Featuring: Daredevil
Release: October 5, 1965
Cover: December 1965
12 cents
Writer: Smilin’ Stan Lee
Penciller: Bubbly Bobby Powell
Inker: Wonderful Wally Wood
Letterer: Swingin’ Sammy Rosen
20 pages
| Previous | #435 | Next |
|---|---|---|
| INTERLUDE | THUNDER Agents #1 | |
| Daredevil #10 | Reading order | Amazing Spider-Man #30 |
| Daredevil #10 | Daredevil | Daredevil #12 |
Wally Wood wrote part one of this two-parter just for a lark! But now it’s up to sly ol’ Stan to put all the pieces together and make it come out right in the end! Can he do it? See for yourself!
This really is goodbye for Wally Wood. He was heavily involved with 4 issues of Daredevil, then partially involved with 3 more. Now he’s just on inks, making no claim to having written this story in any part. After this job, he’s out the door.
Bob Powell provides the main art.
The narration box is again important. Stan is speaking in his normal salesman voice, but it barely conceals the behind-the-scenes drama of Wood writing the first half of this tale and then resigning.
I’m guessing Wood left before making a cover, as the cover is just a repurposed interior panel.
Here’s a good rundown from the Marvel in the Silver Age blog about Wally Wood’s career and time with Marvel and on Daredevil.
We’re left with one of those “What If” scenarios. What if Wood and Lee had gotten along better? Then Wood was probably going to be the one to revive Sub-Mariner instead of Colan. We got a taste of Wood’s Sub-Mariner in Daredevil #7.
I want to take a peek at Tower Comics to see what Wood is up to next. We’ll see he’s cocreated the superhero/espionage team the THUNDER Agents. Maybe he could have brought ideas like that to Marvel. Who knows what he and Lee could have come up with if they’d been able to work together.
For Lee’s part, he seems to be pretty annoyed with Wally at this point. But look at how he touted Wood’s coming on Daredevil. Look at how he touted Wood doing the inks on the Avengers. Stan had shown no enthusiasm for inkers elsewhere. Stan rarely mentioned anybody on the cover, and the few times he had, it was always himself, Kirby, or Ditko. It seemed like he felt Wood was his third superstar. Decades later, Lee still recalled the Daredevil/Sub-Mariner battle he and Wood did as his favorite story. I think Lee really saw Wood as a legend and was excited to work with him. It’s all a bit sad, really.
Now let’s see how Stan and Bob can finish off the mystery Wood started.
Here’s an obnoxious bit of questionable continuity right away. The last issue made a point of how careful the Organizer had been. He purposely never met his men in person. They don’t know who he is or how to find him. Yet now they’re all just hanging out at his place, and Daredevil is able to follow Frog Man straight to him. Seems sloppy.
Last issue, my reasoning about Monroe had been that everyone else was accounted for when the Organizer made a transmission. That’s happening again. But Foggy correctly notes the speech could be a non-live recording to throw suspicion on Monroe.
Ah, the actual clue was a ring. I missed the ring.
Did you catch it? We saw it clearly and frequently on the Organizer last issue.
We never see it particularly clearly on Jonas, but he is wearing a ring. The same one? Not clear. Here are the only two clear pictures of the ring on Jonas.
What do you think? Is that flimsy evidence? Satisfying mystery? Maybe if we’d ever gotten a better look at Jonas’ ring.
Like, what’s going on in this panel? This is unfortunately the digital reproduction, so I’m not sure what the original looks like. But this looks like a sloppy art correction on Jonas’ hand. I’m guessing it was drawn without a ring, and then a ring was added.
Let’s look to next issue’s letter page to see how readers of the time solved the mystery after reading issue 10.
When I discovered that Deborah was actually a crook, I quickly flipped back the pages and discovered it was Jonas who introduced Deb to the unsuspecting Foggy.
Dave H
I had noted that clue as well. Stan claimed in his response that he had not.
I noticed the Organizer’s ring the second time through and saw that Abner Jonas was the only person who wore a ring on the middle finger of his right hand. Although I didn’t get a very clear picture of the ring, I checked the story again and saw that none of the other suspects wore a ring on their right hands, so I’m pretty sure I’m right.
Ron R
I know it’s him, because on page 10, panel 4, the Organizer is pointing his finger, and on it is a ring. This is the same ring Mr. Jonas wears on pages 8 and 16. I love a mystery story and this one was just right for me. Wally’s script was almost as good as Stan’s would have been.
Raymond O
The reason for my belief was his having a ring on the middle finger of his right hand as did the Organizer.
Nehemiah T
Learning he’d been duped by the Reform Party plays into Foggy’s inferiority complex and impostor syndrome.
With the case resolved, Matt makes a dramatic announcement. He’s leaving the law firm.
There’s an interesting endnote. The format accidentally used here of one writer setting up a mystery and leaving it to another writer to conclude has often been done with intent, even within Marvel. Famously, a crossover between Spider-Man and Nova, written by actual friends Len Wein and Marv Wolfman took this format. Wolfman set up a “fair play mystery” in the pages of Nova #12 and left it to Wein to resolve in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man #171 .
Rating: ★★½, 45/100
Significance: ★★★☆☆
I read this story in Daredevil Epic Collection vol. 1: The Man Without Fear.
Characters:
- Frog Man
- Ape Man
- Deborah Harris
- Daredevil
- Bird Man
- Foggy Nelson
- Cat Man
- Bernard Harris
- Abner Jonas/The Organizer
- Milton Monroe
- Karen Page
- Mr. Nesbitt
Story notes:
- Daredevil frees Harris then follows her.
- Foggy notes Matt is the glamour boy winning all the cases.
- Matt and Foggy agree to a trap for the Organizer
- Matt makes a lot of the same observations we did last issue.
- Deborah loved the Organizer in the past.
- Daredevil steals Frog Man’s outfit and puts Frog Man in his.
- Daredevil broadcasts Organizer’s plans on TV.
- Daredevil has extra suit at apartment.
- Reference to “Agent of SHIELD”, a TV show.
- Jonas captured by gang.
- Landlord Nesbitt calls about overdue rent.
- Matt leaves office so that Foggy can move to a smaller office.
| Previous | #435 | Next |
|---|---|---|
| INTERLUDE | THUNDER Agents #1 | |
| Daredevil #10 | Reading order | Amazing Spider-Man #30 |
| Daredevil #10 | Daredevil | Daredevil #12 |
