August 1970: From Siren to Superhero

Already spider-themed, Marvel Comics’ Black Widow naturally became the first of several female counterparts to Marvel’s most popular superhero, the first of several fully feminist Marvel superwomen and finally a Hollywood heroine.

In the first six years of her fictional career, she moved from minor villain to headlining hero. Over the same span, her dramatic journey paralleled the advancement in the status of women across the 20th century.

Created by Stan Lee, Don Rico and Don Heck in Tales of Suspense 52 (April 1964), Natalia Alianovna “Natasha” Romanova was introduced as a Russian communist spy, a foe of the capitalist industrialist superhero Iron Man.

She wasn’t a costumed character but a beautiful “femme fatale,” an archetype created by male writers that represents a woman’s sexual attractiveness to men as a siren threat, a weapon.

Dashiell Hammett’s Brigid O’Shaughnessy, from the 1929 novel The Maltese Falcon, is a classic of the type, seducing several men to their doom. The femme fatale has often amounted to a nightmare view of female independence and confidence.

But Betty Friedan’s book The Feminine Mystique, credited with sparking the second wave of American feminism in the 20th century, was already a year old when the Black Widow debuted. So, by the end of the decade, the character was transformed from a slinky villain into a playgirl feminist superhero with her own feature in Amazing Adventures (Aug. 1970, drawn by John Buscema and written by Gary Friedrich).

Defecting to the U.S. and trading espionage for superheroics, Natasha had settled on a costume that consisted of a skintight black catsuit and wristband weapons that echoed Diana Rigg’s most popular outfit as Emma Peel in The Avengers (no, not those Avengers).

After her Amazing Adventures feature ended in 1971, the Black Widow started teaming up with Daredevil. In 1975, the characters attracted the interest of Angela Bowie, who planned to play Natasha in a TV project. She was the wife of David Bowie (Yes, that David Bowie).

September 1967: A Plague of Frogs

Daredevil has had a surprising amount of trouble with frog people.

Equipped by the Organizer (a/k/a New York mayoral candidate Abner Jonas) for the role of Frog Man, Francois Le Blanc teamed up with Jonas’ other Ani-Men (Bird Man, Cat Man and Ape Man) to battle Daredevil in Daredevil 10-11 (Oct.-Dec. 1965).

Then, in Daredevil 25 (Feb. 1967), Vincent Patilio adopted the springy identity of the Leap Frog even as Matt Murdock invented a twin brother, Mike, in a desperate ploy to protect his secret identity.

In Daredevil Annual 1 (Sept. 1967), the Leap Frog returned with the “Emissaries of Evil” (which included Electro, the Matador, the Gladiator and the Stilt-Man), but DD’s old foes didn’t fare any better as a team than they had individually.

Now styling themselves as “the Unholy Three,” Ape Man, Cat Man and Bird Man returned without Frog Man in Daredevil 39-40 (April-May 1968). And the Man Without Fear didn’t miss the green gangster.

“Only the Frog Man is left — but he hasn’t the brains to lead these other three,” Daredevil observed. “And since he wasn’t with them, he … must still be in the pokey!”

Unlike Frog Man, however, the Leap Frog was smart enough to invent the battery-powered high-tech spring boots that propelled his criminal career. 

Those boots were inherited by his son Eugene in Marvel Team-Up 121 (June 1982), and he used them to try to clear the family name as the Fabulous Frog-Man. 

Surviving largely by luck, Eugene is sometimes referred to as “Kermit.”

“Must be sad needing to follow in your daddy’s flippers in an ugly Frog Man costume,” Joseph Lenius said.

September 1967: Joining the Club

In Marvel Comics, some weapon — a shield, a hammer, webbing or claws — often served as a kind of totem for a superhero.

The weapon usually had a dual purpose: providing the hero with power and symbolizing his identity and mission. For example, Captain America, essentially a protector, carried a shield; Wolverine, essentially an aggressor, had claws.

And Daredevil, who was secretly blind, had a cane that snapped into a billy club — a tool to compensate for disability instantly transformed into a means of punishing the guilty.

Both the cane and the billy club provided freedom of movement to the superhero, as well.

“(T)he true value of Daredevil’s billy club is that it allows him to incorporate an essential item of the blind person into his superhero persona,” observed Alex S. Romagnoli and Gian S. Pagnucci in their book Enter the Superheroes: American Values, Culture and the Canon of Superhero Literature. “The billy club becomes a symbol for rising above one’s limitations. This is what we come to expect of technology in the 21^st century: that it can work miracles. We want devices that help us to navigate our world. Perhaps not a billy club that can let a blind person swing through the air, but certainly digital maps on cell phones that we can call upon when we are lost.”

Comics historian Vincent Mariani remarked, “I always felt that with the revival of Captain America and introduction of Daredevil in early 1964, Marvel achieved as perfect a cast of characters as possible. With Captain America, a link to Timely comics' Golden Age (begun with anti-hero Sub-Mariner a few years earlier) was cemented. And with Daredevil, a unique loner type of hero would be an apt compliment for the ‘offbeat’ Spider-Man and Doctor Strange.

“As time passed, and with increasing success, more and more characters were added in an inevitable expansion. But that early ‘universe’ of heroes, at that point in time, seemed far more manageably iconic.”

April 1965: To Fight the Unbeatable Foe

Daredevil knows this is one fight he’s going to lose, and that he’ll probably be killed. But he fights on anyway.

Early Marvel Comics storytelling ascended to a pinnacle in Wally Wood and Stan Lee’s Daredevil 7 (April 1965).

The manic anti-superhero Sub-Mariner had been attacking Manhattan like King Kong on and off since 1939, but during this particular onslaught all the other superheroes were off somewhere else. Only Daredevil stood between Namor and the ordinary citizens who would be harmed.

We readers were aware that Prince Namor’s strength rivaled the Hulk’s, and that, aside from his super-senses, Daredevil was merely a well-trained costumed acrobat. We also knew that a fight between them would be like pitting a colorful sports car against a Sherman tank.

The storytelling is satisfying on several levels, including its defiance of the genre convention that superheroes must always finally win their battles.

Not this time, gang.

Aided by the restrained power inherent in Wood’s art, Daredevil puts up a valiant fight against the Sub-Mariner, delaying Namor from causing more destruction before finally collapsing, battered and beaten, at Namor’s feet.

Desperately, he grabs Namor’s winged ankle and is slowly dragged along behind the inexorable amphibian superman.

“Come back!” Daredevil whispers. “You – you mustn’t fight the others – They’re innocent! Mustn’t be harmed — Mustn’t…”

Namor turns and gazes down at Daredevil.

“I have fought the Fantastic Four, the Avengers and other super-powered humans, but none have been more courageous than he, the most vulnerable of all!”

Touched, Namor abandons his war, flying serenely out to sea.

The story makes a strong ethical point — that, if you are to call yourself a real person, a mensch, there are things for which you must stand up even if you know you will be knocked right back down.

And the world will be better for this,

That one man, scorned and covered with scars

Still strove with his last ounce of courage.

To fight the unbeatable foe.

Collage by Gil R. Palmer

February 1965: Hooray for Wally Wood

How happy was Stan Lee to have Wally Wood drawing Daredevil? Happy enough to pen a full-page ad singing his praises.

By 1964, Marvel Comics was feeling the pinch of growing pains. Daredevil was a great superhero concept hampered by spotty execution, and Wood’s work helped correct that deficiency.

Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four had the advantage of a single, consistent visual style, but Daredevil didn’t. Golden Age great Bill Everett left after the first issue, and Joe Orlando filled in for three issues. But beginning with the fifth issue, Wood was able to lend his appealing sense of austere power to the feature.

“Wallace Wood’s full-fledged debut as superhero artist came in 1964, with a well-ballyhooed arrival as an artist on Daredevil, and he also found additional jobs inking The Avengers, Tales of Suspense and spot work on Fantastic Four,” noted Jon B. Cooke in TwoMorrows’ THUNDER Agents Companion. 

“But in short order, after only seven issues as artist of the Man Without Fear, Woody would depart the Marvel Comics Group in ’65. Perhaps it was because the often-obstinate artist butted heads with demanding editor/ art director/ writer Stan Lee, or maybe it was an irresistible offer made by Tower Publishing’s Harry Shorten and Samm Schwartz (eager to jump into the superhero game), enabling him to scratch an itch to form his own comic book line-up.”

Daredevil, a latecomer to the Marvel playground, even had to make do with leftovers in the super-villain department. He ran into Spider-Man’s enemy Electro in his second issue, and here in the sixth issue he found himself tackling a “Fellowship of Fear” that included Spidey’s foe the Ox and the Human Torch’s enemy the Eel.

In the next issue, Wood would redesign the Man Without Fear’s costume from an acrobatic yellow to a devilish red, and craft one of the best superhero stories of the 1960s — Daredevil’s clash with the Sub-Mariner, a foe he couldn’t possibly beat (and didn’t).

April 1964: A Cheer for the Man Without Fear

When Daredevil debuted in April 1964, he represented the last of that first great wave of Marvel superheroes that we readers already knew we couldn’t get enough of.

The Fantastic Four had kicked off the parade 29 months before.

At age 9, I immediately liked him — even that yellow costume that everybody else seemed to hate (I love that sunny color). I hoped that Matt Murdock would eventually regain his sight, not realizing how integral his disability was to the drama Stan Lee had in mind.

We’d had blind, or rather quasi-blind, super-heroes before in the Black Bat and Dr. Mid-Nite. And Daredevil’s Golden Age namesake had been mute. But with his other senses heightened, Daredevil’s blindness became central to the storyline. It represented another application of a favorite Lee trick, using an obstacle as an advantage.

The disability shadowed Daredevil’s relationship with Karen Page, bringing a note of tragic stoicism to the feature. It helped preserve the secret of his identity, because no one would believe Matt Murdock could be a superhero. It provided a satisfying underdog counterpoint to contrast with and underline the heroics Daredevil performed.

Daredevil’s blindness-related super powers, carefully thought out, were dramatically more subtle than the more common wall-smashing variety, but particularly effective.

His sensory abilities enabled him to hear distant trouble, overhear secret conversations, dodge and deflect projectiles and punches and, appropriately enough for a moral crusader, detect lies. And they remained a hidden asset, invisible to the public.

Daredevil arrived late in more ways than one. Lee tapped Bill Everett, creator of the Sub-Mariner, to draw the first issue. But Everett got behind on the project, and to fill in Lee had to scramble for a new title.

He called it The Avengers.

Collage by Gil R. Palmer

May 1941: When Justice Is Blind

Dr. Mid-Nite was, in a way, the child of the Black Bat and the father of Daredevil.

Blinded by a mobster’s grenade, Dr. Charles McNider lost the bandages over his eyes when a fortuitous owl crashed through his window and the surgeon discovered he could see in the dark.

Created by writer Chuck Reizenstein and Stan Asch, Dr. Mid-Nite first appeared in All-American Comics 25 (April 1941), a comic book headlined by a champion of light, the Green Lantern. The green-caped and red-vested Dr. Mid-Nite became its champion of darkness, wielding blackout bombs and assisted by that helpful owl. 

With infrared goggles of his own design, he was able to see in daylight as well. Like the Shadow, he made the very darkness an ally.

Though technologically savvy, McNider wasn’t very creative with names — he called his owl “Hooty” and sported a nom de guerre that sounded almost exactly like his own name.

But the real origin of his name was a wink at a radio melodrama that boasted an audience in the millions. Captain Midnight featured a World War I flier fighting superhero battles against the villainous Ivan Shark as the head of the Secret Squadron, an aviation-oriented paramilitary organization. I suspect copyright infringement concerns were behind the idiosyncratic spelling of “Mid-Nite.”

Dr. Mid-Nite wasn’t the first superhero who could see in the dark. The Nyctalope, a French cyborg champion created by author Jean de La Hire in 1911, also had that power, among others. And Dr. Mid-Nite’s origin was virtually lifted from that of the Black Bat, the pulp superhero created in 1939 who had also been blinded by criminals, and who could also secretly see in the dark.

This disability-as-super-ability theme would be amplified and explored by Stan Lee and Bill Everett with Daredevil in 1964. Like both the Black Bat and Dr. Mid-Nite, attorney Matt Murdock would use his “blindness” as a convenient means of keeping people from suspecting his dual identity.