{"id":9814,"date":"2024-03-10T14:59:06","date_gmt":"2024-03-10T14:59:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9814"},"modified":"2024-03-11T22:02:41","modified_gmt":"2024-03-11T22:02:41","slug":"daredevil-villains-17-the-exterminator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9814","title":{"rendered":"Daredevil Villains #17: The Exterminator"},"content":{"rendered":"

We’ve jumped forward quite a few issues again, thanks to a string of issues featuring guest villains from the wider Marvel Universe. Issues #30-32 feature the Cobra and Mr Hyde, explicitly on loan from Thor<\/em>. Issues #33-34 are a Beetle story – he does<\/em> come back for two more stories in the #100s, but I don’t think anyone regards him as a Daredevil<\/em> villain. Issue #35-36 are the Trapster. Issues #37-38 are Dr Doom, and lead into a crossover with Fantastic Four<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>DAREDEVIL #39-41 (April to June 1968)<\/strong>
\n“The Exterminator and the Super-Powered Unholy Three” \/ “The Fallen Hero” \/ “The Death of Mike Murdock!”<\/strong>
\nWriter, editor: Stan Lee<\/strong>
\nPenciller: Gene Colan<\/strong>
\nInkers: George Tuska (#39), John Tartaglione (#40-41)<\/strong>
\nLetterers: Artie Simek (#39), Sam Rosen (#40-41)<\/strong>
\nColourist: not credited<\/strong><\/p>\n

It’s been the best part of a year since Daredevil<\/em> last debuted a new villain. But while the Exterminator is notionally the main villain of this arc, a lot of the emphasis is on his henchmen. Ape-Man, Bird-Man and Cat-Man debuted as the Organizer’s thugs back in issue #10, as part of the Wally Wood arc that Stan Lee hated so much. Now, they’re featured prominently as the returning villains. They’re billed as the Unholy Three, with their fourth member Frog-Man having fallen by the wayside for some reason – perhaps because of his similarity to Leap-Frog. Daredevil notes Frog-Man’s absence, assumes that he must still be in jail, and never mentions him again.<\/p>\n

During the issues we skipped, Stan also brought back the other member of the Organization, Foggy’s ex-girlfriend Debbie Harris. Why? Because even Stan was bored with the book’s romantic triangle, and the simplest solution was to partner Foggy up with someone else. Not only does that get Matt and Karen out of their holding pattern, it frees up Foggy from being a blocking character and a comedy figure, and lets him start shifting back into his original role as Matt’s best friend. By the time we reach this issue Debbie is a full fledged member of the supporting cast, and Foggy is worried that their relationship will damage his chances of being elected as District Attorney. She’s a convicted criminal, after all. Nonsense, says Matt – New Yorkers are very understanding about such things. They love reformed criminals and the open-minded politicians who date them!<\/p>\n

Once Debbie Harris was back in circulation, it made sense to bring back her former stablemates. In Wally Wood’s story, the Unholy Three were press ganged into working for the Organizer. They were halfway between actual super villains, and hired thugs who were pretending to be supervillains as part of the Organizer’s plan. All that has fallen by the wayside – they’re now just an animal-themed henchman squad. But Stan does keep the idea that a mastermind keeps track of them via their clunky headsets and chest-mounted video cameras. This time round, that villain is the Exterminator.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Like the Organizer, the Exterminator has nothing to do with the Unholy Three’s animal theme. He has a version of the Unholy Three’s headset, but otherwise he wears a generic full body supervillain costume, in a garish clash of white and purple. He certainly stands out in a crowd, but you can see why he was redesigned as a moody shadow figure when he returned as the Death-Stalker in issue #113. The fact that he doesn’t make the cover of any of these issues might be another hint that nobody was thrilled with his appearance.<\/p>\n

The Exterminator is a scientific genius who has just created “the awesome T-ray”, which will make him “the next master of all mankind”. But what is the awesome T-ray? Well, it’s not a time travel ray, he clarifies. It’s a time displacement ray. Clear yet?<\/p>\n

Ape-Man points out that this is pseudo-scientific gibberish, and so the Exterminator demonstrates the ray on him. Unfortunately, this doesn’t take matters much further. When zapped, Ape-Man vanishes for half an hour and then re-appears. It sure looks like he’s been sent half an hour into the future, which would be… well, time travel. But judging from what happens later, apparently he’s been shunted into a limbo dimension where he had to patiently wait for half an hour until the effect wore off. The dialogue completely fails to get this across. “The time continuum in which you – and you alone – exist has suddenly been displaced!” says the Exterminator uninformatively.<\/p>\n

Having explained his gimmick to the satisfaction of the Unholy Three, if not of the reader, the Exterminator equips the thugs with portable T-rays – ray guns, in other words.\u00a0 Then the villains head off to a nightclub, where Matt and Karen are on a double date with Foggy and Debbie. The villains drive there in full costume in a completely normal car. It’s adorable<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The Exterminator’s plan is to zap Debbie and keep her in “displaced time” as a hostage. But people won’t know she’s in displaced time! They’ll think that she’s been disintegrated! So… how does the hostage thing work if people don’t know she’s a hostage? “Think,” he says, “how it will make men fear the awesome power of the Exterminator!” And so the Unholy Three zap a whole bunch of random people in the club, while the Exterminator waits politely in the car. And yes, they do zap Debbie and escape.<\/p>\n

The Exterminator doesn’t appear in part two, where Daredevil chases after the Unholy Three and gets zapped himself. That leads to a lengthy sequence where he escapes back to Earth, only for him and Debbie to find themselves as ghosts because they are “slightly out of synchronization”. The Exterminator notices the problem, but doesn’t care. “It merely means I possess a weapon even deadlier than I dreamed it was! It means any victim of the Exterminator is destined to be lost forever!” At least this segment gives Gene Colan the chance to draw some odd pages of Daredevil in a world full of hazy pencil sketches, which is something different.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Foggy discovers that a scientist working for the Organizer skipped town just before his trial. There wasn’t a scientist in the original Organizer story, but I suppose he’s meant to be whoever created the Unholy Three’s costumes. Foggy reveals this information to the press in an attempt to draw out the villains, with no real plan for what he’s going to do if they show up, but heck, he’s trying to help the woman he loves. That goes about as well as you’d expect.<\/p>\n

Daredevil rescues Foggy, the villains are defeated, and Daredevil contrives a nice big explosion in which he fakes his own death. And since Karen and Foggy think that Daredevil is actually Matt’s brother Mike, the notorious twin storyline is duly resolved. Well, more or less. There’s still the question of what happens when Daredevil shows up again alive and well. But that loose end is tied up in the next story, where Matt explains that this new Daredevil must be Mike’s previously unmentioned prot\u00e9g\u00e9, and everyone just runs with that. And then the twin brother plot really is over.<\/p>\n

What about the Exterminator, though? He has no meaningful back story, agenda or personality. He stands and falls with his gimmick, the T-ray. But while it does let Colan cut loose a bit, it’s never remotely clear what “time displacement” actually means, or why it’s meant to be useful. He can take people hostage… well, do you need a ray gun to do that? There’s something rather quaint in the fact that the Exterminator apparently never considered deliberately<\/em> designing a lethal weapon, and sees it as an unexpected boon that his victims might be lost forever. But the bottom line is that he seems to have applied vast scientific learning simply to come up with a pointlessly elaborate revolver.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’ve jumped forward quite a few issues again, thanks to a string of issues featuring guest villains from the wider Marvel Universe. Issues #30-32 feature the Cobra and Mr Hyde, explicitly on loan from Thor. Issues #33-34 are a Beetle story – he does come back for two more stories in the #100s, but I […]<\/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-9814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daredevil"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9814","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=9814"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9814\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9910,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9814\/revisions\/9910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}