{"id":12278,"date":"2026-09-13T12:23:17","date_gmt":"2026-09-13T11:23:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=12278"},"modified":"2026-09-13T12:23:17","modified_gmt":"2026-09-13T11:23:17","slug":"daredevil-villains-87-shotgun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=12278","title":{"rendered":"Daredevil Villains #87: Shotgun"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>DAREDEVIL #272-273 (November 1989)<\/strong>
\n“Liberation” \/ “The Billion Dollar Ashtray”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Ann Nocenti<\/strong>
\nPenciller: John Romita Jr<\/strong>
\nInker: Al Williamson<\/strong>
\nColourist: Max Scheele<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Joe Rosen<\/strong>
\nEditor: Ralph Macchio<\/strong><\/p>\n

There’s still a way to go in the Ann Nocenti run after these issues, but this is where we leave it. While she created a string of new characters in the early part of her run, the later issues feature longer storylines and returning or guest villains, with a couple of one-off stories about everyday bad people along the way.<\/p>\n

So, to be specific, issue #274 has Skip Ash as the villain. Issues #275-276 are an Acts of Vengeance tie-in, with guest villain Ultron. Issue #277 is a one-off story about a manipulative psychiatrist. Issues #278-282 feature Mephisto and Blackheart. Issue #283 guest stars Captain America, and the villains are assorted corporations. Issues #284-290 are a Bullseye storyline. And her final issue, issue #291, has Bullet.<\/p>\n

Which means that for us, Ann Nocenti’s run draws to a close with the entirely unrepresentative figure of Shotgun. These two issues are part of the Number Nine storyline, which we’ve already looked at in the context of Skip Ash. As you’ll remember, Skip is a factory farmer who’s doing illegal operations for the CIA on the side. But he’s also got a laboratory which is altering women to make them “perfect”, and one of them, Number Nine, has been freed by his semi-estranged daughter Brandy. Since this is still a superhero comic, Skip calls in some favours from his government contacts to try and get Number Nine back. And so they send Shotgun to help out.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

He’s a guy in spiky leathers, laden in ammo belts. Despite his name, he carries an insanely over-elaborate techno-gun. His CIA handler tells us that it costs “ten thousand dollars”, which “merely reflects the years of R&D work.” Even Skip is sceptical. Not only does it seem like total overkill just to deal with a few animal rights protestors, but Shotgun’s reliance on technology strikes Skip as unmanly. Still, Shotgun is insistent. He likes his gun. He also has some other guns. He likes those guns too. But he especially likes this one, because it’s new and shiny and cool.<\/p>\n

Shotgun duly shows up at Brandy’s home and gets into a fight with Daredevil, who instantly identifies him as a “Rambo-type”. Although he seems like a more or less competent fighter, Shotgun’s basic strategy seems to be to fire massively overpowered guns in Daredevil’s general direction and to hope for the best. Daredevil naturally wins, and Shotgun simply runs away, promising to come back if Number Nine isn’t returned.<\/p>\n

In the next issue, Shotgun does indeed return. He’s now armed to the teeth with even more hi-tech ordnance, and he’s got a vehicle not wholly dissimilar to a Cybertruck. Frankly, he seems to have a lot more interest in shooting his exciting guns than he does in actually completing his mission. Daredevil beats him again, and his truck explodes, though the dialogue assures us that he’s still alive. And then everybody moves on to talk about something else.<\/p>\n

The rest of the Number Nine storyline is mostly about programming and conditioning. Shotgun is a somewhat awkward fit in that theme. Given the Rambo reference, he may have been intended as a hyper-masculine counterpart to Number Nine’s hyper-femininity, with his framing set by society rather than by Skip’s lab. But the art plays him more as a triggerhappy psycho, and Skip seems to view Shotgun as not manly enough. Shotgun borders on being a parody villain – when everyone else wants to discuss big issues, he’s here to fulfil genre expectations and blow things up for the fun of it.<\/p>\n

Then again, if he is meant to be a parody, the art may play him a little too straight. In concept, he’s crying out to be a proto-Image character, but Romita makes him look somewhat cool. And that’s basically how he’s been treated by later writers, who have played the character more or less straight.<\/p>\n

His next appearance was in the opening arc of 1992’s\u00a0Punisher: War Zone<\/em>, still drawn by Romita, but now with Chuck Dixon writing. This version does retain his childlike enthusiasm for guns, but otherwise he’s a highly competent one-man killing machine and an ally of the Punisher. Shotgun went on to show up as a, well, a hired gun in a bunch of Punisher and Spider-Man stories. Technically, he makes a single further appearance in\u00a0Daredevil<\/em>, but it’s as a generic sniper in the “Nuff Said” silent issue. If it wasn’t for the script that was printed at the back of the issue, you wouldn’t know it was meant to be him.<\/p>\n

Of more interest is the 2017\u00a0Bullseye<\/em> miniseries by Ed Brisson and Guillermo Sanna Bauza. Brisson has a down-on-their-luck Shotgun and Bullet reduced to working as mercenaries for Columbian drug cartels and limited to ordinary weapons. Shotgun keeps some of his childlike excitement about what he’s doing, but seems to have already come to terms with his reduced circumstances before the story even starts, and mainly just wants to get back in the CIA’s good graces. Brisson’s Shotgun doesn’t seem like such a bad guy – he doesn’t have to fight Bullseye, but puts himself in harm’s way so that he can help Bullet try to get home and see his son again. Brisson follows up the pairing in Old Man Logan<\/em> #44-45, where Shotgun and Bullet actually get to defeat Bullseye. This\u00a0is the most rounded version of Shotgun, but he’s basically a sounding board for Bullet. It’s a million miles removed from his genesis as a superficial explosion merchant.<\/p>\n

In his original form as a gleefully one-dimensional shoot-em-up villain, Shotgun\u00a0is an unlikely candidate to be brought back at all, let alone played straight. Presumably Romita had some affection for the guy. He certainly makes a strange final instalment in writing about Ann Nocenti’s run, especially as it has a year left to run. But perhaps he isn’t such a bad segue for us, as the book will tack back in a more conventional direction after this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DAREDEVIL #272-273 (November 1989) “Liberation” \/ “The Billion Dollar Ashtray” Writer: Ann Nocenti Penciller: John Romita Jr Inker: Al Williamson Colourist: Max Scheele Letterer: Joe Rosen Editor: Ralph Macchio There’s still a way to go in the Ann Nocenti run after these issues, but this is where we leave it. While she created a string […]<\/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,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daredevil"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12278","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=12278"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12348,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12278\/revisions\/12348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}