November 16, 2024

Daredevil #162 [1980]

DAREDEVIL #162 [1980]

Steve Ditko had an interesting history with Daredevil, which is a story for another time and place, but part of it is that he did four issues of the series in the 1980s, all pretty much fill-in issues.  This was the first, with the 17-page story "Requiem For A Pug", written by Michael Fleisher, with whom Ditko had worked a few times on different projects at DC in the recent past.

It opens up with a 4-page scene where an accident in a lab threatens to explode and Daredevil responds as the radiation is distorting his radar sense.  As it does.  One lab guy is so happy to see DD that he says "if anyone might be able to avert this catastrophe, it's you", and sure, you take what help you can get, but maybe Reed Richards would have been a better fit?  Tony Stark?  Bruce Banner? Peter Parker? Stephen Strange?  I mean, pretty much anyone but the acrobatic blind lawyer? Of course he fixes the problem, but after putting on his civilian garb again he collapses, and wakes up with amnesia.  So that entire opening might as well have been "a piano fell on Matt Murdock's head".

And of course the amnesiac Matt falls in with a crooked boxing promotor with a pet leopard, becomes a successful boxer until a demand that he take a dive in the ring overwhelms him with memories of his father.  So yeah, not a very good story.  Doesn't even try to address how he's going to explain Matt Murdock being missing for over a month.  I seriously doubt if Fleisher read beyond DD #1 in preparation for this story.

Ditko's art is much better than the story.  I thin this is the first time he draws the Wallace Wood design of DD's costume, and he does that well, and provides a few interesting versions of Daredevil using his enhanced senses and radar.  And of course the whole boxing storyline gives Ditko a chance to do some down-to-earth action.

Ditko also draws the cover to the story, although regular art team Frank Miller and Klaus Janson also did a cover, published a few issues later.

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