Daredevil #56: "...And Death Came Riding!"

I got so caught up in gigglin' at pokin' gentle but fond fun at various panels in Daredevil #56 that I plum fergot to actually say anything about the story itself. So, in words of one silly-bull, this book is fun. It's a fairly standard story for the time: DD is as usual dealing with his complicated series of secret identities: he's just coming off the long-running "my non-existent twin brother Mike Murdock is actually Daredevil, whoops Mike is dead" storyline and it's in the middle of the the whole "Matt Murdock is believed dead to trap the villainous Starr Saxon but maybe it's better that way if Karen Page believes Matt to truly be an ex-Matt" plot, but really, how can you go wrong with a story whose splash page features Daredevil singing a Lennon/McCartney song aloud as he swings through the streets of Manhattan? The late sixties was probably the heights of the soap opera aspect of Daredevil; the "wahhhh, Karen doesn't love me" bit went on a bit long. But the writing's done with such a light touch and the action barrels ahead full-speed. It's a standard but well-constructed DD story, and heck, it sure provides its fifteen cents of entertainment.

I read this story in (the highly recommended) Essential Daredevil Volume 3; to these little button eyes, Gene Colan's moody, shadowy, angled artwork might even look better in black-and-white than in color. I'm a big fan of Colan during this period (even though he did have a tendency to draw fight scenes so you couldn't see the characters' heads...what's that about?). Although Colan's sometimes an unusual art choice for the ordinary Daredevil billy-club in New York adventure, then boy howdy, did Rascally Roy cook up an appropriate tale for him with #56: Karen Page, the love of Hornhead's life, returns home to Stately Page Manor to find the place under the thrall of a sinister new butler and haunted by Death's-Head, a glowing spectre riding a skeleton horse straight of of Karen's childhood dreams. And where's Papa Page during all this? The clues are no harder to put together than an episode of Scooby-Doo, but there's some solid action and tension when DD faces off against the ghostly rider. Sure enough, there's the dangling promise of a dandy Stan Lee-style cliffhanger at the end: Death's-Head knocks out DD, dresses DD in the Death's-Head costume, and sends him off against a pair of trigger-happy cops! Will Daredevil escape? Will Daredevil escape?!? (turning the page to issue #57...) Oh, guess he did.

Most of the fun for this little stuffed Daredevil fan, however, is in the weird and wacky machination behind the Matt/Karen relationship, which has been up and down more often than Stilt-Man. Matt loves Karen but must never reveal his secret identity? That's standard Marvel superhero fare, but what this story was building up to and paid off in issue #57 was fairly groundbreaking for the time:



Anyway, that cover? Not a hoax, not a dream, not a what if, not an imaginary story! In #57, Karen did actually find out the secret of Hornhead's true identity, and that revelation remained canon and unretconned. You kids today with your Civil Wars and your Houses of Ms and your Volkswagen Golf leases may not think that's anything special, what with everybody and his butler now knowing the true identity of Spider-Man and Iron Man and Captain America Man and Professor X-Man, but the Marvel of the sixties and seventies was the tightest lock-down imaginable for secret identities: with the possible exception of the Hulk/Bruce Banner in Tales to Astonish #77, each of the Silver Age heroes protected his secret identity if he had one. Sure, Spider-Man might be flown through the streets sans mask, Captain America's relation to Steve Rogers might be uncovered by HYDRA, Willie Lumpkin might peek under Forbush-Man's pot helmet, but by the end of the storyline if not that same issue the revelation would be undone, retconned, explained away, amnesiaed out, or misled with clones, doubles, LMDs or the occasional jus' plain dumb luck. That the late-sixties Daredevil's identity was made known to one of his closest supporting cast members is one of the most dramatic steps forward towards turning the book from just another Spider-Man clone (and I think we all know how painful that can be) towards its own distinct urban noir that, a handful of silly villains aside, really saw its roots in this era. It's part of the reason I love Silver Age and seventies Marvels: every once in a while one of Stan's successors would throw us a curveball, and whether that twist worked or failed, there were some periods when you never really knew what was coming up in a Marvel comic book from month to month. And you just had to read the next issue to find out...canny, canny Marvel Bullpen! You've got me and my dimes exactly where you want us!

Before I sign off to dream about billy clubs and stilt-men, in the spirit of the Mighty Marvel bonus features, here's the flame-broiled cover of Daredevil Volume 2 #56 (March 2004):



Wow, that glowing red cover with its skeletal hands could almost be a modern version to fit the story in Volume 1, #56. Did Death's-Head come back in this issue in an all-new Bendis version? If so, I'd imagine it would take him three pages just to get out his wicked cackling rant.

Heck, while we're at it, why not savour the Golden Agey goodness of the original Lev Gleason Daredevil #56 (September 1949):



Golly, why doesn't anyone use the word "Illustories" any more?