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Another one of my all-time favorite Marvel Comics characters: the
acrobatic (and insouciant) swashbuckler known as Daredevil -- a.k.a.,
"The Man Without Fear."
Whereas the (supposedly) "lighthearted" SPIDER-MAN
series -- what with the central character's constant whining and kvetching
over his perpetual lack of lucre; his aged aunt's various infirmities;
and the fact that no really, y'know, liked him very much -- frequently
barrel-rolled over the dividing line between Engaging Our Sympathies and
Making You Wanna Slap the Webbing Right Offa His Face... the scarlet-clad
sightless hero really did seem, more often than not, to be having
himself a ball, slamming into various nefarious spandexed stinkers
and whatnot. As a rather impatient pre-adolescent (when I first
stumbled across Marvel Comics), I -- for one -- rather appreciated that,
in all honesty.
I mean: I darned well knew that if I'd suddenly
been blessed with super-powers by some beneficent deity... you wouldn't
catch me moping about on rooftops, wailing and moaning about what
a total "drag" this whole super-guy shtick was! I'd be out
there every night: kicking super-villain butt, and feeling darned
GOOD about it...! 
Of course, none of this is to say that blind attorney
Matt Murdock (Daredevil's non-costumed identity) wasn't fully as capable
of screwing up his own private life as any other Marvel Comics character
of the day, mind. Take, for example, his briefly establishing a
second "civilian" identity for himself, along with that of the
aforementioned "Matt"; that of his (ostensibly) sighted "twin brother"
-- the hip-talkin', loud sportscoat-wearin', happy-go-lucky Mike
Murdock!
(The reason for this bewildering -- and, ultimately,
pointless -- subterfuge, was something along the lines of: "My beautiful
blonde legal secretary won't give me so much as a tumble, in my blind
'real' identity. Therefore... I'll cobble up a totally fictitious
third I.D.; one that's nothing at all like the 'real' me!"
And people wonder why the Marvel heroes of the period had such thoroughly
screwed-up personal lives, romance-wise.)
This led to such merry misunderstandings as the
one which occured in issues #33 and #34 [see accompanying covers, above
and below], during which time Daredevil was "kidnapped" by super-villain-in-good-standing
the Beetle in one persona... "murdered" by said costumed malcontent
in another... and had to "rescue" his two other "selves" in yet
a third identity! (All of this, mind you, while both his
law partner and the aforementioned secretary-slash-heartthrob were
running about in the background, wailing and wringing their hands and
-- in general -- Getting As Much In the Way as was humanly possible.
By means of just such devices as these did the Marvel writers of the 60's
make it possible for career also-rans such as (*snicker*) the Beetle to
actually engage even a half-bright super-hero's fullest energies and attention
for the length of a two-issue storyline.
Not that this was strictly necessary, of course; Marvel had more
than its share of major-league menaces wandering aimlessly about the comics
landscape, just waiting for the opportunity to be plugged into any given
title's current narrative. Like Doctor Doom, for instance.
[see cover, below]
It seems that the Bad Doctor had tumbled upon Daredevil's greatest secret of all. (No, no... not that he was a full-blown schizophrenic! Weren't you even paying attention, earlier? ALL the Marvel super-heroes were nutzoid, back then! Daredevil... Spider-Man... Ben Grimm... heck, it was all just one big, open-air asylum in the Marvel Universe of the 60's! And all of the inmates were allowed to dress just as funny as they pleased... and bop each other on the noggin every now and again, provided they all finished off their Lima Bean Casserole each and every night.)
No... the other "greatest secret"; that Daredevil was -- for real; no foolin' -- completely and irrevocably blind.
Having thus determined that Ol' Horn-Head was gallavanting about the countryside sans sight, Doom reasoned (he was a cunning lad, was old Doomsie) that Daredevil must, therefore, be in possession of some other, totally alien "sense," of some sort, in order to regularly execute his customary feats of derring-do. (He was spot-on here, as well; the "Man Without Fear" had a so-called "radar sense" -- much like that possessed by your garden variety bat, only amped alllllllllll the way up to, like, a gazillion or so. Which is why he wasn't constantly walking into closed doors, and suchlike.)
Deciding that a "sixth sense" (if you will) of
such magnitude would be just the thing to aid him in his ongoing vendetta
against "that accursed Reed Richards, and his 'Fantastic
Four' "... Doc Doom quickly located Daredevil; beat the living poo
out of him; and schlepped him back to his super-secret badguy lair...
and then transferred his mind into Daredevil's body;
and DD's own (thoroughly confused, by this point) consciousness into Doom's
own armored form. [see cover, below]
You all... ummmmm... followed
all of that... right?
Welll... as I mentioned, earlier: goofy multiple-identity plotlines and brain-swapping silliness aside... the early Silver Age DAREDEVIL comics were fun comics.
It always seemed (to me, at any rate) that the writers during those first six, seven years of the title's run -- handed a character with a low-grade and not terribly "flashy" super-power, and who tarted himself up like the something off of a can of Underwood Deviled Ham -- felt free to simply lob Our Hero straightaway into the most patently absurd clown funnycar plots, and let natural storytelling momentum take it from there.
It isn't an approach, I suspect, which would find
favor, overmuch, with today's more jaded and cynical readership.
The standard approach for a writer to take with Daredevil, nowadays, is
to slather him up one side and down the other with "grim'n'gritty" realism.
And while this approach yielded splendid results under precisely one
writer -- Frank Miller, during the late 70's/early 80's -- it hasn't seemed
to have led to much in the way of worthwhile comics under any other scribe.
Again... as mentioned at the very beginning of this essay: Daredevil used to laugh a lot, while doing his patented PunchemInnaHead thing.
He used to make it seem as if swinging down from a rooftop to do battle with some guy tricked up in garb even more outlandish than your own was... well... fun, darn it.
I miss that Daredevil: the laughing swashbuckler. Errol Flynn, in a bright red union suit.
Maybe you do, too...?
OTHER SIGNIFICANT MARVEL TITLES of the Silver Age
PAGE THREE: Daredevil (Part Two)
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