{"id":10097,"date":"2024-06-30T12:04:37","date_gmt":"2024-06-30T11:04:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10097"},"modified":"2024-06-30T12:04:37","modified_gmt":"2024-06-30T11:04:37","slug":"daredevil-villains-29-the-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10097","title":{"rendered":"Daredevil Villains #29: The Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>DAREDEVIL #70-71 (November & December 1970)<\/strong>
\n“The Tribune” \/ “If an Eye Offend Thee…”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Gary Friedrich (#70), Roy Thomas & Lein Wein (#71)<\/strong>
\nPenciller: Gene Colan<\/strong>
\nInker: Syd Shores<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Sam Rosen (#70) & Artie Simek (#71)<\/strong>
\nColourist: not credited<\/strong>
\nEditor: Stan Lee<\/strong><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

But this story has neither the timidness that sank the Phoenix story, nor the over-earnestness of the Thunderbolts. It’s absolutely mad.<\/p>\n

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!”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in New York, a crowd of protestors have gathered outside Vice-President Spiro Agnew’s hotel when a bomb goes off, and the NYPD respond by attacking the crowd with riot gear. Criticising the forces of law and order was still technically against the Comics Code in 1970, but the story is completely clear that this is a violent overreaction. Walter Cronkite even pops up to compare it to the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The bombers are working for Ralston, but that doesn’t stop the NYPD from rounding up some random protestors and charging them with attempted murder – despite Daredevil protesting their innocence.<\/p>\n

Ralston himself is still in Los Angeles, where he’s become the Tribune: a self-appointed masked judge. He’s going to punish commies and bring them into line. He wears a mock judicial robe, he has a picture of the statue of Justice on his chest, and he’s carrying a law book. Here’s his first speech as the Tribune:<\/p>\n

“Yep, just like I figured! Those commie kids don’t even have respect for the Vice President! But all of that’s about to change! Yessir! America’s gonna be America again, with a little help from patriots like me! Everybody’s gonna listen to the government and stop all this rabble-rousin’ protest stuff! Unless they’d rather go listen to Kosygin for a while! As for those that don’t want to fight for this country, well, there’s ways to take care of the yella-bellied cowards! But to do that, we need a leader – somebody who can handle the traitors in this country, so that the government’ll have more time to concentrate on the war and the economy! We need a new kind of judge – to decide who’s a good American, and who’s a rotten red! And lucky for us, there is such a man! He calls himself the Tribune! God bless America! Bring in the accused!”<\/p>\n

Well. This is certainly something different.<\/p>\n

The Tribune’s henchmen are literally just hauling conscientious objectors off the streets and dragging them to “court” to be sentenced for treason. The Tribune then zaps them with a gavel and, it eventually turns out, brainwashes them into joining his followers. This seems to be more or less a hobby.<\/p>\n

Weeks later, the “New York Three” are on trial for the bombing – they don’t get individual names. Matt and Foggy are both convinced that they’re innocent, but it’s their duty to prosecute. Apparently. It’s not as if there seems to be much evidence against them, and shouldn’t this be Foggy’s decision, him being the District Attorney and all? But that’s what the story insists – for some reason, the prosecution must go ahead. Unfortunately, the defence have cited Daredevil as a witness, posing our hero quite the dilemma! Some odd sequences tease that Foggy might go down with the flu (which goes nowhere) and Matt openly tries to find evidence for the defence, but all of that is window dressing.<\/p>\n

Eventually, the Tribune himself arrives in New York with his men in tow. His plan is deranged even by the standards of the Silver Age: he beats up the trial judge in his chambers, then simply takes the judge’s place. Not, mind you, by using his acting skills to impersonate the judge. He just marches onto the bench in full Tribune costume, with one of his costumed henchman as usher, as if he was a proper judge, and starts the trial.<\/p>\n

Roy Thomas is back writing by this point, but he seems just as willing to lean into the concept. “Those who stand before you,” Tribune says, “have conspired to destroy our great nation, and we are here to make certain they receive a fair trial and proper justice before we condemn them to death!”<\/p>\n

As it happens, Daredevil is in the court room in full costume waiting to give evidence. Obviously he’s not going to stand for this charade… Oh, no, hold on, he is. Foggy objects, but the Tribune knocks him out with sleeping gas. (“I find you in contempt of court and sentence you to unconsciousness!”) Daredevil decides that starting a fight in the courtroom would probably just get someone hurt, so he goes ahead and testifies.<\/p>\n

Of course, Daredevil does eventually use his senses to figure out where the Tribune’s mind-control device is kept, and knocks it out of commission. Then he fights the Tribune – which I guess is meant to be safe now that the device is shut down? Tribune tries to escape in a helicopter with JUSTICE written on the side, but gets blown to smithereens by a bomb that he’d been planning to detonate in another false flag operation.<\/p>\n

I can understand why nobody wanted to bring the Tribune back – a little of him goes a long way. He’s a\u00a0Daredevil\u00a0<\/em>villain because of his legal theme, but it’s tempting to say that he’d be better off fighting Captain America. Really, though, he wouldn’t work as a returning villain for either of them. Not only is he relentlessly one-note – which is the joke – but if you tried to use him regularly as a conventional supervillain you’d just water him down. At best, he’d be the Americop. The Tribune would be more at home fighting Howard the Duck. <\/em>
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

This is the final Roy Thomas issue, and even though the unusual collection of writers makes it more of a coda to his run than anything else, it still sends him out on a high. It’s a bizarre story by any standards, but all the more so for coming completely out of the blue. The book just doesn’t do<\/em> things like this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daredevil"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10097"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10189,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10097\/revisions\/10189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}