Friday, May 6, 2016

Daredevil vs. Whoever! Daredevil 30-38

So...for 9 months it was Daredevil vs. someone who was not a regular enemy of his. Of course, this is the Marvel Universe and Stan Lee and his collaborators did toy with pitting different enemies with different heroes and occasionally they would become a regular enemy for the new hero. An easy example is probably the Sandman who started off as a Spider-Man, but became a Fantastic Four villain for awhile. However, I think the Marvel Universe became more stratified and it took a crossover like "Acts of Vengeance" in which Loki encouraged super villains to switch opponents that people realized again, "Hey! This is a shared universe."

For some reason, Daredevil kind of went through his own "Acts of Vengeance" from late 1967 to early 1968. Stan Lee and artist Gene Colan starting having Daredevil fight villains that were not from his traditional rogues gallery. Is "rogues gallery" strictly a Flash term? Too bad, I needed to steal it. I wonder what brought this 9 month sequence of issues on? Were Lee and Colan tiring of having Daredevil fighting the same supervillains? Did they think his rogues gallery was lame? Or did they think, "It would be a shame to let this Marvel Universe go to waste!"

Starting with Daredevil 30-32, DD fought Thor villains, the Cobra and Mr. Hyde. Daredevil even received Thor's blessing to battle in his stead.  Out of all the villains he fought in these issues, these two had the most staying power and returned in issues.....








Next Daredevil fought the Beetle, who had been around a little in the Marvel Universe, starting off as a Human Torch villain, but later battled Spider-Man and the Avengers. I don't recall the Beetle ever fighting Daredevil again.




After that, Daredevil fought the Trapster, another villain who started off as a Human Torch foe.




Finally, Daredevil battled Dr. Doom. Now, Daredevil battled had battled Doom before in Fantastic Four 39-40. although neither made a reference to this.







It came to an end in Daredevil 39 when Daredevil went back to fighting his own foes, the Unholy Three (Ape Man, Bird Man and Cat Man).



But if Stan and Gene had continued on this trend, who could have Daredevil fought next? Well, Daredevil Annual 1 featured a dramatization of a typical meeting and Baron Zemo was suggested by Stan.  A lost adventure perhaps for the future?


No comments:

Post a Comment