Daredevil Message Board

[The Overlord]

Was Silver Age Daredevil Any Good? It seemed like DD was one of the weaker Silver Age titles. It had some good stories, like the Daredevil vs. Namor story. However DD has one of the weakest rogues gallery in the Silver Age, so he has a lot of lackluster stories back then.

I think Spider-Man and Fantastic Four are the best Silver age titles, they are two titles that have not needed a big revamp after the Silver Age, unlike say Daredevil, Iron Man and the X-Men, who really only came into their own either in the late 70s or the early 80s.

[Bullseye11]

I think silver age daredevil was good. It was completely rediculous but still all good fun. I greatly enjoyed Roy Thomas's and Steve Gerbers runs in particular. Roy had the great Star Saxon/Mr Fear and the Tribune stories . Steve had daredevil do rediculous things like fight aliens but it was written well so I enjoyed it. Even the crappy comics are at least interesting just because they suck so much. It's also interesting to see the social commentary in some of the late 60s and early 70s issues. I think people would enjoy silver age daredevil more if they read it before dark runs like millers. But on the other hand no one would really like DD at all if they never read those stories. Anyway, this is a very interesting topic.

[Dragonbat]

I've basically spent a few months on a DD marathon, first buying up all the Volume 1 on Comixology, then starting to do the same for Volume 2... and somewhere around "The Murdock Papers," discovered that I could read everything for a yearly subscription fee on Marvel Unlimited, so I finished Volume 2 there and read more of 1 that Comixology didn't have. (And the limited series, too).

And yes, I agree that reading the Silver Age stuff before the noir is a good thing. I will say that I enjoyed the hokiest Silver Age stuff more than DC's New 52. I admit to wincing a bit when Karen described herself a "silly female", but overall, it was still fun reading. I just wish I could find more of Volume 1 online, because there are some huge gaps...

[qtmxd]

I was a young kid back then, and that's when I got obsessed, so to me, it was great. I don't want it back now and hate Waid's run because I'm not a kid anymore. A blind hero was deep stuff to a kid, and still is.And the villains who people laugh at now, like the ani-men, were grotesque looking characters drawn by still-great artists like Wally Wood and Gene Colan. And like the other Marvel heroes, it grew up with me. When I became an adult, Miller was there for me. As an older adult, there was Bendis. I hope I get another great writer to share my actual old age

[jriddle]

Silver Age DD was a book without a soul. Conceptually, the character was very strong, but this was virtually never recognized by its creators. It was basically--to use that oft-repeated characterization--a poor man's Spider-Man, and Stan, rather than infusing it with any of the kind of vision that drove a lot of Marvel's best books in those days, treated it as an opportunity to goof off.

Its biggest advantage is the same big advantage most early Silver Age books had: they were insane, seat-of-the-pants, everything-and-the-kitchen-sink concoctions in which it seemed just about anything could happen from issue to issue. You never knew what to expect, and this made those issues a lot of fun, in addition to being an unpredictable proving-ground for various ideas. In one issue, DD was battling very recognizable street-level hoods; in the next, he was rocketing into space; in one, he'd be in some vaguely Germanic nation battling a dictator who dressed as a Medieval knight; in another, he'd be tackling a team of animal men. As fun as they can be, reading these books straight through eventually becomes a chore; the book had no unique character, and it's painfully obvious that no one really has any idea what to do with it. DD was regarded as a distinctly second-string character, and when it came to the creative juice, he was mostly getting the leftovers after the better books had been put to bed. By the time it got to one particularly awful multi-issue Ka-Zar story (somewhere around where Johnny Romita first began on the book), Stan was openly mocking his own plots, which proved far more amusing than the issues themselves.

Along the way, though, some of the kinds of stories and characters with which the book would later become associated (once it did find its own unique voice) would turn up--the Owl, the Purple Man, Ox of the Enforcers, etc. Matt's never-give-up spirit, so important later, takes center stage when he tackled the Sub-Mariner. Eventually, Gene Colan took over the art chores, and he was a fellow who really seemed to understand DD's potential--he artistically introduced the tone we'd later come to so strongly associate with DD years before it came to be reflected in the book's writing.

What should mark the official end of the Silver Age is always a rather murky matter over which people debate. However one dates it, DD in the '70s is still largely a book without its own character, and it's still all over the board at times, but it does improve significantly under various writers. More of the elements that will later coalesce into A-list DD turn up. Marv Wolfman, when he was writing it, had a particularly good idea for a tale in which DD ends up in an extended fight with the Torpedo (later of Rom: Spaceknight fame), and, while kicking one another's teeth in and doing the Spider-Man banter between themselves, they completely destroy a family's home. They're shamed to a standstill when the family matriarch blows up on them. I've always thought that was a killer end to a comic story, certainly one that fits with later DD. A comic growing up. It's unfortunate that Marv's follow-up--a non-follow-up, really--involved lifting some material from "Spider-Man No More" then basically just forgetting about the whole thing.