The Marv Wolfman Issues
This section examines the stories written by then-Marvel EiC Marv Wolfman.
Daredevil #127: "You Killed That Man, Torpedo--And Now You‘re Going To Pay!"; 18 pages
Writer: Marv Wolfman
Artist: Bob Brown., pencils, Klaus Janson, inks
Even though the mysterious Torpedo is dead, former football star Brock Jones has vowed to take up his cause. His efforts to fulfill his predecessor's mission will bring him into conflict with Daredevil yet again...and a moment of truth outside a Westchester tract house.
My contention is that Marv Wolfman's run on Daredevil was, with some glaringly bad exceptions, as good as the series got until Frank Miller came along--and this two parter was his crown jewel.
Even this early in his career, Wolfman had some problems with the super-hero genre; the first half of this story questioned the image of heroism that characters like Daredevil represented, and this one pretty much tears apart the concept of the super-hero fight scene. The bulk of this issue is taken up by a fight scene between an obviously fatigued Daredevil and the Torpedo--who literally has had less than a day to get used to this battlesuit of his, and is more than a little upset at DD's snapping at his heels while he tries to fulfill a dying man's wishes. But what Wolfman does is something he did quite a lot in his seminal horror book Tomb of Dracula : he introduces some secondary characters...and lets us watch as this fight scene destroys everything they have, and threatens to kill them.
This sequence is amazing . We don't know much about the black family who plays a pivotal part in the story--but we do know enough to feel their shock when two costumed characters literally smash their way into their home and endanger them. These bystanders, because Wolfman set them up just enough , become our point-of-view characters, and we the chaos that a fight scene brings into their lives. And when the wife has had enough and confronts our combatants, it is as if she's accusing the reader for his complicity in enjoying this.
One of the things that makes the bulk of Wolfman's run so enjoyable is how not a single word is wasted. A lot of lesser writers would make the backstory of the first man to wear the Torpedo armor a lot more detailed--maybe even making it into an illustrated flashback. Not Wolfman; yes, he does give us a brief run-down on why the nameless man who fought Daredevil in the previous issue donned the Torpedo armor, but its just a few word balloons. Stuff like this is not important to Wolfman's point, and as such he tells us just enough and barrels on through.
Of course, there's also the usual sub-plot advancements--a scene where Foggy shows up at the sight of the previous Torpedo battle and tries to act hard nosed towards DD in front of the cops, yet more of Matt discovering Heather Glenn in his apartment (why he didn't have her arrested for breaking and entering I will never know), and another of those commercials that will continue to build toward the three part Jester storyline, but Wolfman doesn't dwell at all...his sights are set elsewhere and he'll be damned if he gets slowed down. Later in his run, when he's dealing with strange guys creating stairways to the stars and Uri Gellar, Wolfman's touch wears off a bit, but right now he is at his peak.
We're at a point in Bob Brown's run just before his work begins to deteriorate due to his illness; compare the smoky, sleek and kinetic pencils of this issue to the ones he completed just before his death, and it's like two different people did them. Bob--who was criminally underrated even when he was alive--had probably the best inker he ever had in Klaus Janson, and it really shows. Janson's noirish sensibilities really drew out the somber qualities of Brown's New York City nightscapes, and even the sequence that sees DD and the Torpedo hustling around a Westchester mansion is full of atmosphere. But really, in my mind, makes this one of Brown's shining achievements is the final sequence in the tract house...the sense of utter chaos, of fear experienced by this family is amplified a hundredfold by Brown's energy. It's a pity that the move has been away from this sort of work in the past few years, because Brown was a master of his trade.
Marv Wolfman's run was as good as it got in the years between Stan Lee and Frank Miller...and this story is as good as Wolfman gets. I'm sure you can do the math...
Daredevil #133: "Introducing: Mind Wave and His Fearsome Think-Tank!"; 17 pages
Writer: Marv Wolfman
Artists: Bob Brown and Jim Mooney
Daredevil teams up with Israeli 'psychic' Uri Gellar to stop criminal esper Mind Wave from looting New York City. Meanwhile, the Jester's electronically-induced campaign of confusion is beginning to reach a head.
I want to assure you that in future updates, I'll be heaping a lot of praise on the work of Marv Wolfman on this title. It's to redeem the reputations of people like Marv, who wrote some genuine classics during his stay, that prompted me to begin the admittedly arduous task of starting, writing, and maintaining The Daredevil Companion.
But one of the things that's very true about Marv Wolfman's year-and-a-half run on the book is that when he's good, he's amazing , and when he's bad....well, he produces "Introducing Mind-Wave and His Fearsome Think Tank."
This issue is a prime example of the 'Guest Star Starring Role' story, where the main character of a book plays second fiddle to the supposed guest star. Usually this is because the writer has an idea for a story featuring the guest star but can't fit in anywhere else but the series he's presently writing. This issue is unique for two reasons: if the editorial piece in the issue is to be believed, Wolfman was ordered to use this specific guest star by Stan Lee, and the guest star in question was celebrity psychic Uri Gellar. Most people would not be familiar with Gellar now, but back in the 70's he was a very popular guest on many talk shows, displaying his amazing psychic 'abilities' for the masses. Later on he was thoroughly debunked by professional skeptic The Amazing Randee, and the man drifted into obscurity. This book came out during the height of his popularity, and uses the sort of reverence in dealing with him some Catholics afford the Pope.
What's the funniest element of this bore-fest--besides the amazingly tacky lime green and yellow costume Mind-Wave wears--is how Wolfman seems to portray Gellar as an out-and-out super-hero. The abilities he displayed during his public appearances are amped up to the point where he causes metal bars in a window to bend and stretch to put the finishing touches on Mind Wave (who, amazingly, is portrayed as Gellar's arch-nemisis!), the backstory he gives for his powers is delivered with all the gravitas of an origin story, and even the way D.A. Tower sort of kowtows to him is incredibly awful. I almost waited for the revelation of the 'Gellar-mobile,' or the 'Gellar-cave,' considering the build up this guy was getting.
And it's not surprising that, in light of the build-up Gellar does get, Daredevil is a supporting player in his own book. We see him pretty much fall prey to Mind-Wave's supposed all powerful villainy very quickly so that the bulk of the pages can be taken up by Gellar trading mental jabs with Mind-Wave. When Wolfman remembers that Daredevil is the star of the book, we're treated to a few paltry pages of him mopping up the floor with Mind-Wave's flunkies while Gellar's immense mental abilities are put into play. It's a pretty sad sight, and all I can think of is that Wolfman 'took the bullet' for other writers, cramming this Stan Lee mandated travesty into an issue and getting it past him as quickly as possible. In fact, there's an overall sense of embarrassment concerning the entire issue; even Brown's pencils seem rushed (although that can be attributed to Brown's illness, an illness that would lead to his death within the year).
There is lip service to what will become Wolfman's magnum opus on the book, which begins two issues hence. There's also the debut of the Bob Brown redesign of the Jester, whose now multi-colored motley hung around for one or two more stories before he reverted back to the classic, plainer green, blue and purple togs he debuted in. As for mind-Wave, he was promptly forgotten after his one appearance, and was retroactively shoved into the Bar With No Name massacre during the 80's.
I've read a lot of Daredevil comics, and I'm not afraid to proclaim that this was the absolute nadir of the book until we hit the Motocross era in 1992. It's kind of unfair, though, to judge Wolfman's tenure on this (and the almost equally awful issue #129), as he is one of the best pre-Millar writers the title ever saw. Standing as part of a larger group of stories, "Mind Wave and His Fearsome Think Tank" is an aberration, sticking out like a sore thumb amongst the original Torpedo story and the Jester three-parter. On it's own, however, it's one of those handful of legendarily bad Marvel comics that need to be seen to be believed.