Don't switch the blade on the guy in shades

So, I was posting last night about Daredevil #57, in which Hornhead reveals his secret identity as Matt Murdock to Karen Page, and I noticed somethin' interestin'. As you'll remember, I've read the story in Essential Daredevil Vol. 3, the black-and-white phone book-style omnibus of the late sixties run of Daredevil. When it came time to post the cover of DD #57, however, I grabbed it from the ever-amazing Grand Comic Book Database (don't blog without it!) so that I could post a color cover. Whoda thunk, true believer, that the b/w cover pictured in Essential Daredevil was different than the one in living color on the GCD. Can you spot the difference? And no, smart aleck, it's not that one's in black and white and the other's in color:




Give up?

Daredevil is wearing sunglasses in the black-and-white version.

I noticed this originally after staring at the b/w version in Essential for a while and then starting to post "Who wears sunglasses under a mask" before realizing that in the color version I'd posted, DD wasn't wearing his trademark Matt Murdock Foster Grants! So where'd they come from in the b/w version? A puzzlement, a puzzlement indeed!

Here's my guess, and it is exactly that, a guess: I don't know how the Marvel Essentials volumes are produced, but most (not all) of the stories seems to be shot from pure black-and-white masters, with no coloring shading turned to grey. (A few stories in some of the volumes do indeed look like they're shot from the actual color comic books.) That produces the stark, detailed black-and-white artwork you can admire, and if you're so inclined, color, in the Essentials. If indeed the Essentials are shot from some sort of b/w production stats (probably not the original art, likely long sold or destroyed), then it's entirely possible we're looking at some editorial workover of Genial Gene Colan's original artwork. It's all an "I guess," of course, but looks like maybe Colan pencilled and Syd Shores inked DD with the usual Murdock specs on—after all, Matt doesn't look like Matt without 'em, does he? Then maybe Stan or someone at the editorial level pointed out DD wouldn't, couldn't wear those shades under his crimson cowl, and the artwork was redrawn before printing to produce what became the final covered version: a barefaced Matt Murdock who is very definitely not making a spectacle of himself.

It's all just supposition on this little stuffed bull's part. I doubt Gene would remember and we can almost bet Stan wouldn't even if he had a hand in it. Maybe it's time to set the bloodhound at "Comic Book Urban Legends on the trail of the altered art. Or maybe it's just one of those cool little mysteries neither man nor bull was meant to know...an enigma of the last days of the Silver Age, a tale more amazing in its obscurity than in its truth...a misty, hidden secret lost to the passing of time. The world may never know.

This is Bully Nimoy, and this has been...In Search of...Daredevil's Sunglasses.

(cue cool Moogy In Search of end theme music):