DAREDEVIL AND THE BLACK WIDOW: EARLY STORIES

This weekend’s light-hearted, escapist superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog looks at some of the early stories during the time when Daredevil and the Black Widow were a team, like Captain America and the Falcon or Power Man and Iron Fist.

DAREDEVIL & THE BLACK WIDOW Vol 1 #92 (October 1972)

Title: On the Eve of the Talon

Villains: Blue Talon and Damon Dran

NOTE: The Black Widow had been a guest star in the past several issues of this series, but the title was not changed to Daredevil and the Black Widow until this issue.

Synopsis: Unscrupulous San Francisco tycoon Damon Dran has a troop of his henchmen capture Black Widow and bring her to him. Dran wants to know what Natasha did with a very high-tech item that she recovered recently from the Top-Secret experiment called Project Four.

Meanwhile, Dran sends his martial arts mercenary Blue Talon to kill Daredevil. Blue Talon is unaware that Daredevil has had his old friend the Black Panther come to San Francisco to disguise himself as Daredevil, complete with white-skin makeup.

This is being done so that lawyer Matt Murdock and the superhero Daredevil can seem to be appearing at the same time in order to squelch recent speculation that Matt is really Daredevil. DD and T’Challa get more than they bargained for when Blue Talon attacks what he thinks is Daredevil.

The disguised Black Panther fights the villain while still pretending to be Daredevil, meanwhile Matt Murdock looks on and the crowd plus the news crews get a long look at Matt and DD appearing at the same time. Blue Talon dies in an explosion when one of his wrist blades accidentally hits a gas main.

NOTE: Believe it or not, Blue Talon really was dead. For his part, Black Panther returned to Avengers Mansion in New York City, while Matt Murdock donned his Daredevil costume and resumed looking for the abducted Black Widow.

DAREDEVIL & THE BLACK WIDOW Vol 1 #93 (November 1972)

Title: A Power Corrupt

Villain: The Indestructible Man

Synopsis: Damon Dran’s machines have extracted the location of the Project Four sphere from Black Widow’s mind and he manages to obtain it. Exposing himself to the sphere, Dran gets transformed into a powerful villain calling himself the Indestructible Man.

Daredevil frees the Black Widow, and an all-out battle breaks out. The Indestructible Man does a Villain Rant during the carnage, explaining that as Damon Dran he obsessively feared a nuclear war. His agents had informed him that the sphere from Project Four could make him powerful enough to survive atomic explosions AND radiation as well as grant him a degree of superstrength.

The destruction from the battle causes Dran’s mansion/ laboratory to explode, and though our heroes foolishly assume he died in the explosion, we readers are shown the Indestructible Man emerging from the wreckage.

DAREDEVIL & THE BLACK WIDOW Vol 1 #94 (December 1972)

Title: He Could Crush the World

Villain: The Indestructible Man

Synopsis: Dran’s exposure to the Project Four sphere is causing him to continue growing, infuriating him and further fueling his rampage across San Francisco while the Black Widow and Daredevil try to stop him.

At the Golden Gate Bridge, our heroes notice that the sphere continues to hover near the Indestructible Man, so they manage to destroy the device.

This robs Dran of his powers, restores him to normal size and seemingly kills him.

NOTE: Naturally, this villain wasn’t really dead, and he returned in the future to plague the Black Widow multiple times, as well as Captain America.

DAREDEVIL & THE BLACK WIDOW Vol 1 #95 (January 1973)

Title: Bullfight on the Bay

Villain: The Man-Bull

Synopsis: Daredevil remains based in San Francisco with his crimefighting partner the Black Widow, while his secret identity Matt Murdock is Natasha’s public romantic partner as they share her mansion.

NOTE: Natasha still has a lot of money from her White Russian ancestors.

Back in New York, Daredevil’s old foe the Man-Bull has his gang break him out of prison so he can go to San Francisco and kill Daredevil. The unsuspecting Matt Murdock is settling in at Broderick & Sloan, his new law firm.

When the Man-Bull begins rampaging through Frisco in order to flush out our hero, the Black Widow and Daredevil swing into action against him. The battle takes them throughout the city.

Eventually the villain renders Daredevil unconscious, leaving the Black Widow alone against him for the cliffhanger ending.

DAREDEVIL & THE BLACK WIDOW Vol 1 #96 (February 1973)

Title: The Widow Will Make You Pay

Villains: Man-Bull and his transformed victims

Synopsis: The Black Widow fights off the Man-Bull to stop him from killing Daredevil. After driving him off, she gets Daredevil to a hospital for treatment. The Widow then returns to swinging around San Francisco in search of the villain.

Meanwhile, in his hideout, the Man-Bull gets bad news from the professor who makes the serum that turns him into his super-powered but monstrous form. This time the serum cannot be reversed.

Unhinged with rage, Man-Bull forces the professor to make a large batch of the formula, then the villain goes to drop it in the San Francisco water supply. The Black Widow spots him and attacks, but she is too late to stop him from contaminating the water.

As time rolls along, the serum in the water causes several who drink it to transform into much less powerful human-animal hybrids because they did not get the kind of concentrated dose that created Man-Bull. As the Black Widow struggles to contain the rampaging crowd of animal-people, Daredevil gets well enough to rise from his hospital bed and join her against the mob and the Man-Bull himself.

The battle ends with the crowds turning back to normal and with Man-Bull maneuvered into chains that are attached to a huge anchor. Daredevil causes the anchor to fall into the bay, taking Man-Bull down with it to his apparent doom. He somehow survived and showed up in the near future in Chicago fighting the superheroine the Cat.

DAREDEVIL & THE BLACK WIDOW Vol 1 #97 (March 1973)

Title: He Who Saves

Villains: The Dark Messiah and Moon Dragon

Synopsis: Street preacher and con man Mordecai Jones is seriously injured when something goes wrong during one of his street performances. While being rushed to the hospital, Jones is abducted.

Moon Dragon, an Earth orphan raised by the Eternals of Titan after Thanos killed her parents, uses Titan’s superior technology to grant Mordecai Jones superpowers. Moon Dragon mistakenly believes that her San Francisco Earthling ally Kerwin Broderick is cooperating with her plans to create super-soldiers to fight Thanos’ impending invasion of Earth.

Instead, Broderick is really one of Thanos’ Earthling agents and unleashes Jones on San Francisco as the supervillain called the Dark Messiah. As part of his initial rampage he frees three of his former disciples from prison.

Daredevil and the Black Widow are made aware of the Dark Messiah’s criminal activities and a battle results. Dark Messiah’s powers are deadly enough on their own, but for the cliffhanger ending his three former disciples show up to help him, having been granted superpowers of their own.

NOTE: Obviously, this story took place when the very first Thanos War was raging in the pages of Iron Man, Captain Marvel, The Avengers, Marvel Feature and here in Daredevil & the Black Widow.

DAREDEVIL & THE BLACK WIDOW Vol 1 #98 (April 1973)

Title: The Disciples of Doom

Villains: The Dark Messiah and his Disciples of Doom

Synopsis: The Dark Messiah’s disciples – Macabee, Josiah and Uriah – help their leader effortlessly win the battle and leave the area to hatch further plans. Daredevil resumes his life as lawyer Matt Murdock, romantic partner of Natasha Romanoff, the famous Black Widow.

Little does Matt suspect that Kerwin Broderick, the senior partner at Matt’s new law firm, is really the agent of Thanos behind powering up the Dark Messiah and his Disciples. Eventually, the supervillains emerge from hiding for another rampage and crime spree.

Daredevil and the Black Widow don their costumes and take on the villains. The Disciples prove much easier to beat than their leader, but Daredevil taunts the Dark Messiah about his lowly origins as a two-bit street preacher and performer. This causes the villain’s power to blaze out of control, consuming him.

DAREDEVIL & THE BLACK WIDOW Vol 1 #99 (May 1973)

Title: The Mark of Hawkeye

Villains: The Hellbirds

Synopsis: One day, the Black Widow’s former romantic interest Hawkeye shows up at her San Francisco mansion. Hawkeye, always hotheaded, has quit the Avengers partly because the Scarlet Witch just rejected him in favor of the Vision. He wants to reignite his long-ago love affair with the Black Widow.

This ultimately leads to a jealous clash between Daredevil and Hawkeye. The former Avenger storms off and Daredevil soon sets out to find Hawkeye and talk things out with him. The two heroes take down a criminal biker gang called the Hellbirds, then resume their own battle over Natasha.

The Avengers and some of the X-Men show up on the trail of Magneto, who recently defeated both teams in a crossover story. The Avengers invite the Black Widow and Hawkeye to rejoin the team to help save the world from Magneto.

Hawkeye, still being a hotheaded jerk, refuses to listen, but the Black Widow does go with the Avengers, with Daredevil volunteering to tag along to help.

AVENGERS Vol 1 #111 (May 1973)

Title: With Two Beside Them

Synopsis: Our assembled heroes try to stop the next phase of Magneto’s plan as he attempts to kidnap the attendees at a meeting of the world’s greatest nuclear physicists. Magneto manages to abduct his targets and escape.

Back at his secret lair, Magneto does a Villain Rant for his captives. He explains that he wants to use their nuclear expertise combined with his ability to manipulate iron in the bloodstream of humans, both born and unborn.

Working in unison they will come up with devices which can cause women’s gestating babies to be born as mutants that Magneto will raise and control as a superpowered army against which nothing can prevail.

Thanks to the Black Panther, our heroes track Magneto to his hideout where they defeat the villain in a huge battle and free his captives. Black Widow and Daredevil argue about her need to make a choice between Daredevil and Hawkeye, so an angry Natasha stays with the Avengers while Matt goes back to San Francisco by himself.

AVENGERS Vol 1 #112 (June 1973)

Title: The Lion-God Lives

Villain: Lion-God

Synopsis: At Avengers Mansion, the Black Widow’s old friend the Scarlet Witch has been helping her readjust to the mansion and the busy pace of being an Avenger, with all manner of security briefings, updates on every superhero and supervillain incident around the world, press conferences, etc. Natasha also discusses with Wanda her current romantic plight.

Meanwhile, in an unnamed African nation, a reporter named Mr. Umbala (no first name given) is covering a ritual being celebrated by a Lion Cult for their deity. The cultists trick Umbala into touching the totem-staff of the god, which allows the deity to possess Umbala, using his body to take physical form for the first time in millenia.

NOTE: In this very first appearance of the villain, the Lion-God was simply a fictional deity whose religion had once threatened the popularity of Wakanda’s Panther-Gods and White Gorilla-Gods. In the future Marvel would retcon things so that the god was actually a goddess (at right) and they tried tying her to figures from Egyptian mythology.

Before long, the Lion-God is in New York City using their totem-staff to whip up frenzied crowds of African-Americans who protest around Avengers Mansion, denouncing the Black Panther for “selling out to the white establishment” and abandoning his subjects in Wakanda. Things get violent and the Lion-God uses the violence as an excuse to force a meeting with the Black Panther.

To the surprise of his fellow Avengers, T’Challa recognizes the figure from ancient legends and treats it with respect. The Lion-God(dess) responds by seizing Black Panther and teleporting with him back to the fictional African nation from the beginning of the story.

The entity parades the Black Panther around as its shackled captive to “prove” to its jubilant worshipers that the Panther-God era is over and the Lion-God religion is now supreme. After it feels that T’Challa has been shamed and humbled enough, the being teleports back to New York City with the Black Panther.

Obviously, the Lion-God did this just for a quick comic-book ending since all this accomplishes is to let the Avengers battle the entity. The being’s totem-staff lets it create an army of lions out of thin air to attack the Avengers, plus grants Lion-God incredible strength and the ability to shoot energy blasts (as lions are so prone to do).

The Black Widow shines in the battle alongside Thor, the Scarlet Witch, Iron Man, Captain America and the Vision. At length, the Black Panther frees himself from the chains binding him, then tips the battle in favor of the Avengers.

Thor finishes off the Lion-God for this time around by having lightning blasts strike the being’s totem-staff, causing the villain AND the staff to evaporate. Black Widow has decided to go back to San Francisco to resume her relationship with Daredevil.

Meanwhile, in Vietnam, the enigmatic new superheroine Mantis (in her first appearance) convinces her romantic partner the Swordsman that with his bitter enemy Hawkeye publicly and angrily quitting the Avengers, it’s an ideal time for him to rejoin the team and take her with him.

NOTE: Yes, Mantis started out as an Avenger, NOT a member of the Guardians of the Galaxy. She was key to the years-long Celestial Madonna Saga during the 1970s in the pages of The Avengers. If you’re a Hawkeye fan, he soon joined the Defenders (Dr. Strange, Hulk, Sub-Mariner, Valkyrie and the Silver Surfer) just in time for the Avengers-Defenders War.

DAREDEVIL & THE BLACK WIDOW Vol 1 #100 (June 1973)

Title: Mindstorm

Villain: Angar the Screamer

Synopsis: While the Black Widow is in New York City fighting supervillainy as an Avenger, Matt Murdock has been boiling with impatience back in San Francisco. He becomes Daredevil and starts swinging around the city, looking for some action to blow off steam.

He finds such release by taking on a bunch of armed robbers who are raiding the Rolling Stone offices in San Francisco in broad daylight. Daredevil foils the robbery and the famed head of Rolling Stone – Jann Wenner – thanks the hero and invites him to stay for an interview conducted by Jann himself.

To preserve his secret identity, Daredevil verbally gives Jann only bare essentials while his thoughts reveal to readers the full extent of his origin and superhero career. The recap of his origin alone would have helped make this 100th issue anniversary special to readers of the 1970s.

Back then periodic recaps of heroes’ origin stories were necessary because that long ago readers couldn’t just go on the internet to look up the origin of their new favorite characters. As the issue goes on, Daredevil summarizes the highlights of several of his best story arcs.

Presently, Daredevil, Jann and the Rolling Stone staff fall victim to the titular Mindstorm. In our hero’s case it takes the form of him fighting illusions of many of the supervillains he was just discussing, like the Owl, Gladiator, Purple Man, the Matador, Mr. Fear and the Jester. Clearing his mind, Daredevil races to the source of the screams which induced the Mindstorms and comes face to face with the villain responsible for them – he calls himself Angar the Screamer.

DAREDEVIL & THE BLACK WIDOW Vol 1 #101 (July 1973)

Title: Vengeance in the Sky with Diamonds

Villains: Angar the Screamer (David Angar) and Moon Dragon

Synopsis: Daredevil and Angar square off in direct combat. The Screamer’s powers come from experiments he volunteered for with Kerwin Broderick’s ally from Titan – Moon Dragon. Again, she had provided what she thought was another super-soldier to help Earth against Thanos, but instead Kerwin used Angar the Screamer to further his own plans.

Angar’s screams induce hallucinations the way that vibrations in real life (especially sound related vibrations) have been known to cause such hallucinations. The screams make Daredevil think he is facing freaks and monsters now, and Matt must flee in order to survive.

The next day the Black Widow returns to the mansion that she and Matt Murdock share. After fighting the supervillain called Lion God with the rest of the Avengers, she decided to return to our hero, choosing him over Hawkeye.

When next the Screamer strikes, Daredevil and the Black Widow face him side by side. The battle against the disorientation and monstrous hallucinations that Angar causes eventually turns in our hero and heroine’s favor, but the Screamer manages to escape in the chaos. DD and Natasha wonder when they will encounter this villain again.

NOTE: After a few more issues, Angar the Screamer returned for additional installments of the Thanos War. Daredevil and Black Widow would face him, Dark Messiah (who did not die) and other creations of the duped Moon Dragon (in pic at right). Eventually, she would return to San Francisco and see what Broderick had done behind her back, then join our other two heroes in fighting them.