{"id":11182,"date":"2025-07-20T12:12:22","date_gmt":"2025-07-20T11:12:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11182"},"modified":"2025-07-20T12:12:22","modified_gmt":"2025-07-20T11:12:22","slug":"daredevil-villains-55-edwin-cord","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11182","title":{"rendered":"Daredevil Villains #55: Edwin Cord"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>DAREDEVIL #167 (November 1980)<\/strong>
\n“…The Mauler!”<\/strong>
\nWriter: David Michelinie<\/strong>
\nPenciller: Frank Miller<\/strong>
\nInker: Klaus Janson<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Joe Rosen<\/strong>
\nColourist: Glynis Wein<\/strong>
\nEditor: Denny O’Neil<\/strong><\/p>\n

So here’s what happened since our last instalment. Issues #163 and #164 don\u2019t have villains: the first one guest stars the Hulk, and the other is the story where Daredevil admits his secret identity to Ben Urich, who decides not to publish. Issue #165 has Dr Octopus, on loan from Amazing Spider-Man<\/em>. Issue #166 brings back the Gladiator. And that’s the end of Roger McKenzie’s run as writer.<\/p>\n

By this point, Denny O’Neil has taken over as editor, and as of issue #168, Frank Miller will be writing as well as pencilling. But first, we have another fill-in.<\/p>\n

This one is a rather better fit than the Steve Ditko story we looked at last time. For a start, it still has the regular art team of Frank Miller and Klaus Janson. But this time, our guest writer is David Michelinie. At this point, he\u2019s about 30 issues into his run on Iron Man<\/em>, and he’s already completed “Demon in a Bottle”. So this feels like a contemporary Marvel comic from 1980.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It’s just that the contemporary Marvel comic in question is Iron Man.<\/em>\u00a0This issue’s villain, Edwin Cord, is an evil industrialist. He\u2019ll never appear in Daredevil<\/em> again, but he\u2019ll show up in Iron Man<\/em> #145 (April 1981), and he’ll make occasional appearance in that book throughout the 1980s. Oh, and this issue also features a guy in a suit of hi-tech armour. If it wasn\u2019t for the fact that word processors weren’t around yet, you could be forgiven for thinking that Michelinie had done a search-and-replace job on an unused Iron Man<\/em> script.<\/p>\n

We open with Matt and Heather as guests at Cord’s country club party. Her heiress status explains why they’re there, but it still feels like a scene\u00a0 for Tony Stark. Cord is a creep, and he tries to recruit Matt by offering to help him dodge tax – a bold approach to take with a lawyer he’s only just met. Matt is grossly offended, and he’s about to storm out when the Mauler crashes the party and attacks Cord.<\/p>\n

The Mauler is our guy in a suit of hi-tech armour, though Miller’s design veers more towards the semi-realistic than the typical Iron Man design – with a bit of charity, you could just about imagine this as some sort of exploration suit. The name supposedly stands for Mobile Armored Utility Laser Emitter, Revised, which isn\u2019t the most impressive acronym in Marvel history. Anyway, we\u2019re given to understand that the Mauler wants to kill Cord, but Daredevil drives him off.<\/p>\n

Cord won\u2019t explain what any of that was about, so Daredevil breaks into his home to interrogate him. This time, Cord identifies the Mauler as Aaron Soames, a disgruntled employee fired for “clerical reasons” who stole the prototype armour and wants revenge on the company. Daredevil isn’t entirely convinced, but we haven’t quite reached the stage where he’s a walking lie detector, so he leaves it at that for now.<\/p>\n

It turns out that the Mauler really is Soames. He’s 63 years old, he spent 35 years working for Cord as a filing clerk, and he\u2019s been fired to make way for a computer. With less-than-subtle irony, a computer glitch has wiped out his entire work record, and Cord is using this as a pretext for not paying Soames’ pension. With his litigation tied up in delays, Soames has stolen the armour to get revenge. But he only want to take symbolic revenge by incinerating Cord\u2019s ID. He achieves that goal, and then gets gunned down by security guards. Cord invokes national security to cover up the whole incident, so Daredevil decks him before leaving.<\/p>\n

And that’s the issue. It’s an early example of the “computer says no” trope. In 1980, this doubtless all seemed very new, hence the cover art with all the surrounding computer lettering. In 2025, such things make it look like the Mauler armour operated on ticker tape.<\/p>\n

For that matter, the story handwaves away the quesiton of how exactly Soames managed to steal the Mauler armour in the first place, given that he was just an ageing filing clerk. Mind you, Turk will also manage to steal the Mauler armour in issue #176 – its only other appearance in Daredevil.<\/em> So apparently Cord’s security is so useless that it can\u2019t even keep out the comic relief. Considering Cord’s national security clearances, this probably ought to be a bigger deal than it is, but then I suppose that explains why Cord doesn’t want to bring in the police.<\/p>\n

The Mauler armour itself has nothing to do with the theme of the story, and serves only to give Daredevil something to fight. Fundamentally, it’s a story about a long-serving loyal employee being screwed over by the capitalist who only cares about profit. The core of that story ages perfectly well. You could do it today with AI.<\/p>\n

Of course, Cord doesn’t have to be corrupt in order for him to fire people in favour of machines. That just requires him to be ruthless. But it’s much more satisfying if he’s a crook too, which is why he’s dodging tax, refusing to pay Soames’ pension and invoking his national security clearance for cover-ups. Still, Cord’s level of actual villainy is at the low end. It’s enough to position him as someone deserving a punch in the face, but stops short of making him a full-bore villain. In his own eyes, he’s a normal businessman bending the rules just like everyone does. He’s greedy, but he has no plans to conquer the world or ally with supervillains. He’s just an asshole in a position of power, which is enough.<\/p>\n

Well, it\u2019s enough for this story, anyway. When he shows up next in Iron Man<\/em>, he’s a more conventional villain. He sends his own armoured guys to fight Iron Man, and he gets brought down by SHIELD. Later, he becomes an armour dealer with a grudge against superheroes. All of which is fine, for a generic Iron Man<\/em> villain with a dash of recognition factor. In Daredevil<\/em>, Cord plays more on the tension between law and justice, as somebody working the system to his advantage. But Kingpin will soon have that role sewn up.<\/p>\n

As for the Mauler armour, it might have found a better niche in Daredevil<\/em> than in\u00a0Iron Man<\/em>. Suits of armour are everywhere in that book. As a budget option for fighting the likes of Daredevil, Mauler might have found a home. Miller used the armour again, albeit in a comic relief subplot, so he must have liked something about it. But Soames himself isn’t designed for return appearances, and the armour is too generic to stick around without him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DAREDEVIL #167 (November 1980) “…The Mauler!” Writer: David Michelinie Penciller: Frank Miller Inker: Klaus Janson Letterer: Joe Rosen Colourist: Glynis Wein Editor: Denny O’Neil So here’s what happened since our last instalment. Issues #163 and #164 don\u2019t have villains: the first one guest stars the Hulk, and the other is the story where Daredevil admits […]<\/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-11182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daredevil"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11182","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=11182"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11242,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11182\/revisions\/11242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}