Daredevil #1

Featuring: Daredevil
Release: February 4, 1964
Cover: April 1964
12 cents
Written by: Stan Lee
Illustrated by: Bill Everett
Lettered by: Sam Rosen
23 pages

Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four do not actually appear in this issue. They mention Spider-Man on the cover and the first page in an attempt to market Daredevil as their next Spider-Man.

Daredevil has a pretty distinctive logo, an expanding font with a swoosh running through it. Preceded by a “Here comes…”. And then the tagline which will endure to this day: “The Man Without Fear”.

Bill Everett is a name we should be plenty familiar with by now even though this is his first time showing up in the Marvel Age. We know him from our “Prelude” reading as the creator of Namor the Sub-Mariner 25 years earlier. Reportedly, he was very slow working on this issue of Daredevil, leading to this issue being released a full 7 months after it was originally scheduled. So he won’t be invited back to illustrate more Daredevil stories. He’ll be put on covers and finishes, jobs where he’s less likely to blow deadlines. A shame, because he does great work here.

Boxing details

Bill Everett is very detail-oriented in this story, especially when contrasted with everything else we’ve been reading. Time seems to have been spent on every panel.

A centerpiece is Fogwell’s gym, the source of the story’s tragedy. Look to the details of posters scattered everywhere. Ads for old matches, political signs… I unfortunately know nothing about boxing history aside from my last 5 minutes with Google, but some of the signs seem to refer to actual boxers.

For example, Benny Leonard was an actual boxer, the world lightweight champion 1917-1925.

There have been lots of boxers named Carson or Romero. If I knew more, it may be more obvious which Carson vs. Romero fight they’re referring to. Here’s some footage of the 1950 match between Luis Romero and Eddie Carson in Britain.

But there’s also Perfecto Romero and Jack Carson, who had a series of matches in New Mexico between 1913 and 1916. It’s also possible Everett picked a couple names at random.

There’s an odd discrepancy regarding Matt’s father’s boxing name. He is referred to both as Battling Murdock and Kid Murdock. In-story, it’s possible he just had two nicknames. What’s interesting is the consistent placement of these names, which may give clues to behind-the-scenes dynamics. In dialogue and narration boxes, he is always Battling Murdock. In the artwork itself, newspapers and posters, he is always Kid Murdock. I am guessing Bill Everett himself filled in the text within the art and called him Kid Murdock. By the time the script made it to Sam Rosen to letter, Stan had decided to make his name Battling Murdock. All just conjecture on my part.

Oddly, we never learn Murdock’s real first name, just the two stage names.

It will make him a little awkward to refer to in this story. “Battling Murdock” is a mouthful, but I can’t just call him Murdock, as there are two of them in this story.

The origin

Daredevil has a great origin. You can spot the great ones because they don’t change much over time. Later writers retell them with details largely intact. Film and television adaptations include them basically as originally told.

Daredevil’s origin is rooted in personal tragedy, the death of a father. A well-worn motivation for being a superhero, with Batman being the most famous example. It hasn’t been that common of a trope among the Marvel Age heroes yet. Spider-Man was motivated by his Uncle Ben’s death and Wasp by her father’s death. Wasp’s story is an example of a poorly written origin that nobody ever bothers to reference. Spider-Man’s story is of course the best superhero origin story ever. It worked in part because there was a complication. It’s not just that his Uncle died; it’s that he could have prevented it.

Daredevil will also have a complication in terms of his relationship to his father’s death. Let’s take a look. We’ll break the origin into 4 acts, spread over 14 years of Matt Murdock’s life.

Act 1: A childhood promise

The comic begins in medias res, but we’ll tell the tale from the the temporal beginning.

The story starts with Matt Murdock aged 8, around 14 years before he became Daredevil. This first act of his origin will be the basis of that complication, that emotional core. Matt’s dad, Battling Murdock, was a boxer who never amounted to much. His mother had died and his father had made her a promise: that Matt’s life would not be like his. He makes Matt promise not to become a fighter, to study hard, get a good education, and a respectable career, like a lawyer. To break the cycle of poverty through education.

We see that young Matt does not participate in any school sports or activities. I don’t know what the world was like in 1950, but when I was in high school, academics alone were not enough to get into a good college. Extracurricular activities were key. But Matt and his dad seemed not to think so.

Matt would watch children play and never join in. They would bully him and he would not fight back. He’d made a promise to his father. The children taunt him with an ironic nickname. Because they think he’s a coward, they mockingly call him Daredevil. Matt remembered those insults. In hindsight, it’s probably good they called him Daredevil rather than something like Dorkface or Boogerboy.

Then Matt starts to push the boundaries of his promise a little bit. His father is often away and has workout equipment at home. Matt takes every opportunity to train his body, but without letting his studies slip. Kids, please take note that this is a much healthier attitude than studying all the time. In all things in life, balance and moderation are essential.

Act 2: A bizarre accident

Almost a decade after we first met them, Matt is the top student in his high school class, but his father is struggling to provide. Matt had kept to his promise, but now his father fears he won’t be able to provide the financial support needed for Matt’s college education. He’s old and considered a has-been boxer. In desperation, he turns to the Fixer, who agrees to take him on.

It’s an eventful day in the life of the Murdocks. While Battling Murdock is making the fateful decision that will seal his tragedy, young Matt Murdock makes a more noble decision, one that will forever change his destiny.

A blind–and possibly deaf–man is crossing the street. A truck transporting radioactive materials is barreling toward him, its brakes malfunctioning. Matt sees this and reacts. He saves the old man’s life, risking his own in an act of selfless heroism.

Everybody survived, but some radioactive material had fallen from the truck and splashed Matt’s eyes. By this point in our reading, we know well what radiation can do to a person.

He is now blind, but soon learns something startling. The radiation affected him in strange ways, blinding him, but also heightening his other senses to a fantastic degree.

Act 3: Personal tragedy

Matt has started college. His roommate is Foggy Nelson. College roommates are a good source of lifelong friends in these stories. Reed and Ben had met the same way.

His father’s career seems to have turned around. He’s been getting fights and winning them and making money. Battling Murdock and the Fixer must have been working together for at least four years at this point.

Matt and Foggy attend what will turn out to be his father’s last fight. However, Battling Murdock has learned a dark truth, one his ego or naïveté had kept him from seeing. His successes had not been his own; all his recent fights have been rigged; his opponents had been paid to take a fall. And now it was his turn to take a dive.

But he couldn’t do it with Matt in the audience. It would betray every value he had worked so hard to instill in the boy. Honor. Bravery. An old washed-up fighter, never that great to begin with, understands this is his last fight. And wins it. It is a moment of exceptional fortitude and courage that will cost him his life.

The Fixer is not forgiving.

Act 4: Birth of a superhero

Matt and Foggy graduate college. This was Matt’s father’s dream for him, and would have been proud if he had lived to see it.

Foggy’s wealthy father sets them up as partners in their own law firm. They hire Karen Page as their secretary. Perhaps there will be some romantic drama there.

Matt feels finally ready to bring his father’s killers to justice. But there’s not enough evidence to do it purely within the bounds of the law. He is a trained fighter and has these remarkable senses. He thinks he can get a confession out of Fixer and his goons. Doing so will require violence.

He will be breaking two promises. The one he had made to his dead father as a child, that he would solve problems with his brains not his fists. And also his more recent oath to uphold the law, as he plans to act outside of it. He puts on a costume and adopts a new name, the one he’d once been taunted with.

He reasons (rather spuriously) that it would not be Matt Murdock breaking his promise to his father; it would be Daredevil.

Fixer had given the order to kill Battling Murdock, but his henchman Slade had pulled the trigger. Over the course of the struggle, Fixer dies of a heart attack, and Slade is tricked into confessing to Murdock’s murder.

The greatness of the story lies in the level of detail, but also in the complication of the motive. He becomes Daredevil to avenge his father, but in doing so breaks the most important promise he ever made to his father.

I’ll note one odd detail, perhaps a bit of a flaw in the story. Nelson and Murdock were requested to defend Slade. That makes no sense whatsoever. That’s a clear conflict of interest since Slade is accused of murdering Matt’s father. Nonetheless, the request makes its way to Foggy, who reviews the case and still somehow seems to not notice the suspect is accused of killing Matt’s dad. He turns down the case, but brings it up carelessly and casually to Matt, apparently oblivious to the connection.

Costume

Daredevil’s costume is obviously the worst superhero costume we’ve yet seen. It’s almost painful to look at. We’ve already discussed how a letter makes the worst logo. Everett’s most famous creation is a man in speedos, so there’s not a lot of evidence that he’s able to design superhero costumes on par with Ditko or Kirby.

I’d like to reiterate that, except for the costume design, I think Everett does a great job with this story.

In-story, it should be noted the costume was designed by a blind man. Given that, it’s actually quite impressive.

The one salvageable part is probably the billy club accessory. The sheath attached to his leg is a nice accent. As Matt Murdock, he’ll keep up the pretense of being an ordinary blind man by using a walking cane that he doesn’t actually need. But the cane folds in on its hinges to fit in the sheath and becomes Daredevil’s weapon.

Powers

Daredevil’s powers are complex and their precise nature will come into more clarity over time. There are basically two things to know: he’s an exceptional athlete and has heightened senses.

This comic is actually quite the tour de force for examples of what heightened senses can do. Over the years, these examples will be expanded upon and refined into a clearer picture of his limits.

He…

• can tell if someone is in a room by listening for heartbeats;
• never forgets a smell and can identify a person by their perfume or hair tonic;
• can tell how many bullets are in a gun by the weight of the barrel;
• can taste how many grains of salt are on a pretzel;
• can identify a person by their footsteps;
• can read newspapers with his fingers by feeling the ink impression.

A key ability is his “radar sense”, described as a tingling sensation that warns him about nearby obstacles.

During his struggles, his thoughts let us know how he’s doing what he does. Often the secret is his exceptional hearing, which tells him what is happening and precisely where.

On the screen

Daredevil has made it off the comics page into live action three different times. The first was in Trial of the Incredible Hulk (1989), the second of three television movies to follow the Incredible Hulk TV series which ran 1978-82. Daredevil and Hulk teamed up, and there was potential for this version of Daredevil, played by Rex Davis, to spin off into his own TV series, but that series never materialized. John Rhys-Davies played the Kingpin, which is cool.

In 2003, Daredevil made it to the big screen, unfortunately portrayed by a miscast Ben Affleck in a film that did have a few great moments, but was mostly mired in mediocrity.

Daredevil would finally get the adaptation he deserves in a streaming series from 2015, portrayed by the excellent Charlie Cox. Cox would play Daredevil for three seasons, as well as in a spin-off series, Defenders (2017), that teamed Daredevil with other Marvel heroes (but none that we’ve yet met).

Blind adventure heroes

In general, diversity is not a strong suit of early 1960s Marvel Comics, nor any pop culture of the era. But for all their failings in spotlighting women or different ethnicities, there is solid representation of people with disabilities. Daredevil is the second major blind character in these stories, after Thing’s girlfriend Alicia. Professor X uses a wheelchair. Thor needs a cane to help walk in his alter ego. Dr. Strange has severe nerve damage in his hands.

The tradition of blind superheroes goes back to Dr. Mid-Nite, created by Charles Reizenstein and Stanley Josephs Aschemeier for All-American Comics #25 (1941) for the Distinguished Competition.

I don’t particularly expect that Stan or Bill were keeping a close eye on Japanese cinema of the day, but one of its most popular and enduring characters is Zatoichi the Blind Swordsman. His first film was released in 1962, and he would have had at least 5 out by the time Daredevil hit the stands. But the concept of Daredevil was likely being developed right around or soon after when that first film hit. Zatoichi would star in 26 films and a TV series, and there have recently been various reboots, remakes, reimaginings, etc. Eat that, Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Zatoichi eventually found his way into one of my favorite comics in the form of Zato-Ino the Blind Swordspig, occasional nemesis/ally of Usagi Yojimbo.

Record-breaking series

Daredevil is actually a character and series of some rare privilege in Marvel history. He was introduced in his own eponymous title, and it lasted. Spider-Man got his own ongoing series, but only after they tried the character out in an anthology title. Most heroes we’ve seen have been introduced in anthology titles, or titles dedicated to entire teams like the Fantastic Four.

Hulk is also in the eponymous-title-debut club, but his series was cancelled after 6 issues. Daredevil was introduced in his own series which has continued basically without interruption for well over 50 years. That’s a pretty remarkable feat. Captain America is the only other hero we met in the club, and his series was cancelled after 8 years, though the character has endured now for 80 years, just with a 15-year hiatus early on.

As far as the really big superheroes, the ones who have made it into movies and such, that’s actually all of them. The other big eponymous-title-debut we’ll eventually meet is Luke Cage. There will be a few more miscellaneous examples over the decades, but mostly not of enduring heroes. There was a boom of heroes in the 90s, most best forgotten, many starting in their own titles. The best ones were Sleepwalker and Darkhawk.

Generally heroes get introduced in anthology or showcase titles, or as guests in other titles. Wolverine will be introduced in Incredible Hulk, Punisher in Amazing Spider-Man…

For a series focused on a brand new superhero to last as long as Daredevil… pretty sure that’s unique in Marvel history and maybe (?) in comic book history. After a few minutes of thought on this issue, Spawn fits the criteria and his series has lasted 30 years and counting. I’m blanking on any other examples in the superhero genre. Stepping to other genres and self-published comics, Cerebus fits the bill and lasted 27 years.

The original Daredevil

This is Marvel’s first superhero named Daredevil, but there is a classic superhero with the name, published by Lev Gleason. The original Daredevil was created by Don Rico (co-creator of the modern Black Widow) and Jack Binder in Silver Streak #6 (1940). Criminals had killed his parents when Bart Hill was a child, torturing him, leaving him mute, and with a scar on his chest that resembles a boomerang. As an adult, he would wage war on crime as the silent, boomerang-wielding Daredevil. By his second appearance, the legendary Jack Cole would revamp his costume and remove the mute angle, pitting him against Cole’s own yellow-peril villain, the Claw. Soon after, the great Charles Biro would take the reins of Daredevil in his own ongoing series, and eventually give him a totally different origin involving Australian Aborigines. This Daredevil series continued until 1956, though Daredevil would bow out of his own series in 1950, so the title could focus on humor stories in a market no longer friendly to superheroes. But that’s a pretty good run. He outlasted Captain America.

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I am no expert on Golden Age heroes. The information on the original Daredevil is mostly gleaned from the excellent work of history, American Comic Book Chronicles: 1940-44, written by my good friend Kurt Mitchell, along with Roy Thomas.

Marvel Age foundations

On the Our Cast So Far page, I have a section called “the original stars”. It lists 20 characters and 3 teams that I think of as the original stars of the Marvel Age. Daredevil will be our 21st and final “original star”.

The foundations of the Marvel Universe are complete.

We’ve met the Fantastic Four: Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Human Torch, and Thing; the X-Men: Professor X, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Angel, Beast, and Iceman; the Avengers: Ant-Man, Wasp, Hulk, Thor, and Iron Man. We’ve also met Spider-Man, Sgt. Fury, and Dr. Strange.

And two important Golden Age stars have been revived: Sub-Mariner and Captain America.

Those are the people I’m calling the original stars. They’re far from our only stars, of course. Watcher was introduced in the pages of Fantastic Four and now stars in his own solo adventures.

Sgt. Fury shares his comic with the rest of the Howling Commandoes: Dum-Dum Dugan, Gabe Jones, Rebel Ralston, Izzy Cohen, Dino Manelli, their Captain Happy Sam Sawyer, and the departed but not forgotten Junior Juniper. Thor shares the spotlight with his fellow Norse Gods in the Tales of Asgard stories, notably Odin, Heimdall, and Balder.

And then there are some villains who will become important characters in their own right. Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, and Black Widow will all reform and become stars. (There’s one more famous villain/hero in this category we’ll be meeting soon; it is perhaps then that our cast will truly be complete.) Dr. Doom will not reform, but will still soon headline his own adventures.

Rating: ★★★★½, 81/100
Significance: ★★★★★

I read this story in Daredevil Epic Collection vol. 1: The Man Without Fear.

You can also find it in Marvel Masterworks: Daredevil vol. 1. Or on Kindle.

Characters:

• Daredevil/Matthew “Matt” Murdock
• Battling Murdock/Kid Murdock
• Fixer
• Franklin “Foggy” Nelson
• Slade
• Karen Page

Minor characters:

• Sam (Fixer’s goon)
• Porky (Fixer’s goon)
• Hank (truck driver)

Story notes:

• Fixer operates out of Fogwell’s Gym on the Lower West Side.
• Visible text on Gym signs: “Vote No”, “Fight tonite: Romero vs. Carson”, “Mad Sq. Garden”, “Benny Leonard”, “Fights every Friday”, “Thurs Fri”, “Wrestling Arcaro vs”, “Kid Kapitan”, “Fights Every Day Fights”
• Four of Fixer’s goons play poker in room above Fogwell’s Gym.
• Daredevil armed with billy club.
• Battling Murdock a prize fighter.
• Matt Murdock 8 years old in 1950. That suggests he is around 22 when he starts his law firm.
• Murdock wants his son to study, not become a fighter. He promised his wife that before she died.
• Matt top student in class, never involved with athletics or other activities.
• Kids mocked his perceived cowardice by calling him “Daredevil”.
• Matt uses dad’s workout equipment to secretly exercise while Dad on boxing circuit.
• Matt got straight A’s in high school.
• Fixer agrees to manage Murdock when nobody else will; Murdock had turned him down 10 years earlier.
• Matt’s accident is on the day Murdock signs with the Fixer.
• Ajax Atomic Labs Radioactive Materials truck– brakes malfunction. Blind, perhaps deaf, man does not notice. Matt saves man, but cylinder falls from truck and strikes his face.
• Matt is blinded but his other senses are more powerful.
• Doctors say that an operation may cure his blindness in a few years after tissues heal.
• Matt was in high school when accident happened.
• Director of Admissions eager to accept Matt to State College; Matt’s dorm-mate is Franklin “Foggy” Nelson.
• Papers refer to father as “Kid Murdock”.
• Kid Murdock to fight Dynamite Davis for what turns out to be final match.
• Slade is Fixer’s henchman; he shoots and kills Murdock.
• Matt’s father died shortly before college graduation.
• Matt graduates college as valedictorian.
• Foggy’s dad is financing his law office; he wants Matt to be his partner: “Nelson and Murdock-Attorneys at Law”.
• Karen 5’4″ and young.
• Daredevil gives cane a hinge, and designs a sheath for it.
• Fixer arrives with two men to confront Daredevil, including Slade.
• Saturday is Daredevil’s battle with Fixer. Monday is first day of work. Foggy and Karen both visit office on Saturday.
• Fixer dies of heart attack; Slade arrested after being tricked into confession.

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