{"id":11786,"date":"2026-04-26T13:47:24","date_gmt":"2026-04-26T12:47:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11786"},"modified":"2026-04-26T13:47:24","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T12:47:24","slug":"daredevil-villains-77-the-nameless-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11786","title":{"rendered":"Daredevil Villains #77: The Nameless One"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>DAREDEVIL #243-244 (June & July 1987)<\/strong>
\n“Don’t Touch Me” \/ “Touch Me”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Ann Nocenti<\/strong>
\nPenciller: Louis Williams<\/strong>
\nInkers: Al Williamson, Danny Bulanadi & Tony DeZuinga<\/strong>
\nColourists: Christie Scheele & Paul Becton<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Joe Rosen<\/strong>
\nEditor: Ralph Macchio<\/strong><\/p>\n

(Note: I skipped this post by mistake last time, so it’s appearing out of sequence. For #78, see here.<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n

After a string of one-off villains, most of whom are mentally ill serial killers, Ann Nocenti goes in a different direction: magic. Specifically, voodoo.<\/p>\n

The last time\u00a0Daredevil<\/em> did voodoo was in issue #130, cover date February 1976. That’s a story by Marv Wolfman, Bob Brown and Klaus Janson, in which a voodoo priest called Brother Zed uses his illusion powers to convince his followers that he has real magical power, and then exploits their belief for his own gain. The basic concept isn’t too bad when taken in isolation, but the story came out at a time when black characters were largely absent from Daredevil<\/em>, and if your sole representation of black America is to have them decapitating chickens in Central Park, then that’s a problem.<\/p>\n

Eleven years have passed, since then, but in terms of the diversity of its cast, less has changed in Daredevil <\/em>than you might think. The generic bystanders certainly have a lot more variation than they used to. But the book’s most prominent black character is still Turk, a comic relief character, and even he hasn’t appeared in Nocenti’s run. The Hell’s Kitchen supporting cast is small, and consists of Karen Page and a group of street kids called the Fatboys – they aren’t all white, but the ones with developed personalities are. Rotgut and his mother were black, to be fair, although Rotgut himself was an albino. So while things have changed in 11 years, this still stands out as a Story With A Lot Of Black People In It.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Danny Guitar, so called because he carries his gun in a guitar case, is a Haitian immigrant drug dealer. His gimmick is that he uses voodoo, or at least voodoo symbolism, to keep his underlings in line. When one of his drug runners tries to leave the group, Danny has him injected with a drug overdose that sends him to the hospital – and it’s 1987, so let’s give a big Daredevil <\/em>welcome to crack! But Danny also has the kid’s house filled with voodoo patterns and symbols in order to send a message. Privately, Danny claims that he doesn’t believe in any of this stuff any more – he used to when he lived in Haiti, but he freed himself from fear and superstition by moving to New York. Or that’s his story, anyway.<\/p>\n

Up to this point, the core idea is very similar to Wolfman’s story. But there are differences. Nocenti treats voodoo as a particularly colourful example of superstition in general, something exceptional in degree rather than in kind. The story ties in to a theme she’s been developing about Daredevil’s own use of religious imagery, the intimidation factor that goes with it, and how his self-image as a hero squares with the reality of being a man who beats up drug dealers in alleyways. This story’s B-plot involves Karen Page and police officer “Bucko” Leary encouraging Daredevil to maybe use some of those legal skills of his and gather some actual evidence to convict criminals, instead of just beating them unconscious and dumping them outside a police station. “We don’t need to use voodoo and fascism to get justice done,” says Leary.<\/p>\n

The other difference is that in Wolfman’s story, voodoo was all an illusion and the believers were just gullible. In this version, voodoo is<\/em> real. So Danny’s old mambo (priestess) shows up in New York with her followers, planning to punish Danny for taking voodoo in vain. The Nameless One is a magical creation that she sends after Danny. He seems to be one of Danny’s victims from earlier in the issue, raised from the dead, and empowered by the mambo’s followers sacrificing their lives. Basically he’s a zombie animated by the souls of the believers.<\/p>\n

While this is happening, Daredevil is dutifully trying to gather evidence on Danny, by tailing him and recording his conversations with a portable tape deck. For some reason, Daredevil has decided that it would be an excellent idea to dress up as a black man while doing this. Or I think that’s what’s happening. The art is confusing – the colouring vanishes immediately once he switches to his Daredevil costume. So I guess it’s a mask, but it hasn’t aged well either way. At any rate, this leads to the mambo sending the Nameless One after Daredevil, not because she has anything in particular against him, but simply because she’s trying to pursue her own crusade against Danny Guitar, and Daredevil is in the way.<\/p>\n

The Nameless One is a superhumanly strong man with chalk white skin, patterns drawn onto his body, and minimal speech. He’s just a weapon, really. Everyone assures us that he still smells like a corpse. He easily despatches Daredevil, and leaves the hero’s bloody glove in his and Karen’s apartment as a warning. This in turn ties back to a subplot in which Karen has been agonising about the conflict in her mind between the man she loves and the violence she hates – she regards the glove as symbolising both Matt’s loving hand and Daredevil’s fist. She also blames herself for getting Daredevil into trouble by trying to make him, you know, prove anything.<\/p>\n

Daredevil wakes up to find his mask and glove both missing. He improvises a new mask, but thanks to the power of voodoo, it feels as if his ungloved hand doesn’t work. He’s also uncharacteristically intimidated at the thought of a rematch with the Nameless Ones. The basic idea is that the mambo is trying to sideline Daredevil, and that if violence is his only weapon then it’s a good enough solution to make him scared of it. She gives Daredevil’s real mask to the Nameless One, and declares him to be the new Man Without Fear.<\/p>\n

Danny, meanwhile, is being driven insane by voodoo, and starts appearing in public with facepaint that he doesn’t even realise he’s wearing. He gets arrested by Leary’s cops, only for the Nameless One to show up and overpower everyone. At first Leary thinks it’s just an illusion, but he finds out the hard way that the Nameless One is bulletproof. Of course, since it’s his book, Daredevil still shows up to save the day, and puts up a respectable fight anyway until he retrieves his mask and glove, which seems to break the spell. He and the Nameless One have a staredown, after which Daredevil takes him out with a single punch. The defeated Nameless One seems to melt away, but apparently it’s an illusion, since he shows up at the end of the issue with his mambo. That scene seems to promise a rematch, but Nocenti never comes back to the story.<\/p>\n

The Nameless One’s story has aged a little better than its 1970s predecessor. Not only does it treat voodoo as part of a wider theme of symbolic initimidation, but this time the characters who take voodoo seriously are right. On the other hand, the very fact that it isn’t just a symbol slightly undercuts the point, and the B-plot about whether Daredevil should be trying to gather evidence runs into a common problem with stories that query the ground rules of the superhero genre. Once you’ve raised the question of whether vigilante violence is really acceptable, you’ve backed yourself into a corner, because if the answer is “no” then either the main character becomes an antihero or the book ends. In the long run, Nocenti is more willing than most to explore the possibility of Daredevil being an antihero who thinks he’s a hero, but in the short term the book can’t help but cycle back to him being right.<\/p>\n

The Nameless One eventually makes a further appearance in issue #310, an Infinity War\u00a0<\/em>tie-in. That story also retcons his mambo, who becomes the sister of Calypso, a somewhat similar Spider-Man character. Aside from that, the Nameless One doesn’t appear again, even though Nocenti seems to have had it in mind to go back to him.<\/p>\n

It’s not that Nocenti avoids magic – there’s a lot of magic in upcoming stories. But the Nameless One is still a relatively street-level character; he’s a glorified zombie being sent to take revenge on a drug dealer. When Nocenti leans into magical elements in the future, they’ll be much bigger, much more abstract and conceptual, and frequently downright surreal. In that context, perhaps the Nameless One was just a little too ordinary to fit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DAREDEVIL #243-244 (June & July 1987) “Don’t Touch Me” \/ “Touch Me” Writer: Ann Nocenti Penciller: Louis Williams Inkers: Al Williamson, Danny Bulanadi & Tony DeZuinga Colourists: Christie Scheele & Paul Becton Letterer: Joe Rosen Editor: Ralph Macchio (Note: I skipped this post by mistake last time, so it’s appearing out of sequence. For #78, […]<\/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-11786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daredevil"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11786","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=11786"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11786\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11971,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11786\/revisions\/11971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}