{"id":9567,"date":"2023-12-31T17:21:55","date_gmt":"2023-12-31T17:21:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9567"},"modified":"2023-12-31T17:21:55","modified_gmt":"2023-12-31T17:21:55","slug":"daredevil-villains-10-the-plunderer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9567","title":{"rendered":"Daredevil Villains #10: The Plunderer"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>DAREDEVIL #12-13 (January & February 1966)<\/strong>
\n“Sightless, in a Savage Land” \/ “The Secret of Ka-Zar’s Origin!”
\nWriter, editor: Stan Lee<\/strong>
\nLayout penciller: Jack Kirby\u00a0<\/strong>
\nFinishing penciller, inker: John Romita<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Sam Rosen<\/strong>
\nColourist: not credited<\/strong><\/p>\n

DAREDEVIL #14 (March 1966)
\n<\/strong>“If This Be Justice…!”<\/strong>
\nWriter, editor: Stan Lee<\/strong>
\nPenciller: John Romita<\/strong>
\nInker: “Frankie Ray” (Frank Giacoia)<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Artie Simek<\/strong>
\nColourist: not credited<\/strong><\/p>\n

However questionably, Stan Lee apparently felt that Wally Wood’s run on Daredevil <\/em>had gone awry. Wood’s replacement was John Romita Sr, doing his first work for Marvel. This time, Lee took no chances, with Jack Kirby doing the layouts for Romita’s first two issues before Romita (who says that he only wanted the inking work at first) took over as penciller. He didn’t stick around on Daredevil <\/em>for long, but that’s because he was swiftly promoted to Amazing Spider-Man<\/em>.<\/p>\n

As for the story direction, Lee seems to have been toying with drastic action. The previous arc ends with a tacked-on epilogue in which Matt and Foggy suddenly realise that they’ve been so preoccupied with the plot that they haven’t been doing any legal work and they’ve run out of money. They need to downsize. So Matt announces that he’s leaving, and the whole thing plays like it’s setting up a new status quo.<\/p>\n

It isn’t. Instead,\u00a0Daredevil<\/em> spends three issues exploring the back story of Ka-Zar, before Matt simply returns to the office, with no mention of why he left in the first place. It’s been three months, the kids will have forgotten.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I don’t plan to cover villains who are mainly associated with other characters, but there are exceptions. Electro was an exception because he was Daredevil’s first supervillain. So are characters like the Kingpin, who start out elsewhere but become Daredevil <\/em>regulars. The Plunderer is an exception because, really, he is <\/em>a Daredevil villain. There is no Ka-Zar series, not yet. His first two stories both appear in Daredevil<\/em>. He counts at least as much as any one-off Daredevil <\/em>villain.<\/p>\n

At this point, Ka-Zar had only made one previous appearance, in X-Men<\/em> #10. He’s a revival of a Golden Age character of the same name, who was a straight Tarzan clone. The new Ka-Zar has an added element: his jungle is the Savage Land, a lost world where dinosaurs still roam. In other words, he’s no longer a straight Tarzan clone – he’s Tarzan crossed with Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World\u00a0<\/em>(plus a dash of Joe Kubert’s Tor<\/em>). This works out well for him in the long run, partly because it distances him from Tarzan’s colonial overtones, but also because it lets him tack to Jurassic Park<\/em> and then to an all-purpose eco-primitivism when his parent archetype started running out of commercial steam.<\/p>\n

At this point, though, Ka-Zar is a big blonde man in a loincloth who calls guns “thundersticks” and yells things like “Stronger than mastodon! Stronger than giant boar! Mighty is Ka-Zar! Lord of jungle!”<\/p>\n

But what about this Plunderer guy? He’s a pirate who, by sheer random chance, attacks Matt Murdock’s holiday cruise ship. The Plunderer and his crew look like old-timey pirates and their ship looks like a schooner, but they have hi-tech weaponry. Even so, Daredevil is beating the henchmen single-handedly until the Plunderer threatens to chuck the cruise ship crew over the side into the “shark-infested waters”. So Daredevil surrenders, and the Plunderer takes him prisoner, aboard a schooner which turns out to be a hi-tech submarine. (If you’re wondering how the people left on the ship fail to figure out that Matt is Daredevil… yes, me too.)<\/p>\n

The idea at this point in the story seems to be that the Plunderer is an engineering genius who turned to piracy in order to prove the superiority of his ship designs. That’s why he goes around attacking ships without actually stealing anything from them. He’s also obviously positioned as a man of honour.<\/p>\n

He sails to the Savage Land, via an undersea tunnel which he claims to have discovered while hunting for Atlantis. This leads to a bit of running around in the Savage Land, as Daredevil loses his powers for a bit until Ka-Zar restores them with (ahem) “juice of ju-ju plant”. It turns out that the Plunderer is there to capture Ka-Zar, who is actually his brother Kevin. Yes, the blatant Tarzan clone turns out to be the lost child of a British aristocrat! Who would have thought it?<\/p>\n

Even though he was positioned as a man of honour in act one, the Plunderer doesn’t care about Ka-Zar at all. He’s only interested in his brother because they have the two halves of an amulet which, it turns out, was created by their late father Lord Plunder, and can provide access to a mystery substance that he discovered. This strange metal destroys other metals, and could be the most powerful weapon on Earth. (Marvel will eventually christen this stuff “Antarctic vibranium”.) The Plunderer traps Ka-Zar, and everyone sails back to England.<\/p>\n

At first the Plunderer sticks with the pirate motif. He throws Ka-Zar in a dungeon and tries to force Daredevil to persuade Ka-Zar to give up his half of the amulet. Which I suppose is at least a kinder approach than just shooting Ka-Zar dead and looting the corpse. Maybe the Plunderer does love his brother after all.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, spies within the Plunderer’s organisation spread word of the amulet’s discovery. All sorts of people start chasing after it, so that they can get their hands on the metal.<\/p>\n

Daredevil and Ka-Zar escape, but the amulet winds up back with the Plunderer, who frames Ka-Zar for murder. The story then takes a bizarre left turn: the Plunderer uses the mystery substance to make a special weapon that can destroy all metal. He then switches gimmicks entirely to become a caped supervillain, still calling himself \u00a0“the Plunderer”. He outfits his henchmen in nearly identical costumes, complete with capes, for no terribly clear reason. They don’t carry his special anti-metal weapon, but their own weapons are mysteriously immune to the effect. How can this be? Well, they’re made of plastic, which I imagine was less of an anticlimax in 1966. Daredevil defeats the Plunderer, who exonerates Ka-Zar, because at that point, why not.<\/p>\n

These issues are quite good fun, and entirely mad. I’ve glossed over an entire subplot about Foggy being brought over to help defend Ka-Zar in an English court (because that’s how rights of audience work!). Ka-Zar’s fish-out-of-water schtick is often entertaining. But even as a Ka-Zar villain, the Plunderer is a bit odd. In his favour, he has the back story and the aristocratic rivalry. He’s the brother who grew up with everything Ka-Zar didn’t, so you can play off that. But he’s also a jumble of unrelated concepts fighting for space. He’s an anachronistic pirate – no, he’s a man of honour – no, he’s Captain Nemo – no, he’s a generic supervillain with plastic guns… Pick one and stick with it!<\/p>\n

This is Daredevil<\/em>‘s first 3-parter, but it’s still ultimately a Ka-Zar story. It’s obvious why Ka-Zar and the Plunderer didn’t stick around as Daredevil regulars: they have no connection with anything else in the book. In that context, this whole thing is a detour.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DAREDEVIL #12-13 (January & February 1966) “Sightless, in a Savage Land” \/ “The Secret of Ka-Zar’s Origin!” Writer, editor: Stan Lee Layout penciller: Jack Kirby\u00a0 Finishing penciller, inker: John Romita Letterer: Sam Rosen Colourist: not credited DAREDEVIL #14 (March 1966) “If This Be Justice…!” Writer, editor: Stan Lee Penciller: John Romita Inker: “Frankie Ray” (Frank […]<\/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-9567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daredevil"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9567","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=9567"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9724,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9567\/revisions\/9724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}