Showing posts with label daredevil. Show all posts
Showing posts with label daredevil. Show all posts

Thursday, February 8, 2018

DAREDEVIL "Night of the Panther" Conclusion

...The Black Panther is drawn into a manhunt for Daredevil, who faces certain death due to blood poisoning!
The delirious and disoriented blind hero had managed to evade his pursuers, recovering enough to remember his girlfriend Karen Page was being held at his alter-ego Matt Murdock's apartment by assassin/robot creator Starr Saxon...who knows Murdock is Daredevil!
But the Panther has tracked Murdock/Daredevil to the apartment, and is first to confront Saxon...
DD and BP did, indeed, meet up several more times in the Silver and Bronze Ages, in the pages of both Daredevil and The Avengers!
Since that era, the relationship has been, more or less, ignored.
Starr Saxon kept tormenting DD for another couple of issues before meeting a temporary demise and being resurrected as MachineSmith!
One aspect which, in retrospect, seems obvious (but wasn't at the time) is that Saxon is gay, a matter made quite clear in his later MachineSmith incarnation.
Barry Smith has stated that was, in fact, the intent and that Saxon's feminine hands and fey gestures were meant to be subtle enough to get by the Comics Code Authority!
Compare Saxon's pointy-fingered hands with both Daredevil's and the Black Panther's square-fingered ones.
(One of Kirby's artistic quirks, which Smith imitated, was to give all males, no matter how big or small, strong or scrawny, those famous square fingers, while giving all females, no matter what physical build, long pointy fingers.)
However, Barry attributes his lack of artistic experience at the time to not being able to convey that as succesfully as he intended!
So, was Marvel's Daredevil #52 (1969) one of the first "politically-correct" comics, featuring a blind hero, a Black hero, and a gay villain?
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(which contains this tale...but in black-and-white)

Wednesday, February 7, 2018

DAREDEVIL "Night of the Panther" Part 1

There are stories involving The Black Panther from the '60s and '70s that have been "lost"...
...either reprinted in other characters' collections or have never been reprinted at all!
This one has been reprinted, but not in color, and not where you'd think!
Guess Daredevil's been found, eh, Saxon?
Want to see how this story turns out?
Written by Roy Thomas, penciled by Barry Windsor-Smith (during his Kirby/Steranko phase), and inked by longtime pro Johnny Craig, Marvel's Daredevil #52 (1969) is a dizzying smorgasbord of experiments in page design, perspectives, and color usage, some of which work, and some don't.
For example, here's pages 2-3 from the b/w French reprint...

Interesting to see what the primitive attempts at color enhancement both conceal and emphasize, eh?
Speaking of "conceal and emphasize"...did you note anything...unusual...about Starr Saxon?
We'll go into detail about what Roy, Barry, and Gene Colan who penciled the first chapter of this plotline intended!
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(which contains this tale...but in black-and-white)

Friday, August 13, 2010

Death-Defying 'Devil aka Dynamic DareDevil aka the ORIGINAL Dare Devil

Silver Streak Comics was unique in two respects;
1) It wasn't named after it's lead character, like Flash Comics or Blue Bolt Comics.
(In fact, the hero known as The Silver Streak didn't even come along until issue #3, and then he was just a backup strip!)
2) The lead character was a villain!
And what a villain he was!
The Claw was the first great villain of the Golden Age!
He was a, literally, inhuman scientific genius with powers of size-changing, hypnotism, and numerous other abilities depending on the needs of the story! (In the Golden Age, these things tended to be a little, well, loose.)
In his first few appearances he was barely defeated by various international secret agents who would stumble upon his various operations, but The Claw himself would always escape to plot again!
While the foul fiend dominated the front of the book, several heroes made their debuts in backup features, among them a mute fellow in a weird half-yellow / half-blue costume who used a boomerang!

Created in Silver Streak #6 by writer / artist Jack Binder, brother of noted pulp sci-fi writers Otto & Earl Binder, this DareDevil was Bart Hill, rendered speechless as a boy when he witnessed the murder of his father!
The silent lad learned how to use a boomerang, and, when he became an adult, adopted a costume in order to avenge himself against evil in it's various forms.
Not a bad origin tale, overall.

Jack Cole, who later would create Plastic Man, took over the strip in the next issue, tossing out everything except the boomerang and the name Bart Hill, creating the first comic book retcon!
He also modified the costume, making the yellow sections bright red.
Cole then decided that his revamped hero would make the perfect ongoing counterpoint to The Claw, so as of Silver Streak #7, he pitted the two against each other in an ongoing battle that lasted five issues, which ended with The Claw finally being captured!
At that point, DareDevil was given his own title, DareDevil Comics, with the greatest real-life villain of all as his first opponent--Adolf Hitler! With the aid of other heroes, including The Silver Streak, DD managed to stalemate Der Fuehrer.
Of course, The Claw escaped to wreak further havoc in DareDevil Comics until #31, where he was "killed".
(The Claw has since returned both in Project SuperPowers and The Next Issue Project: Silver Streak Comics #24.)

Cole went on to other projects, and writer / artist Charles Biro took over the strip.
Biro gave Bart an entirely new origin, having the orphaned kid raised by Australian Aborigines and trained by them to use boomerangs!
Bart Hill settled down to a typical life of an acrobatic superhero whose new secret identity of a policeman enabled him to serve the law by day, and justice by night...until the Little Wise Guys came along in #13!
Jocko, Peewee, Scarecrow, and Meatball were a kid gang whom Officer Hill encountered while on patrol. Sensing they were inherently good kids gone wrong, he took them under his wing, guiding them into more socially-acceptible activities, like spying on saboteurs.
It was like having a whole team of Robins or Buckys (sans costumes) to help in his ongoing war against evil!
During one of their adventures against a rival gang, Meatball was killed.
A rival gang member, Curly, feeing guilty about Meatball's demise (though he didn't cause it) reformed, and joined the Little Wise Guys.

The kids gradually took over the book as DareDevil went from lead hero to mentor / advisor to occasional guest-star, disappearing altogether as of #80.
DareDevil Comics continued until #134, September 1954.

Though the character missed the Silver Age, his influence was felt throughout it.
Marvel's Matt Murdock became an acrobatic hero with the same name.
Charlton's acrobatic ThunderBolt wore a very similar costume in tribute to the Golden Age character.

And now, the original hero has returned in not one, but two different incarnations:
The Death-Defying 'Devil in Alex Ross' ongoing Project SuperPowers series and his own self-titled mini-series which restores the original mute aspect of the character, but, as it turns out, Bart Hill himself is deceased.
A grown-up Curly (the "replacement Little Wise Guy") is the new 'Devil!
and
Dynamic DareDevil, guest-starring in Erik Larsen's Savage Dragon series.
This version IS Bart Hill, and The Little Wise Guys are also present!

PLUS: we at Atomic Kommie Comics™ have digitally-restored and remastered several of DareDevil's koolest Golden Age covers on an assortment of pop-culture collectibles in our Lost Heroes of the Golden Age of Comics™ line!
You'll also find a couple of DD's covers (including his FIRST appearance) in our The Claw section!

Don't forget to buy Project SuperPowers, Death-Defying 'Devil and Savage Dragon!
We wanna keep DD (and maybe even the Little Wise Guys) around for a while!

Saturday, May 15, 2010

Second Cousin of SuperPowers Saturday

For the next few Saturdays, we're going to present the nifty updated designs of the Project SuperPowers characters by Alex Ross along with links to a couple of Squidoo pages of background info and links about the series and characters...
Alex Ross' Project SuperPowers
(featuring characters who've been cover-featured)
Alex Ross' Project SuperPowers Strikes Again!
(featuring the other characters)
Erik Larsen's the Next Issue Project & Savage Dragon
(featuring several of the same characters as Project SuperPowers and others, but set in a different universe!)
Plus solo pages for
The Classic Black Terror & Tim
and
The Classic Dare Devil

In addition, you can find Atomic Kommie Comics™ kool kollectibles emblazoned with the ORIGINAL 1940s classic cover art featuring these classic characters...
Amazing-Man
The Arrow
The Black Terror & Tim
The Blue Bolt
Captain Battle & Capt Battle Jr
DareDevil
(aka Death-Defying 'Devil
and Dynamic DareDevil)
The Green Mask & Domino
(in Solo Heroes)
PyroMan
Sub-Zero Man
U.S. Jones
(in Flag-Draped Heroes)
at
Lost Heroes of the Golden Age of Comics™!
Unfortunately, we've been unable to find solo cover appearances for either The Liberator or Vulcan.
If you know of any, e-mail us the issue numbers and we'll track 'em down and scan them!

And don't forget to buy the Project SuperPowers comics and collections including Black Terror, Death Defying 'Devil, Masquerade, and Project SuperPowers Volume 2!