If I Had a Buck... Civilized!

Martinex1: We are just days away from the Captain America: Civil War release and I have been avoiding as many trailers and spoilers as possible. But the fact is, I have been seeing previews for this grand kerkuffle in the Marvel Universe for decades, as the heroes have repeatedly relied on fisticuffs to solve their problems. Long before the comic book Civil War, the attitude was punch first and ask questions later. Disagreements over hidden faces, shady actions, misunderstood movements, and even a favorite food seemed to lead to an epic battle. 

So here we are in the mystical comic shop for our regular $1 Challenge shopping spree of If I Had a Buck... For those of you that have not joined us before, it is a simple game of choosing from the titles below, picking your favorites from this virtual spinner rack and commenting on those issues, the characters, the genre, Marvel in general, or anything that pops into your heads. We once again are pulling from the Quarter Bin as some of these comics came out in the (eeek!) 1990s and even the 2000s, and could not have been purchased for a single greenback. So you have four quarters for four comics with our friendly foes fighting ferociously. Who can ask for more?

There were plenty of Marvel cover battles to choose from, but I did my best to limit it to characters appearing in the film. (If the Hulk had been included, there would have been dozens more). If you can think of other examples, please share. Thanks to Mike's Amazing World of Comics site for the easy research and cover hunting.

So without further ado, jump right in, keep your hands to yourself and enjoy!

This Cover Made Me Buy This Comic Book

Doug: Lots to love about this one, folks. What sayest thou? Good cover, or bad? Did you have this book?

Who's the Best... Character With "Black" in His/Her Name?

Doug: Today is known as "Black Friday" here in the States, so in honor of that, let's discuss some more of our favorite longjohn types! And as a sidenote, it took me years to fully grasp the concept of "black" in "Black Friday". As a history guy, I was always stuck on "Black Tuesday", that day in 1929 when the stock market crashed and the Great Depression began. Ironically, the "black" in "Black Friday" also has to do with money, but in the opposite way -- Black Friday signifies the beginning of the Christmas shopping season, a time when retailers should see their balance sheets shift over from the "red" to the "black". Whoo... don't know if anyone else needed that lesson, but I'm glad I finally figured it out! Now, on to the comics!!

Who's the Best... Male/Female Partnership?

Carnival of Madness - Daredevil 161

Daredevil #161 (November 1979)
"To Dare the Devil!"
Roger McKenzie-Frank Miller/Klaus Janson

Doug: It's been a fun series so far, hasn't it? Today we'll wrap up our month spent with Frank Miller and the team as they changed comicdom's perspective on Daredevil, perhaps forever. Maybe at the end we can have discourse on the impact of Miller's tenure on the character -- specifically, did said tenure really do anything for Daredevil? Or was any critical acclaim short-lived in the larger 50-year history of the character? Maybe Miller's art and stories are the book's golden age -- but why is that window of greatness so narrow? Would the general public, in spite of the Hollywood film, recognize the name or visage of Daredevil?

Doug: When we ended our visit to Daredevil #160, we'd just seen one of the great comic bar fights of all time, rivaling anything Conan was ever involved in. DD had gone looking for information about Bullseye's whereabouts. The assassin had kidnapped the Black Widow and was using her as bait. Ol' Hornhead wanted nothing more than to take that bait. As we begin, we're at Coney Island and watch from above as one of the informants DD had so wanted to squeeze comes sprinting into the area Eric Slaughter is using as his base. You'll recall that in issue #159 an unmasked Bullseye had hired Slaughter and his men to either capture or kill Daredevil; Bullseye used that ruse as a means to videotape Daredevils movements for study. "Turk", he of the lisp and fast feet, runs right up to Slaughter and tells him how Daredevil wants him. Trouble is, DD tailed Turk and is right above the gangsters as Turk begins to relate his tale. Remember -- this is a very impatient vigilante. As we've now grown accustomed to, Miller is just dynamite in these fight scenes. Although static images, the reader can feel the pop in each blow and hear the jangles of chains and the crushing of jawbones. And for my money, you can't beat Miller's efforts in providing motion through the use of multiple images, sequentially presented and overlapping. Great feature of the art.

Doug: Daredevil emerges from the scrum to face Slaughter, and he basically tells him to give up Bullseye or else. But just then DD hears the Astrotower kick into gear -- in a deserted theme park? Scaling the tower, he knows that Bullseye can see him -- but what's he to do? Of course there are gunmen on a perch, but DD evades their fire in another great series of panels. Miller seemed to have his finger on the pulse of the radar sense and when would be a good time to depict it; he also gives us another "motion" panel that nails it. Bullseye gloats over a loudspeaker that he indeed has Daredevil's "woman", and it's a shame that she has to die; after all, she's quite beautiful. And then the rollercoaster cars begin moving. DD knows he has a very limited amount of time to a) locate Natasha, b) avoid additional gunfire and/or Bullseye himself, and c) free her from however she's bound on the tracks. Swooping low over the 'coaster tracks, he begins his search. And of course, the gunfire commences. DD's able to take out several gunmen, actually swinging right at them -- pretty unnerving I'd guess, trying to get off an accurate shot while knowing you're going to get buried in about 10 seconds...

Doug: As Daredevil scrambles back toward the tracks, he suddenly wheels and veers in a different direction. The flunkies can't believe it, and as the train hits the Widow's body there is a large impact, knocking "her" off the tracks! But hey -- no heartbeat = no Natasha, right? Bullseye, ever watching, cannot believe it. Of course he has the real Widow, a goon on each arm and a very large gun to the back of her head. While he taunts her, Bullseye has her moved and strapped to a large board; the assassin throws a knife at her, pinning it just below her shoulder. Sceneshift to a musty and dirty old gym, where an old man is talking to Daily Bugle reporter Ben Urich. Urich's come for some information on "Battlin'" Jack Murdock. The old man relates a story of the old pugilist, and of course Murdock's son comes up in the conversation. He's a lawyer now, you know. Urich says he knows. "K.O." tells how hard Murdock pushed his son to study, and how the neighborhood kids always made fun of him for it. Called him a name... "Daredevil?" says Urich. "How'd you know?" "Just a hunch." The plot thickens...

Doug: Back at Coney Island, DD has caught up with Turk again and drags him to a very high point in the park -- in the fork of a devil, no less. Turk decides that giving up Bullseye's location gives him a chance to get away; not giving it up, and the pavement's going to be coming up real fast. Inside the arcade, Bullseye has a marksman throwing knives at the Widow. Bullseye orders him to stop missing and kill her before DD arrives. But the Widow begins to wriggle, and her catlike reflexes allow her to avoid several knives... until she gets the right one. She maneuvers her wrists into just the right position, where a blade cuts her bounds. Now it's butt-kicking time, Soviet spy-style! I was really glad they did this and didn't keep Natasha as some helpless female, which would greatly have disrespected the character. Tasha easily takes out the biggest of the thugs assembled, and shows no fear as she turns to face Bullseye -- he armed with a knife. But as he is about to throw it, the cord from Daredevil's billy club encircles his wrist. DD whips him backwards, totally killing his enemy's balance. And then Daredevil proceeds to kick his butt -- hard.

Doug: But it couldn't, and shouldn't, end that easily. DD tosses Bullseye across the arcade, but the villain lands in the baseball toss game. Coming up firing, DD takes several baseballs off his face and chest. Trying to recover, he fires his billy club toward Bullseye, who snatches it out of the air. Bullseye fires it back, catching DD square on the jaw. While Daredevil struggles to catch is wits, Bullseye uses the club to crack our hero on the back of the head. However, through sheer will, DD takes advantage of the close quarters and punches Bullseye in the face, following that up with a hand to the face. Bullseye's head is driven back into a wall. Daredevil then delivers a roundhouse, which sends his foe reeling -- right toward a gun. But Bullseye's nerves are shot, and his hand shakes as he grips the weapon. At close range, DD knows he's done for, so he takes the only chance he has left: he goads Bullseye. And the assassin cannot pull the trigger. Calling out to Eric Slaughter and his men, Bullseye orders them to shoot Daredevil. Slaughter calls back that DD has earned his respect, and if Bullseye wants him dead he should shoot him himself. Bullseye collapses to the ground. The Widow steps over by Daredevil and remarks that Bullseye seems to have lost his mind. DD says that it's over now. He binds Bullseye's arms behind his back, lifts him to his shoulder, and DD and the Widow walk off hand-in-hand.

Doug: Sentimentally, I'd have liked to have seen Daredevil and the Widow get back together. But as I said when we began this tour back near the end of June, this was the last issue that I read for a very long time. And even saying that, I've never read Miller's complete run. Really, I've only picked at it here and there, even though I have access to almost all of it. So the Elektra stories? I wouldn't see those until around four years after they were released. In fact, when I was first going about filling in the massive holes in my collection, it was Miller's collaboration with Bill Sienkiewicz on Elektra: Assassin that was on the newsstands. I thought it was weird (I never warmed to Sienkiewicz's style). Bullseye is a great villain, and I think Miller was onto something (by now co-plotting with Roger McKenzie, I'd guess) in reaching into the head of the villain and going after the pathological elements of his psyche. While the "anything in my hands is a weapon" schtick is cool, depth was needed. I think in this 3-parter we started to get a little of that. All in all, these four issues would equate to around 80 minutes very well spent!

Doug's Favorites - Daredevil 160

Daredevil #160 (September 1979)
"In the Hands of Bullseye"
Roger McKenzie-Frank Miller/Klaus Janson

Doug: This is the second-to-last issue of Daredevil that I purchased before my five year hiatus from new comics buying. I was fortunate enough to also purchase next week's conclusion to this Bullseye 3-parter off the spinner rack, but then I quit cold turkey. I don't know that I overall stopped with the November 1979 cover dates (next week's issue), but it was close. I've always loved the cover to this book, despite it's depiction of violence against women. White covers always tend to grab the eye, and I'm a well known sucker for floating heads. But the expression on Bullseye's face -- his "Ta-da!" exuberance, and the hopeless state of the unconscious Black Widow make it one of the best covers in Frank Miller's run on this book.

Doug: If you'll recall, back in DD #158 the law offices of Nelson & Murdock had been trashed by the so-called Unholy Three (I always find that a dumb moniker. They're the freakin' Ani-Men!) when they came to kidnap Matt Murdock for delivery to the Death-Stalker. Heather Glenn, Matt's girlfriend, had asked the Black Widow to go search for the blind attorney -- even though she knew that Matt could take care of himself. So today's story actually begins with an epilogue. Natasha Romanoff arrives back to her penthouse apartment after a night on patrol. She thinks to herself that every time she gets close to someone, death ensues. She's brooding, and perhaps that's why her guard is down. As she begins to ready for bed, a voice comes from the other side of the room -- the voice of Bullseye! He has not come for pleasantries. Had Natasha not been trained to be hard, fought alongside the Avengers, the Champions, SHIELD, and Daredevil, she surely would have died instantly. As everything is a weapon in the hands of Bullseye, it's spellbinding that he attacks the Widow with a hairbrush, a picture frame, a flower vase, a blowdryer, one of his own explosive throwing projectiles, and a chandelier. While the battle lasts 15 panels, we get the impression that it does not last 15 seconds. Pulling a clipping from the newspaper he'd read at the end of the previous issue, Bullseye pierces the photo of the Widow with a stiletto and hurls it into the wall. She is his captive; his hostage.

  

 

Doug: Sceneshift to a cemetery, where the DD cast is gathered at the grave of Maxwell Glenn, Heather's father. Matt has brought her here to come to grips with his death -- the others provide moral support from a distance. It's pouring rain. Heather is perturbed that Matt made her come, and especially on a day as it is. She chafes at him, saying that when she needed him the most he was away playing Daredevil. She asks for a promise that it won't happen again... and gets no answer. Matt begins a "with great power..." speech, and gets a slap to the face for it. Heather storms off and Matt is left alone. Foggy encourages the girls to let him be. We next find Matt in his brownstone, brooding. He's poured himself a drink, and thinks about why he became DD in the first place. He figures there's one person who will "get" what he's going through -- Natasha. So it's into the red suit with the hornheaded mask, and away he goes to seek his former lover.

Doug: Matt billy clubs it across town and arrives to Natasha's to an open window. There's no sign of her, and his radar sense tells him that there's been a scuffle. His keen sense of smell tells him that there's been blood in the room. And then the breeze raises the paper pinned to the wall. Using his heightened sense of touch, he recognizes the scrap as the picture of the Widow that had run in the paper a few days past. DD hightails it to the Daily Bugle offices, where he pumps Ben Urich for information on Bullseye. Urich tells him that they have nothing that hasn't already seen print. DD wants to know how Bullseye made it back onto the streets. Urich relates how he broke out of Bellevue Psychiatric by strangling his therapist, knocking out a security guard, taking a nurse hostage, and finally commandeering a police car, which he later abandoned. Before Urich has finished this recounting, ol' Hornhead is nowhere to be seen. Urich shuffles over to his file cabinet and pulls a folder out. There's a picture of Daredevil clipped to the outside, but the filing had been in the "M" section... for "Murdock".

Doug: You know, if you were or are a reader of Conan, whether under the pencils of Barry Smith or Big John Buscema, then you've seen your share of bar fights. I'd say there's nothing either of those two masters ever put to bristol board that would surpass what Frank Miller and Klaus Janson give us over the next five pages. In fact, it's so strong an action scene that I just decided to include the entire thing rather than attempt to pick-and-choose which panels were the best. The premise of the scene is that DD has come looking for Bullseye's location -- he wants information and he wants it now! It's kind of funny -- DD had a chance to get what he wanted, but I guess there was a sense that all hell was about to break loose so he figured he'd rather be the orchestrator rather than a reactionary. His strategy seems to work just fine.

Doug: This second act in the Bullseye trilogy is mostly set-up, isn't it? So why the heck would I have scrapped my original title (which wasn't very satisfying; it was a work in progress) and changed it to one of my "favorites"? Seriously -- why do most of us read comics? That's right -- same reason people go to hockey games. For the fights! Obviously, there was more to this issue than that, and I recall at the time finding the "Urich knows Matt is DD" subplot intriguing. It's nothing we hadn't seen before from J. Jonah Jameson over in the Spidey books, but this was fairly new territory in DD (hey, that Mike Murdock thing really threw everyone off back in the day!). I personally never warmed to Heather Glenn, so that she and Matt may have been heading toward "over" was OK with me -- I thought it would have been much cooler if he'd gone back with the Black Widow. And I guess that's one of the elements of the story that really gripped me then, and now on the re-read: Bullseye tries to hit Daredevil where it hurts, by kidnapping his partner (and presumed love interest?). He accomplishes this relatively easily when he shouldn't have. And then we see DD go after her like a man possessed. There was some serious passion involved in every scene and from every character -- from Bullseye to Heather Glenn to Ben Urich to Daredevil. Although we only had half a dozen scene shifts, the pace was frenetic. I loved this book 35 years ago, and it's still one to check in on every now and then! Enjoy the more-than-usual full-page art samples today!

It's Miller Time - Daredevil 158

 

Daredevil #158 (May 1979)
"A Grave Mistake!"
Roger McKenzie-Frank Miller/Klaus Janson

Doug: Does anyone around here have an explanation as to why in the past five years we've never gotten around to reviewing one of the hallmark series of the latter Bronze Age? Will someone please tell me? You know, it is funny. One would think that with 52 weeks of partner reviews in a year that we'd have gotten to some Frank Miller DD. But what you may not know is that in all of our meetings to come up with four-issue blocks to fill out the various months, this just never came up. It was always, "Hey, sometime we need to get to some Miller Daredevils!" and then we'd say, "But we haven't done the FF in awhile so let's find a good storyline." In fact, back in January when we were on vacation and plotting out 2014, we were going to do the Frightful Four storyline that we mentioned in our last Super Blog Team-Up. But no Daredevil. Today that changes.

Doug: With this issue, we're right up against the wall that symbolizes my departure from comics buying for around a five-year period. As I've remarked in the past, I left just as the "Dark Phoenix Saga" was getting underway over in X-Men. Ditto here. I know I had this issue, and DD #s 160-161. Then nothing until I got back into the hobby circa 1985. Sheesh. Talk about a ship sailed. But I've caught up on most of what I missed in one form or another (the "Golden Age of Reprints", indeed), largely because in this case I liked what I was seeing before I left. I'd like to start off with a question for everyone, aside from any thoughts you'll leave on the plot and my thoughts. That question is, who do you think is the quintessential DD artist: Gene Colan or Frank Miller?

Doug: Talk about dropped right into the middle of the action! We open with a splash page featuring Daredevil's then-cast of characters, and it looks like a scuffle has taken place. Natasha Romanoff is front and center, and bloodied. In the background we see a prone Foggy Nelson, and Matt Murdock's love interest at the time, Heather Glenn. A page turn later we find out what's up -- the Ani-Men (I can here you all gasp in horror all the way over here in Chicagoland) are on the scene and have busted up the place! You know, I've come across these goons a few times, and I just can never bring myself to say, "Holy snot! It's the Ani-Men!!" But apparently the fellows in this version are pretty nasty, particularly if they bloodied the Widow. But they've come for Matt Murdock, at the behest of "the boss". Natasha was out as far as secret IDs go, so she had no trouble jumping right back into the fray; Matt couldn't so easily do that. So while 'tasha tried to give Matt a chance to escape, she took some further physical abuse from Ape Man. Finally Matt called out that he'd go peacefully if no one got hurt. As the "Unholy Three" makes their move to leave, a lady in a wheelchair named Becky (help me -- I don't have my DDs anymore, so I'm going to need to be reminded here) fires something at Bird Man and knocks him for a loop. This gives the Widow an opening to launch herself onto his back, even as he flies out the window. She disables his flight pack, which drops him. Ape Man and Cat Man make it safely away with Murdock in tow.

Doug: Heather comes to the window to call Natasha back inside. She says that Foggy needs her help. Then she remarks that Matt can take care of himself. This shocks the Widow at a couple of levels, but mostly wounds her. Previously, only she and Karen Page had known Matt was Daredevil. How serious were Matt and Heather? thought Natasha. Cut to the mean streets, where Murdock's kidnappers make their way through Uptown. Along the way, Ape Man divulges the name of "the boss" -- Death-Stalker! Murdock suddenly pipes up, telling them they need to not deal with Death-Stalker -- he's a cold-blooded killer and their lives are in very real danger. Of course, it's the money for delivering the lawyer that they care about and blow off their charge's words. Shortly they are in a small cemetery, where they tie Murdock to a large stone crucifix. Death-Stalker emerges from a mausoleum. While his look was in no way original, I did think he was a cool-looking villain. One of my first DD comics was #128, and I was sold on Death-Stalker after that. The Ani-Men get their money, and huddle in the corner to count it. They're most happy to now only have to split it two ways.

Doug: Death-Stalker waves a hand toward an open grave, with a headstone bearing Murdock's name and the inscription "May he burn in Hell". He then narrates an origin that stretches back to DD #41, when he was known as the Exterminator. He had built a time-displacement ray, and after the defeat of the Ani-Men Daredevil had thrown the switch to the machine. This forced the Exterminator into the time stream, where he drifted in limbo. He was able to anchor himself at one point and steal AIM tech that allowed him to craft his death gloves. And now Daredevil would pay a price for the Death-Stalker losing his former life (it seems that this is all about the destruction of the time-displacement ray, which for some reason could not be rebuilt? -Flimsy...). As the Ani-Men count their loot -- all $100K of it -- Death-Stalker leaves Murdock to walk over and kill both of his mercenary assistants. That distraction was just enough time for Murdock to finish loosening his binding. It's swashbuckling time!

Doug: Matt removes his clothes to reveal his DD costume. Death-Stalker wants it that way and Matt obliges. DD thinks that he has to be very careful, as Death-Stalker exists a second out of the timestream -- he's blurry in his movements to DD's radar sense. But suddenly the Stalker's heartbeat becomes more audible. DD thinks that -of course!- Death-Stalker must materialize on this time plane in order to use his death grip. DD takes that window of opportunity and strikes! The two men engage, with Daredevil always staying away from those white gloves. But as DD drives the Death-Stalker back toward a large monument, D-S blinks out -- jumping back into limbo. As Daredevil tries to get a bead on his adversary, Death-Stalker re-emerges above Daredevil. DD is barely able to roll to the side and away from the grip of death. The two continue to tussle until Matt becomes aware of a street lamp overhead. Rifling his billy club into the heart of the globe, he plunges the cemetery into darkness. But seriously -- I wasn't buying this. They're in the heart of the city! Even if they were away from any sort of "downtown" area, the neighborhood wouldn't be a black-out. But not to hear Death-Stalker complain... "What sort of game is this, Daredevil? I cannot see you in the darkness!" Boo hoo, dude. Come and get your whuppin'. The combat continues, with DD having the obvious advantage. Finally, Death-Stalker lurches toward a monument of an angel, thinking it's Daredevil. As he stretches out his white gloves for the coup de grace, Daredevil uses his club to strike down hard, smashing the Death-Stalker's hands -- and with them, the tech that allowed him to kill by touch. Now blind with fury, Death-Stalker lunged at DD, but with his concentration gone did not realize that he had partially phased through a headstone. Unable to control his anger, he solidified -- half in and half out of the monument. End of battle.

 

Doug: Back at the storefront offices of Nelson and Murdock, Matt's quite moody. He's exhausted from his ordeal with the Death-Stalker. Foggy's been bandaged up. Becky tells him that there's been no word from Natasha since she left to look for him. As everyone gets ready to leave, Matt says he is going to stay behind to get some work done. As he broods in his office, he hears a noise and voices Natasha's name. But it was Becky, who apparently has a secret thing for him. To be continued.

Doug: Frank Miller's pencils were quite a departure from the work of Gene Colan, who had most recently been back on the book (issues #s 153-157). I had enjoyed Bob Brown's much earlier run on the title, and found Miller's "look" to be similar to Brown's. But whereas Brown's figures could at times seem stiff, there was none of that in Miller's pencils. His figures seemed to burst with the frenetic energy that Colan imbued them with, but in a more realistic style that evoked acrobats, or dancers in a ballet. There was drama in his pencils. And Klaus Janson's inks remained steady, as he'd been on the book for several issues prior to Miller's arrival. But I'd submit that Janson's inks over Miller's pencils changed the tone of the book from how I had perceived it over my previous years as a regular reader. So while Miller would not write the Daredevil feature for several more issues, his (and Janson's) presence was nonetheless a watershed moment on the book -- and for Marvel. And help us all -- it was great. I only wish it had not continued down a path that has brought us to where we are today in comics, where ninjas and bloody violence permeate our comics and the anti-hero takes center stage more often than the noble helper. Give me the way-back machine...