greatest threat to law and order that New York had ever seen. In a couple of issues time, he’ll be selling Stilt-Man in the same way. But here’s how he opens issue #6:
“Remember the Purple Man in D.D. #4? Well, we have a hunch that this month’s villain will remind you of him in some ways! But, though their methods may be somewhat similar, you’ll find that our ‘Mr Fear’ is far, far different than you first suspect!”
That’s the opening pitch: Mr Fear is a bit like the Purple Man, but don’t worry, this isn’t just a retread of two issues ago, honest. It doesn’t exactly ooze confidence. (Just to confirm that he wasn’t on top form this month, Stan also tells us that Daredevil is “like a brooding wingless eagle”, an image far more disturbing than he can have intended.)
Mr Fear is Zoltan Drago, proprietor of a failed waxworks. His museum has models of all the world’s greatest heroes and villains, but nobody is interested. So he comes up with an evil scheme. Not a scheme about fear, mind you. No, his plan is to find a way of bringing his waxworks to life and then use them to take over the world. Even the narrator describes this as “slightly mad”. After all, even if it wasn’t completely impossible, how many waxworks is he going to churn out? How does this put him in any better position than just hiring a hundred mercenaries?
But it’s while experimenting with waxwork-animating chemicals that Drago accidentally stumbles upon his “fear gas”, which can fill anyone with terror. So he drops the whole waxworks idea, and decides to become a fear-based supervillain instead. Step one is to get some henchmen – except that he’s scared of hiring anyone too good, because they might turn on him. And so he settles for the Eel and the Ox, who were C-list even in the Silver Age. We’re not off to a good start in the imposing villainy stakes.
Incidentally, Dr Strange, Sorcerer Supreme #33 retcons Drago’s origin, revealing that he’s being secretly influenced and driven mad by the Dweller in Darkness. I suppose that makes slightly more sense than him just randomly trying to animate waxworks.
For that matter – if there’s a strong thematic connection between waxworks and fear, it’s been lost somewhat in the mists of time. I mean, I know there’s the film House of Wax, and waxworks had chambers of horrors, and I suppose there’s an uncanny valley aspect to them at a push, but… mostly I associate waxworks with shonky tourist attractions where you can take a photograph with a model of Nicky Campbell, if you really must.
Having assembled his Fellowship of Fear, Mr Fear then hatches a pointlessly elaborate scheme which has nothing to do with fear at all. He hires an entire film crew so that the Eel and the Ox can commit a break-in in broad daylight while pretending that it’s a film shoot. Daredevil steps in, Mr Fear drives him into a panic with fear gas, and our hero is publicly humiliated. Of course, the innocent film crew have filmed the whole thing, meaning that there’s a documentary record of the crime being committed – and they duly hand it over to the police.
Mr Fear decides to press his luck by luring Daredevil to the wax museum with a new Daredevil model. Remember how the starting point of the character was that he was bitter because nobody came to see his hero and villain waxworks? Well, for some reason, the Daredevil waxwork is a huge draw. If only he’d just made a Daredevil waxwork in the first place, all this could have been avoided.
All this leads to Daredevil returning to explore the museum at night, and some shenanigans with people pretending to be waxworks. Foggy Nelson manages to tear Fear’s mask off, but gets injured and winds up in hospital. The villains try to kill him by pretending to be doctors – thoughtfully leaving all of their special equipment at home, despite it being their main advantage over Daredevil. That goes about as well as you’d think. Mr Fear then retreats back to his waxworks, despite the base having already been exposed. His reasoning is that nobody would expect him to do anything so stupid. By this point, Ox and Eel are openly complaining that he’s useless.
And then Daredevil defeats him by standing in front of a fan, so that the fear gas blows harmlessly away.
Mr Fear isn’t a fundamentally bad idea , but he was the one that Stan decided to undercut. He’s not exactly played for laughs, but he comes across as a no-hoper who fluked his way into a few days of success before reality caught up with him. As a break from the Silver Age formula, it’s quite entertaining, but perhaps the concept would have had some legs if it had been played straight.
I suspect wax museums held a morbid fascination in the ’60s the way quicksand did in the ’70s or like clowns do every few years. I have no proof for my theory, but there’s got to be an old Vincent Price movie about wax dummies, right?
Also, how much better would Mr. Fear have been if he *had* animated some wax figures? That sounds great. Daredevil fighting a super-strong, half-melted Carmen Miranda…
Finally, the plots of these early Daredevil issues sound like the childhood games I’d play with kids in my neighborhood where we basically ran between two points exclaiming.
Some stories have suggested that Matt is actually totally immune to fear- the Fear- Eater storyline in Marvel Comics Presents and the Fear Lords story in Doctor Strange.
After this, Drago is killed by Starr Saxon, who takes over his identity. Saxon is killed at the end of that story and comes back as Machinesmith. Machinesmith became a greater presence in the Marvel Universe than any of the Mr. Fears.
Then, we had Larry Cranston, an old law school rival of Matt’s become the third Mr. Fear. Cranston was also killed off by the end of his first story. Weirdly, Ralph Macchio decided to bring him back a quarter century later, even though there was a fourth Mr. Fear around at the time. Cranston got his moment in Brubaker’s Daredevil run, where he drove Matt’s love Milla permanently insane. The story ended with him in jail, controlling the minds of the guards and raping a guard, and there was nothing Matt could do about any of it.
Then, there’s the fourth Mr. Far, Cranston’s nephew, Alan Fagan.He was introduced as a loser who squandered his fortune and was kicked out of college- not much of a way to inspire confidence as a villain.
So basically there’s four Mr. Fears, two of which are still active, and none of which really became a significant villain, except for Machinesmith, who became a technology-themed villain, not a fear-themed one.
Five years after this, Dr Who gave us Spearhead From Space, with its terrifying shop window mannequins. Maybe models of people were more inherently scary back then…
Hearing about Alan Fagan, ‘the loser Mr Fear’, I assumed it must have been him in the Rosenberg King in Black: Thunderbolts mini.
But marvel.fandom.com wiki says it was Larry Cranston after all.
Anyway, that mini and the Brubaker run with poor Milla are probably the only two comics I remember included a Mister Fear.
Thom, not sure if you were kidding or not, but there certainly is a relevant old Vincent Price movie: House of Wax: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Wax_(1953_film)
Considering the amount of times that DD decides to fly a plane, I think one has to conclude that he truly has no fear. Yes, no commonsense also, but still, a man without fear.
Plus, the tagline gave us the iconic, paraphrased bon mot from the Kingpin in “Born Again” about Matt:
“I have shown him that a man without hope…is a man without fear.”
So, also, DD is the “man without hope”. I think Stan Lee missed out on creating a thematic villain for DD using that aspect of the character.
On the subject of wax museums, comic books (including Atlas/Marvel) didn’t leave fallow ground during the days of horror stories. There are plenty of examples, including “Midnight in the Wax Museum” (with artwork by Ditko) which was reprinted in Strange Tales #175 (1974).
Then, there was the Twilight Zone episode, “The New Exhibit” from 1963. Perhaps Lee and/or Wood came up with the living wax figures episode after watching the TZ episode, considering the closeness in date.
*the living wax figures idea, not episode
Soon after, there’s also a waxworks episode of the 1960s Spider-Man cartoon.
I don’t remember which version it was, but I think he was used in the Kesel/Nord era (might have been one of the Kane issues).
The Fellowship of Fear is a great supervillain alliance name. If nothing else, Stan was great at coming up with those.
@Kryzsiek- that’s why having two Mr. Fears at the same time is a stupid idea- it just confuses the readers and writers. See also, the two Cobras.
Of all the Mister Fear variants, Cranston is arguably the one who works best as a villainous foil to Daredevil, since Cranston is also a lawyer in his civilian identity. I suspect he’s the one who has stuck the best for this reason.
Weirdly, an obscurity like Mr. Fear has managed to produce two spin-off villains: in the 1990s, there was the extremely 1990s character Shock, Alan Fagan’s estranged daughter who used some Fagan’s fear-gas impregnated skin (!!!!) to become a supervillain.
But early, in the late 1970s, there was a one-off villain called Phantasm, a domestic abuser who got some kind of radiation-based powers from an accident and got ahold of a spare Mr. Fear costume using it to stalk and terrorize his partner. That was a Don McGregor-scripted story meant to pitch a possible series for Paladin, the super-mercenary who had debuted recently in Daredevil
More generally, fear-based villains almost always have the problem of ending up in the same two plotlines over and over again:
1) Hero faces their fears, ideally in the form of a hallucination that gives the artist somethign to work with, overcomes them because it’s sort of in the definition of “hero,” and beats the baddie. (See also: virtually every D’Spayre story ever).
2) Hero succumbs to the villain’s chemical/artificial fear thingus, dopes out what’s influencing them, and takes countermeasures, after which the baddie is taken down with ease (e.g., about half of all Batman stories featuring the Scarecrow).
Mr. Fear usually falls into version 2, but most of the Alan Fagan version’s plots were version 1.
Mark Coale said: I don’t remember which version it was, but I think he was used in the Kesel/Nord era (might have been one of the Kane issues).
It was Cranston. Kesel introduced Cranston as the power behind the crooked radio staton where Karen Page was working in his last couple of issues, giving him a bizarre super-henchperson names Insomnia.
When Joe Kelly took over the title, he kept the Mister fear plot and took it in an odd new direction involving a frameup of Karen Page and a serial killer who was being protected by the system, with Larry Cranston — using his real name — demonizing Karen publicly as a legal commentator on TV.
This plot element made zero sense, since Cranston’s real name was not only known to Matt, but also was supposed to be legally dead: the Alan Fagan version ’s origin is that he inherited the gear after Cranston died. Cranston’s identity had also been exposed to other people in his 1970s appearances, so how he was able to have a career as a law professor in Macchio’s resurrection plot is unclear.
Michael said: Cranston got his moment in Brubaker’s Daredevil run, where he drove Matt’s love Milla permanently insane. The story ended with him in jail, controlling the minds of the guards and raping a guard, and there was nothing Matt could do about any of it.
I always thought it was odd that Cranston wasn’t a major target for DD during the “Shadowlands” period, when he was growing corrupt by using the Hand to try to fight crime in increasingly horrifying ways.
Mark Gruenwald created a “Waxman” villain/tragic figure character back in 1979’s Spider-Woman #17. It had a fairly good horror vibe and even turned up a few times since.
In all fairness, at the time he felt like a throwback to the Marvel line of monsters stories, and it took almost forty years for him to return at all.
@Omar- “Cranston’s identity had also been exposed to other people in his 1970s appearances, so how he was able to have a career as a law professor in Macchio’s resurrection plot is unclear.”
In Macchio’s story. he’s using the alias “Harold Cranstone” in his identity as a law professor.
Michael said: In Macchio’s story. he’s using the alias “Harold Cranstone” in his identity as a law professor.
That makes a bit more sense. So the problem is really with the Joe Kelly arc, then.
The only thing I have to say about Mr Fear is that the current character design with the gorilla skull is absolutely fantastic.
I have no idea what gorilla skulls have to do with fear, but it’s a real glow up.
So what we’re saying is that Mr. Fear’s three main weapons are not fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, and an almost fanatical devotion to the pope?
I recall liking conucs written by Brubaker, but the description of Mr Fear raping prison guards while Daredevil is helpless to stop him, is sickening. I don’t need my superheroes to be one-dimensional Golden Age types, but what is a superhero comic where the hero can’t save the day or protect the commonfolk? I have news sites if I want to read that.
“I recall liking conucs written by Brubaker, but the description of Mr Fear raping prison guards while Daredevil is helpless to stop him, is sickening. I don’t need my superheroes to be one-dimensional Golden Age types, but what is a superhero comic where the hero can’t save the day or protect the commonfolk? I have news sites if I want to read that.”
Well, it is a bit of a recurring theme with Daredevil that impromptu victory against a villain is not enough to stop him permanently. It happened in particular with Kingpin, but all too often Daredevil’s “fist” victories do not correspond to a legal victory for Matt Murdock.
In Mr. Fear’s case, he defeats him and sends him to jail, but Milla is permanently mentally impaired and in prison Mr. Fear is able to control whoever is around him, including a guard who waits for him half-naked in the cell.
It seems more like an abandoned storyline though, the way those pages are set up I think Brubaker had intended to return to this situation, but then changed plans.
Midnighter said: Well, it is a bit of a recurring theme with Daredevil that impromptu victory against a villain is not enough to stop him permanently. It happened in particular with Kingpin, but all too often Daredevil’s “fist” victories do not correspond to a legal victory for Matt Murdock.
In Mr. Fear’s case, he defeats him and sends him to jail, but Milla is permanently mentally impaired and in prison Mr. Fear is able to control whoever is around him, including a guard who waits for him half-naked in the cell.
And the Gladiator is also permanently back in his violent psychosis. It was pretty grim arc all around.
It seems more like an abandoned storyline though, the way those pages are set up I think Brubaker had intended to return to this situation, but then changed plans.
Hard to say. I thought I’d seen an interview where Brubaker said he wanted Fear to just ppain win, tomake him a bigger villain.
But all I found was this:
https://www.cbr.com/broken-hand-brubaker-talks-daredevil/
In it, Brubaker says the following: “It was also about taking a character, Mr. Fear, who I always thought should have been one of Daredevil’s arch-nemesis and making him a scary bad ass. I hope to get back to him at some point but right now he’s enjoying his life in Ryker’s Island.”
I think Brubaker’s Daredevil run is my favorite of the, uh, “modern era,” let’s say Marvel Knights and onward, but there are quite a few stops and starts. That first 12 issues of him breaking out of jail are great, but it feels like they wrap of very neatly, and then . . . is that when he takes off for Europe?
It’s almost like Brubaker was glad to no longer be saddled with the prison status quo Bendis left for him, and yet he seemed to really be having fun writing that arc.
@Josie: the prison escape arc was great, butr I didn’t like most of the Brubaker run. It was a little too unpleasant, bordering on misery porn. I liked the later arc with Dakota North, and the Kingpin stuff was okay, but it’s telling that the best thing that came out of the last 20 or so issues of his run was a back-up story by Ann Nocenti & David Aja. The Waid/Rivera/Martin/Samnee run was more my speed.
Remind me, does Brubaker’s run have something in the way of conclusion? Because I agree, it borders on misery porn, but that whole glum era ultimately leads to Shadowland and that’s… Andy Diggle, right?
Krzysiek Ceran said: Remind me, does Brubaker’s run have something in the way of conclusion? Because I agree, it borders on misery porn, but that whole glum era ultimately leads to Shadowland and that’s… Andy Diggle, right?
Brubaker ends with Matt screwing over the Kingpin and Lady Bullseye by seizing control of the Hand himself.
Diggle picks up virtually right where Brubaker leaves off.
For the record, I do kind of appreciate the fact that outgoing Daredevil writers have been setting up bizarre status quos for their successors to take over ever since Bendis left.
Bendis left Matt in prison.
Brubaker left Matt having taken over the Hand.
Diggle left Matt uh sort of soul-cleansed, kind of a hard reset except his identity being public is still a thing, and Waid runs with Matt feelings freer and a bit more wild.
I think there’s another kind of hard reset before Soule takes over, but Soule kicks off with a magical solution to the public identity, which is later revealed as the work of the Purple Man’s children.
And then Zdarsky takes over with Kingpin as mayor.
And then I don’t know what the new volume does. I haven’t read all of Zdarsky’s run.
There’s another mystical hard reset at the start of Ahmed’s new series, but the way Zdarsky ended his second volume left no space for anything but a hard reset.
That or a new character taking up the mantle.
…actually Elektra is still Daredevil, but Matt gets rebooted anyway.
@Josie: not to mention Miller leaving Matt disbarred and working in a diner at the end of “Born Again.” The Nocenti run is even more remarkable considering what she had to work with.
I love Nocenti’s run. How she uses the first year to make Matt realize the limits of what Daredevil can accomplish as far as justice, prompting the “free legal clinic” set-up.
Then she brings Kingpin back in, and since trying to destroy Daredevil by taking tangible things (his money, home, license to practice law) didn’t work in Born Again, Fisk tried to take intangible things this time. Matt’s faith in the legal system to offer justice, and his relationship with Karen Page.
(There’s a whole sort of arc in the DD vs. Kingpin thing that runs from “Born Again” thru Nocenti’s run up to Chichester and Lee Weeks “Fall From Grace” story, in terms of how they attack each other.)
Plus, while Nocenti and Romita Jr. did use Kingpin and Bullseye, the old standards, they also had Daredevil up against Mephisto, Blob and Pyro, the craziest Ultron ever. I know street crime and ninjas are kind of Daredevil’s wheelhouse, but I like when writers go outside that. Variety’s important.
I really don’t like Elektra Daredevil, but I also don’t really care for Elektra beyond the Miller stories. Rucka’s series was okay, but I kind of side with Miller in that she served her purpose as a character, had a complete arc, and doesn’t need to keep being dredged up.
I really didn’t feel Zdarsky had anything to say with her.