Daredevil Message Board

[mghg]

In the early days of Marvel comics after the introduction of Fantastic Four, it seems to have been a general rule that new characters were introduced in existing anthology titles. In addition, Marvel is said to had been limited in the number of titles it could send to market by its distributor, and three double-feature titles were split into six comic series in 1968 after Marvel had negotiated a new distribution deal (e.g. "Tales of Suspense" featuring Iron Man and Captain America were split into the solo series "Captain America" and "The Invincible Iron Man").

In my opinion, the Daredevil comic series is the outstanding exemption to the general rule described above. Is there anyone that knows why Daredevil first appeared in its solo series instead of getting a debut as the second feature in an existing title? Was Stan Lee very confident in the future success of Daredevil?

[Mike Murdock]

Amazing Fantasy 15 quickly spun off into a solo book rather than continuing with Amazing Fantasy. Daredevil was very much a transparent "let's create a new solo book." It has Fantastic Four and Spider-Man on the cover.

In addition, all the new creations for anthology books had already been created: Ant-Man and Thor were 1962, Iron Man and Doctor Strange were 1963. After that, new characters got solo books: The X-Men, The Avengers, and then Daredevil. Daredevil only stands out for not being a team book. Otherwise, he's not unique.

Admittedly, they went back to anthology books (usually books designed for that purpose like Marvel Feature, Marvel Spotlight, or Marvel Premiere) or had characters spin off of existing books after that for awhile (I think the next new character to debut in a solo book is Luke Cage), but Daredevil himself is consistent with the 1963-1964 period.
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[Pete]

Marvel, or Lee in particular, were quite clever in getting the most out of their expanding universe in those early days despite the limited number of titles they were 'allowed' to produce each month.

Launching 'Daredevil' as a brand new title did take up much of that allocated space on the racks, but remember it was a bi-monthly title to begin with, as I believe was 'Uncanny X-Men'.

Sales were good enough on DD for it to turn monthly a couple of years after its launch.

[mghg]

Thanks Mike Murdock and Pete for your responses.