{"id":10328,"date":"2024-12-01T11:35:55","date_gmt":"2024-12-01T11:35:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10328"},"modified":"2024-12-01T11:35:55","modified_gmt":"2024-12-01T11:35:55","slug":"daredevil-villains-41-black-spectre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10328","title":{"rendered":"Daredevil Villains #41: Black Spectre"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>DAREDEVIL #108-112 (March to August 1974)<\/strong>
\n“Cry… Beetle!” \/ “Dying for Dollar$!” \/ “Birthright!” \/ “Sword of the Samurai!” \/ “Death of a Nation?”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Steve Gerber<\/strong>
\nPenciller: Bob Brown (#108-109, 111), Gene Colan (#110, 112)<\/strong>
\nInker: Paul Gulacy (#108), Don Heck (#109), Frank Chiaramonte (#110), Jim Mooney (#111), Frank Giacoia (#112)<\/strong>
\nLetterer: John Costanza (#108), Artie Simek (#109-110), Tom Orzechowski (#111), Annette Kawecki (#112)<\/strong>
\nColourist: Petra Goldberg (#108-109, 112), Linda Lessmann (#110-111)<\/strong>
\nEditor: Roy Thomas<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are several noteworthy things about the Black Spectre arc. On the most basic level, it takes the book back to New York. Foggy Nelson, who we haven’t seen since issue #87, has been shot by a sniper, and Matt Murdock returns to Manhattan to help out. At first, the story presents this as a brief visit. But Matt won’t go back to San Francisco until issue #116, and even then it’s just to tie up loose ends. The reality is that from issue #108 onwards, this is a New York book again.<\/p>\n

As for Moondragon, who was introduced with great fanfare in the last story, she’s instantly written out.<\/p>\n

But that’s not the most striking thing about the storyline. Until now, Steve Gerber’s Daredevil<\/em> has been a fairly normal comic, at least by the standards of Steve Gerber. Sure, there’s Angar the Screamer and his LSD powers. But the book has mostly stayed within normal Marvel parameters. Even when it’s ventured into stranger territory, it’s drawn on Jim Starlin concepts.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Black Spectre arc is much weirder, for both good and ill. Its villains proved to have more staying power than most new characters from this period of Daredevil<\/em>, but from the standpoint of 2024, there are aspects of this story which could generously be described as “questionable”. In fact, “staggering” might be closer to the mark. A handful of comics on Marvel Unlimited have content warnings, of the “This comic is presented in its original form” variety. This arc doesn’t, but it probably should. “This comic is presented in its original form. It reflects the editorial standards, racial politics and recreational pharmaceuticals of 1974. Reader discretion is advised.”<\/p>\n

We need a bit of back story here. The Black Spectre storyline was picked up from a cancelled book. Shanna the She-Devil<\/em> had been launched in 1972 in an attempt to revive the jungle girl genre. Eventually Shanna herself was repositioned as Ka-Zar’s partner, and so she came to be associated mainly with the Savage Land. But at this point she’s an American woman in a leopardskin bikini who protects an African game reserve. The writer who created her was Carol Seuling, but Steve Gerber had helped to script her early appearances.<\/p>\n

Shanna <\/em>#4, plotted by Seuling and scripted by Gerber, introduces the Mandrill. He first appears as a hooded man who tries to enlist people in a scheme to overthrow three African nations. Everyone thinks he’s mad, so he reveals that he has the head of a mandrill, which is somehow meant to convince people that he’s a winner. He claims to lead a “religion of hate”. He’s accompanied by two female worshippers who have mandrill tattoos on their faces. He also turns out to have kidnapped Shanna’s father, which was the main plot of the book, thus positioning him as Shanna’s arch-villain. But there’s no mention at this stage of any mind control powers, and\u00a0Shanna simply fights him and wins.<\/p>\n

Issue #5 is credited to Gerber alone. The Mandrill doesn’t appear, but his partner Nekra makes her debut as the chalk white priestess of his aforementioned hate cult. She has a whole congregation of African women with mandrill face tattoos, who yell a lot about hate, and she seems to get superhuman strength and invulnerability through the power of their rituals. Professor X shows up briefly, to confirm that Mandrill and Nekra are both mutants.<\/p>\n

There is no issue #6. Shanna the She-Devil<\/em> was not a success.<\/p>\n

But about six months later, Gerber brought back the Mandrill and Nekra in Daredevil<\/em>. Shanna also guest stars in this arc, in order to tie up her dangling plot threads. To be honest, though, the plot would play out in much the same way whether she was there or not.<\/p>\n

The Mandrill’s hate cult has now repackaged itself as terrorist group Black Spectre, although it’s still the same cultists in the uniforms – as far as we can see, they’re still all black women with mandrill patterns tattooed on their faces. That’s not obvious at first, since they wear full body costumes that conceal their gender, let alone their race. But the group is called Black Spectre for a reason. Randomly added to the group as a more colourful henchman is the debuting Silver Samurai, played as a man of honour paying off a debt; despite being well pitched as an opponent for Daredevil and fitting quite well with the iconography of later Daredevil<\/em>, he doesn’t return, and seems to have been nailed on to the story for no particular reason.<\/p>\n

Black Spectre’s big idea is that power lies in symbols. The Mandrill plans to stage a coup in America through a combination of conventional terrorism and situationist pranks. In issues #108-109, Black Spectre steal some printing plates that they can use to print “genuine” American dollars. But we also get a montage of other bizarre schemes. They’ve staged a race riot at the Statue of Liberty. They’ve draped Independence Hall in black to signify mourning. They’ve mounted a swastika on the Washington Monument. They’ve used “some sort of laser device” to add the face of Adolf Hitler to Mount Rushmore. And they hurl their “genuine money” to the public from the rooftops of Wall Street.<\/p>\n

At this point the story crosses over into Marvel Two-in-One<\/em> #3, also written by Gerber. This issue mostly involves Daredevil and the Thing boarding Black Spectre’s airship, and might be seen as a bit of an advert for Daredevil. B<\/em>ut it also includes a scene in which Foggy’s younger sister Candace – a would-be radical journalist – drags Matt to an “avant garde pro-patriotism play”. The cast have been hypnotised by Black Spectre. A black man comes on dressed as a slave and berates white people. Another actor dressed as Captain America beats him up, while yelling that America is all aobut treating minorities with respect. “Captain America” is then shot dead by “Adolf Hitler”, who declares “Und now der show is over! America must die!” before committing suicide on stage by shooting himself in the head. This is not the sort of thing we’ve been getting in Gerber’s Daredevil <\/em>up to this point.<\/p>\n

In issue #111, Daredevil finally meets the Mandrill, and this is where things get more problematic. First, the Mandrill explains that the Black Widow has switched sides to join him, thanks to his incredible power over women. “She loves me,” he explains. “All women love me. I am their master.”<\/p>\n

This alone puts the Mandrill into very dodgy territory. His power isn’t mind control as such, but women are supposedly unable to resist him – though despite his claims, they generally seem more zombified than smitten. Certainly the Black Widow spends several issues loyally obeying him, with no subterfuge involved. She even tells the Mandrill about Daredevil’s secret identity, a plot thread that seems to have been politely forgotten about by everyone since. Now, in fairness, the Mandrill isn’t shown using his cultists as anything other than cannon fodder – in contrast to the Purple Man, say, who did<\/em> have a mind-controlled girlfriend when we last saw him. But the Mandrill’s gender-specific powers have nasty overtones nonetheless. As for Shanna, she’s just immune, for reasons that are never explained.<\/p>\n

Then we get to the Mandrill’s origin story – and since we’re expressly reminded that Daredevil can tell whether the villain is lying, we’re apparently meant to take it at face value. According to the Mandrill, he and Nekra are the chidlren of a white scientist and a black cleaning lady who were working at an atomic research facility in New Mexico. Both were exposed to radiation in the same incident. The white man’s son is the Mandrill, who was born with black skin and who became more mandrill-like over time. The black woman’s daughter is Nekra, a vampiric albino. Each was rejected by their respective communities. Mandrill was dumped in the desert by his parents, where he stumbled upon Nekra, who had run away from home; presumably we’re meant to take it that they’re somehow drawn together, since otherwise it’s a staggering coincidence. The two bonded, and grew up together as homeless children. They discovered Nekra’s powers after being attacked by a lynch mob. Nekra herself is under the Mandrills’ influence, by the way, which has made it a little easier for later writers to rehab her.<\/p>\n

The Mandrill claims that his intention is to “create a near utopia – an alternative to the perverted value system of America”. He never really explains what this will involve, beyond the bare fact that it’ll be some sort of hate-based system. But hold on. Let’s take a step back.<\/p>\n

Obviously, the high concept of this origin story is a race swap. The black kid is a monstrous version of whiteness, the white kid is a monstrous version of blackness. Except the story’s version of monstrous whiteness is a hot goth chick. And it’s version of monstrous blackness is, literally and explicitly, a sexually magnetic monkey. Even in 1974, this seemed like a good idea? Really?<\/p>\n

Gerber’s idea seems to be that Mandrill and Nekra are both projections of American racial hatred and division, and that they represent a vicious cycle. The white and black communities each have their own prejudices reflected back at them, and they respond by doubling down. That causes Mandrill and Nekra to become even more radicalised, and to become convinced that hate is where all true power ultimately lies in America. Certainly, the moral that Daredevil ultimately draws from the whole thing is the need to break out of that cycle – he regards Mandrill’s origin story as sympathetic, but draws the line at the point where they start killing people. Evidently that’s the message that Gerber thought he was sending with these characters.<\/p>\n

But the story is, at the very least, invoking<\/em> an extremely racist trope, and there’s no real parity between “sex ape” and “vampire chick”. You could argue that this is deliberate, and that Gerber is implying that the racism of black people is less grotesque than the racism of white people, but that feels like a stretch. And the decision to make them radiation-fuelled mutants is odd, since it obscures the fact that they’re apparently meant to be projections of American culture. This story is about symbols, not scientific hubris; surely their origin ought to lie in magic, not pseudo-science.<\/p>\n

The story builds to Black Spectre claiming to have a nuke (they’re bluffing) and seizing the White House. The narrator stresses that the White House is just a building, but explains that it’s the climax of a series of attacks on American national symbols which will let the Mandrill subvert the narrative of American national identity. Black Spectre then lower a giant Mandrill statute onto the White House lawn. It doesn’t have a payload. It doesn’t do anything. It’s just a big statue. “He knows the US army could easily overcome Black Spectre by sheer numbers,” says the narrator, “but that does not matter. For war today is fought on the battleground of public relations.”<\/p>\n

The plot depends\u00a0 on everyone but Daredevil and his allies caving to the nuclear bluff. That’s also a problem, because if that works, it kind of breaks the genre. And even on the story’s own terms, seizing the White House doesn’t seem to achieve anything. Instead, Daredevil frees the Widow; she gets her revenge by blowing up the Black Spectre airship; and Mandrill escapes while all of his followers are rounded up by the authorities. Perhaps you could make a case that Daredevil gets him out before the damage is done, but it feels awkward. The idea of defeating America by subverting its symbols is interesting, but Gerber never quite works out how to translate that into the climax of a superhero plot, and settles for just blowing everything up.<\/p>\n

The Mandrill’s race-swap origin story and gender-specific mind control make him a strong contender for the most disturbing character in the Marvel Universe, and this arc is so strange that you’d have thought it would be a curio. But Mandrill, Nekra and Silver Samurai all had far more staying power than the typical Daredevil villain of this period – albeit not in this book. The Samurai slotted neatly into Wolverine stories. The Mandrill has been relegated to the role of a comedy villain that female heroes get to beat up, which is probably the only way you can use him now. Nekra, who has the excuse of being under Mandrill’s control in this arc, is much more viable on her own and found a new lease of life in the Krakoan-era Exiles team.<\/p>\n

It’s a train wreck, to be honest. But it’s hard to look away from.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DAREDEVIL #108-112 (March to August 1974) “Cry… Beetle!” \/ “Dying for Dollar$!” \/ “Birthright!” \/ “Sword of the Samurai!” \/ “Death of a Nation?” Writer: Steve Gerber Penciller: Bob Brown (#108-109, 111), Gene Colan (#110, 112) Inker: Paul Gulacy (#108), Don Heck (#109), Frank Chiaramonte (#110), Jim Mooney (#111), Frank Giacoia (#112) Letterer: John Costanza […]<\/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-10328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daredevil"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10328","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=10328"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10572,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10328\/revisions\/10572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}