Daredevil Villains #40: Kerwin J Broderick
DAREDEVIL #104-107 (October 1973 to January 1974)
“Prey of the Hunter!” / “Menace From the Moons of Saturn!” / “Life Be Not Proud!” / “Blind Man’s Bluff!”
Writer: Steve Gerber
Penciller: Don Heck (#104-106), Jim Starlin (#105 Titan sequence), Bob Brown (#107)
Inker: Sal Trapani (#104, #106), Don Perlin (#105), Sal Buscema (#107)
Letterer: Charlotte Jetter (#104, #107), June Braverman (#105), Shelly Leferman (#106)
Colourist: Petra Goldberg (#104, #107), Janice Cohen (#105), George Roussos (#106)
Editor: Roy Thomas
Throughout Steve Gerber’s run, a mysterious shadowy figure has been giving super powers to oddballs like Angar and the Dark Messiah. Now, it’s time for Daredevil to meet this arch villain. It’s Kerwin J Broderick, the senior partner of the law firm of Broderick, Sloan and Murdock.
Until now, Broderick hasn’t been seen on panel, but Gerber has been building him up in a subplot. Matt is hired to defend a group of kids who are charged with robbery, and Jason Sloan keeps telling Matt that Broderick wants him to enter a guilty plea. The expectation seems to be that Matt Murdock, of all people, won’t merely persuade his clients to plead guilty, but will actually ignore their instructions. It’s a strange arc, since Gerber seems to think that this sort of thing would be classed as “slightly questionable” rather than “completely beyond the pale”, meaning that Matt reacts to it as simply a troublesome work problem.
By the way, you might remember that before Matt Murdock joined the firm, its other partner was Larry Cranston, who turned out to be Mr Fear. So Jason Sloan was in business with two supervillains. This is a complete coincidence. The stories are totally unrelated. Jason just has terribly bad luck in choosing his partners.
In issue #104, Matt and Natasha finally meet Broderick when they go to a drinks reception at his mansion. Broderick sends one last hireling after them – for some reason, instead of creating a new villain, he imports Kraven the Hunter from Amazing Spider-Man. Kraven defeats Daredevil, chucks him off a cliff at the bottom of Broderick’s garden, and disappears from the plot, his role fulfilled
Daredevil lands safely in the water, and there he stumbles upon an elaborate underground labyrinth full of cosmic stuff. This is where he stumbles upon Broderick’s partner, the shadowy woman who we saw alongside him in Ramrod’s origin flashback. This is Moondragon (or rather, “Moon Dragon”), a character who will go on to much bigger things.
Moon Dragon had appeared once before, in Iron Man #54. In that story, written by Mike Friedrich, she’s a random evil scientist who goes by “Madame MacEvil”. She mostly seems interested in science experiments and in trying to capture Iron Man and the Sub-Mariner. This storyline completely retools her, and issue #105 gives her a four-page origin flashback drawn by Jim Starlin. Apparently, these were pages that Starlin had produced for Iron Man #57 (on which Gerber was going to be the co-writer) before Stan Lee removed him from the book. So basically, Gerber is shoehorning the unused pages into his Daredevil plot. And that’s why Moon Dragon was tied to a mystery character who had been in Iron Man a few months previously, something which feels utterly random if you don’t know the context.
This flashback ties Moon Dragon into Starlin’s Thanos mythology. She was raised in an enlightened monastery on Titan and developed her mind and body to their peak, only to flee to Earth after Thanos conquered the planet. She’s an enlightened human from an enlightened culture, in an exceptionally seventies fashion: “Unhampered by the lunacy you call ‘education’ – grades, exams, awards – my mind grew to full flower.” Ostensibly, the monastery practised an alien religion, but they’re blatantly Buddhist monks. They have shaved heads. There’s a statute of Buddha, even if he’s called “Kaluba”.
Moon Dragon has come to Earth because she’s convinced that Thanos is making moves against the planet. She’s become convinced that San Francisco is full of Thanos thralls, and she’s allied herself with Kerwin J Broderick because he’s a respectable establishment figure and must therefore be trustworthy. In theory, that’s the theme of Broderick’s character: he’s a crimelord who exists within the establishment and gets away with it because everyone trusts him so much. Officially he has no codename, but the narrator follows Angar’s lead and calls him “the Man” – in scare quotes. As San Francisco’s only superheroes, Daredevil and the Black Widow are doing too much damage to his operations. That’s why he’s been creating supervillains to take them down.
The only reason why Moon Dragon is on board with this plot is that Broderick has convinced her that Daredevil is working for Thanos. Once she actually meets him, she figures out the truth almost immediately. And that’s why I’m not classing Moon Dragon as a Daredevil villain: in plot terms, she’s more of a dupe. The trouble is that by giving her this role in the plot, Gerber undercuts her origin story. She’s a superior, enlightened human who’s so stupid that she got talking into giving superpowers to Angar and Ramrod, all in order to fight Thanos, who isn’t in the storyline at all. Sure, she falls for Broderick’s social position, but isn’t that precisely the sort of thing that enlightened people are meant to see through?
Once Moon Dragon switches sides, we’re left with Broderick as our sole villain. He’s unbothered by her betrayal, because she’s already served her purpose. He re-activates his henchmen from the previous arcs so that they can cause trouble again, and then unveils Terrex, a life-force-controlling green humanoid thing. Terrex is a doomsday robot from Titan that Moon Dragon brought with her.
Even though Broderick has apparently been a normal, under-the-radar crimelord for years, exposure to all this cosmic stuff has made him to raise his aspirations. He’s now completely insane, and he wants to be the monarch of San Francisco, “Kerwin the First, King of the Golden Gate!” To that end, he merges himself with Terrex, and becomes a giant green guy who can make things live or die.
This is all rather similar to Damon Dran. They’re both rich lunatics with access to technology; they both use those resources to turn themselves into super powered giants who march on San Francisco. But Gerber’s version has a bit more going on, thanks in part to the subplot threads with the other henchmen, with Angar in particular going off the rails and pursuing his own shambolic agenda. And Jason Sloan gets to redeem himself somewhat by showing up to confront Broderick/Terrex.
Broderick is defeated through the combined efforts of Daredevil, the Black Widow, Moon Dragon, Captain Marvel (who shows up in the last chapter) and Angar. The actual mechanics of that defeat involve a lot of 70s cosmic woo. Terrex is “a being of pure life”, you see. It follows that he can be defeated by “un-life”. Un-life is not death, which is merely the absence of life – un-life is the opposite of life. Unfortunately, there isn’t any un-life to hand, due to it being indescribable and unobtainable. So in the absence of proper un-life, the solution is to combine Moon Dragon and Angar’s powers in order to make Broderick think that he’s being destroyed by un-life. What that means in practice is a bizarre sequence of Terrex breaking an egg full of black goop over his own head. For some reason this turns Broderick back into a human, and kills him.
Broderick’s core concept is a corrupt pillar of the establishment, who was prompted to raise his game by Daredevil, and who fluked his way into the resources of Moon Dragon. That’s the part of the story that wants to make something of Angar finally taking down the Man, and even Jason Sloan standing up to the mentor he’s never questioned. But the story needs a bigger climax and so Broderick randomly becomes a lunatic who wants to be a giant green king. And on top of that, the whole thing gets tied in to a bunch of Captain Marvel concepts that don’t really fit with Broderick.
Moon Dragon hangs around to the start of the next issue, in which Gerber seems to be setting her up as a romantic rival to the Black Widow. In practice she gets written out almost immediately, and shunted over to Captain Marvel and Avengers. As for Daredevil lurches back to New York in the following issue. Broderick, despite his lengthy build-up, winds up overshadowed by a detour into the mythology of Thanos, who isn’t even here.
“Daredevil lands safely in the water, and there he stumbles upon an elaborate underground labyrinth full of cosmic stuff” Matt is falling towards the water and he suddenly gets teleported into Moondragon’s and Broderick’s base- I think we’re supposed to think that Moonstone teleported him, since she says she was preparing for their meeting.
After defeating Daredevil, Kraven gets defeated by Natasha and Paul the Cop. Not Kraven’s best showing.
It’s not clear why Moondragon didn’t just read Broderick’s mind to see if he was lying to her. Maybe she just really trusted him? I have to wonder if Gerber’s idea was that she had to establish a mind link with someone to read their minds like she did with Matt But later writers have her read someone’s mind just when she’s standing near them, like any other telepath. so it’s not clear why she didn’t do the same with Broderick.
Moondragon’s flashback is completely inconsistent with later depictions of her origin- Thanos is a child when her parents die, when in every other version he killed her parents as an adult. And Thanos’s and Starfox’s mother has a different name, too.
Note that Mentor’s original reason for banishing Thanos was because he built a weapon but Gerber establishes in this story that Moondragon’s training enabled her to create lethal mind blasts. So blasters are forbidden on Titan but training to create lethal mind blasts isn’t?
The name “Madame MacEvil” has been mocked by fans for a half century.
Note that Daredevil says that the Titans haven’t made Moondragon wise- “just ARROGANT”! Heather’s fatal flaw being her pride is the way most writers will write her from this point forward.
Heather is the first of a series of Avengers characters that were intended to be “jerks that sometimes make a good point”. The others were Gyrich and Dr. Druid. And all three of them wound up being portrayed as villains at various points. I wonder why the book could never pull off the “Jerk Who Makes a Good Point” trope.
At one point In this story Matt gets his sight back but winds up having to give it up for the greater good. This is not the last time this happens.
Matt becomes the first to wonder what it’s like kissing a woman who’s bald, as so many Defenders will after him.
Is this the first story in which Matt regains the ability to see, or am I forgetting an earlier one?
Broderick is a generic evil rich guy, but Terrex seems like a villain someone should have brought back by now, to fight some team or another. Doesn’t have much mileage as a recurring Daredevil foe, though.
Also, the monks who trained Moondragon were called the Priests of Shao-Lom, which is another obvious reference to Buddhism, with the real-world Shao-Lin Monastery in China.
There’s a great Gerber quote in that issue about “Earth becoming a wasteland. Unhealthy for children and other living things.”, which is a reference to an anti-war group’s similar slogan of the time.
Gerber’s plot regarding Moondragon and her assumptions may be reflected in a more coherent, developed form some of his later stories.
Here in Daredevil, Moondragon is easily convinced that 1970s San Francisco has already fallen to Thanos and that everyone is a thrall.
Much later, in one of his Guardians of the Galaxy stories, Gerber has the Guardians land on a planet that seems to be a diversely populated alien equivalent of late-1970s Earth. Ham-fisted social satire ensues. At the end of the story, though, it’s revealed that the planet is actually a lunatic asylum, which the Guardians only realize when they’re told by the asylum administrators.
He did something broadly similar in his Defenders run, Gerber reinvents the alien villain Nebulon as a would-be guru who tries to mind control everyone on Earth. The twist there is that Nebulon is sincere, seeing contemporary humanity as a bunch of unenlightened clowns.
Nebulon is driven off when Doctor Strange battles him inside Gerald Ford’s mind and links Nebulon to all of humanity, hoping to sow him the nobility of the human race. Instead, Nebulon decides that human beings are simply too screwed up to achieve enlightenment, and he gives up on his plans.
And, of course, much of Gerber’s celebrated Howard the Duck is about Howard reacting to Gerber’s spoofs of the supposed absurdity of the world in which he’s found himself stuck.
So perhaps this is an inchoate version of the same idea: Moondragon believes Earth has fallen to an alien dictator because she’s been raised in an enlightened alien culture. Humans on Gerber’s Earth have been socialized into absurd ideas and destructive behaviors by institutions like the school system.
But, as Paul points out, in the Daredevil story, this idea doesn’t work on multiple levels. Not only is Moondragon too foolish to see through Broderick and inexplicably unwilling to read his mind, she also allies herself with a representative of the establishment…who you’d think she’d instead see more as one of the more deeply invested Thanos-thralls, given his position of social power.
It also does nothing to explain why she ever called herself something like “Madame MacEvil,” but we can chalk that up to the quick-fix retool and retcon of what was likely conceived as a one-off character.
Maybe there’s a slightly better version of this story where Broderick is so warped he sincerely believes he’s making things better, restoring order to a damaged society, and fools Moondragon because he’s already fooling himself. That still makes Moondragon more arrogant than enlightened, but there’s nothing wrong with that if it’s an intentional point instead of contradicting the character concept.
Congratulations and commiserations to anyone who waded through all of that! Anyone got any Mister Sinister jokes?
Which could be another element of Gerber’s ongoing cynicism about humanity. Moondragon is a human who was trained by enlightened alien beings, thinking they can raise her to their level, having little understanding of human nature. Typical of humanity, Moondragon thinks she’s more enlightened than everyone else, but she’s simply become arrogant instead. Humanity is hopeless.
Perhaps it’s a further commentary on working within the system. She aligns with Broderick thinking that access to power will allow her to work within the system and help bring enlightenment to the rest of humanity. Instead, she realizes she’s become corrupted by “The Man” too. Although, this last part is probably reading too much into a story Gerber was writing on the fly for a superhero comic.
@Omar- there’s an attempt to explain away the Madame MacEvil name- Moondragon says “A computer I created once dubbed me: Madame MacEvil.”
madame Mac Evil is my favorite Blood Sweat and Tears song.
@Omar Karindu – He went by “Nathaniel Essex” for over a century but fell in love with Madame MacEvil and rechristened himself Mister Sinister to attract her attention. Her choice to become “Moondragon” set him on the path to villainy.
@Michael – The Avengers can’t do the “jerk who makes a good point” character because most of their writers are incapable of seeing the Avengers as a concept that can be criticized by outsiders. True, Dr. Druid was a member, but he always came off as an outsider in the group, down to his mystic/mental powers. There is probably a doctoral thesis (or at least a senior capstone) going on about the lack of mental powers on non-mutant superhero teams, but I can only think of two members who primarily have mystic/mental powers, and they’re both on the Avengers Jerk list. I don’t know if Doctor Strange has ever been on the Avengers; I don’t think so?
No, Wanda doesn’t count; she has probability/reality manipulation as her primary power; the magic has been tacked on.
Wanda can’t be a jerk, but there are already one or two in her family (depending on if she is currently related to Magneto at the moment).
I mean, I would count Tony as a jerk. Some would probably count Hank Pym as a jerk (not me; I’m a Hank fanboy).
Madame MacEvil was going to be a parody character of a Ronald McDonald in a Steve Gerber comic about monopolistic conglomerates, but Mike Friedrich stole the name.
Doctor Strange was a member of Luke Cage’s New Avengers after Civil War. Not sure if there were other times.
The Avengers prob still pale in comparison in jerk quotient to the Defenders, although many of the candidates, like Moondragon, qualify for both.
“Jerk Avengers” spinoff series would rule.
I feel like a Claremont version of Krakoa would have had the creation of Orchis-Moira include a line like “At last, ah’ve freed muhself from th’ endless suffering of rebirth after rebirth! The frail, pained Moira MacTaggert is nae more! Before yuh stands, now an’ forever— MADAME MACEVIL!”
I take it that you are talking about the original proposal for Iron Man #57, right, Paul? The issue that was published had no Jim Starlin credits and no obvious connection to Moondragon.
Yes, it was the original proposal for Iron Man #57. Gerber and Starlin were supposed to take over as the new full-time creative team on IM. They only got published (the great) issue #56. Lee was unhappy with the script, and so Gerber transitioned to Friedrich returning, while Starlin decided to leave the book. I guess. Not sure what happened with Starlin on art.
Moon dragon is lucky she has been able to escape the crap 1st name and become like the Trapster constantly laughed at for his former moniker. But if you call her Madame Macevil she’ll reduce you to a vegetable where as paste pot Pete will just spurt his sticky load over you.
I really like the idea of following Sloan, a lawyer who keeps unknowingly partnering with super heroes and villains in disguise.
Sloan. Like Rick Jones but oblivious. That would be an epic miniseries.
“I can start Monday, Mr Theconquerer. Hmm, is that French?”
One of the great things about this recap series is that it showcases how much the Daredevil franchise struggled with setting up, and then effectively delivering on the execution of, the “big boss villain,” at least before Wilson Fisk/Kingpin really set up shop in the 80s. 107 issues in and the series set up:
Masked Marauder
Starr Saxon
Crime-Wave
Mr. Kline
Damon Dran
Kerwin J. Broderick
Yet none of them entirely worked in one way or another, and half never appeared again.
It is a problem which had plagued 4 writers and none had really cracked that nut. Saxon arguably may have done the best but then he had all of that business with becoming the Machinesmith and was removed from DD. Dran became a moderately reoccurring Black Widow villain, and he arguably started out as one; she just happened to be DD’s partner when he debuted. In theory the Owl could have been this had the concept been executed better.
No wonder Fisk endured so long. He filled a gap in a way no one else had and served the role well, with a hero he could better challenge physically. Of course, Miller’s run being popular and top selling helped, too.
The expectation seems to be that Matt Murdock, of all people, won’t merely persuade his clients to plead guilty, but will actually ignore their instructions. It’s a strange arc, since Gerber seems to think that this sort of thing would be classed as “slightly questionable” rather than “completely beyond the pale”, meaning that Matt reacts to it as simply a troublesome work problem.
As a former public defender, I can tell you that the lines between advice, persuasion and coercion of a client are often unclear. Associate attorneys often struggle with finding the line, particularly when senior partners (who may not know the case or client very well) are passing along institutional interests under the guise of wisdom, experience or expertise. That’s how young PDs end up becoming lubricants for the criminal justice machine. “Just get them to plead guilty; it’s a good deal and we can’t afford to piss off the prosecutors/judge because we work with them every day.” An inexperienced attorney might struggle to persuade without coercion. Counsel is often unaware of the power imbalance with the client based on asymmetrical information. Under such pressure, counsel may use the client’s lack of insight into the system to present the choices in a way that feels like there’s only one good choice.
As is typical of the era, Gerber’s writing probably is even less subtle than my made up quote above. But that ambiguity may have been what he was going for.
(For the record, after one mistake very early in my career, I made a conscious choice to always err on the side of neutrality when presenting choices to clients; never to assume that I knew the best outcome and needed to persuade them to accept my view. If a client wanted a trial we couldn’t win, I’d tell them it’s a terrible idea and that I’d happily and zealously litigate it for them anyhow. For some people it’s more important to have their day in court, than it is to get the best possible outcome).
… paste pot Pete will just spurt his sticky load over you.
Oh my god, how have I never seen it that way before? One of my favorite characters to rag on, and I missed the obvious for forty years.
@Oldie: Have you heard about the origins of the name “Paste Pot Pete?”
If not, prepare to be still further shocked (link in sentence)!
@AMRG: Unfortunately for Daredevil, he didn’t have Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, or John Romita for very long. They were the best character designers Marvel had in the Silver Age. Thinking of his most popular recurring foes, there’s the JR-designed Kingpin and Bullseye, Miller’s Elektra and Hand ninjas, JR Jr’s provocative Typhoid Mary, aJoe Orlando’s rather generic-looking Purple Man and… Mr. Hyde, I guess? That’s an evergreen concept, however, and Don Heck’s design didn’t deviate from what a reader would expect from someone named Mr. Hyde.
Judging by analysis and reviews I read on the internet, lots of comic book readers seem to think art and design aren’t that important. I don’t get that mentality. Thinking of the characters who stand the test of time, they’re nearly all visually distinct.
“I really like the idea of following Sloan, a lawyer who keeps unknowingly partnering with super heroes and villains in disguise.”
I’d recommend he bring this pattern of his up with his therapist, but his therapist is probably Moonstone.
@ Mike Loughlin — You do have a very good point. Some of Marvel’s best known Silver Age artists were not on the book long, and while I don’t want to diminish the efforts of Gene Colan or others on the book during this era, but they’re not the same. Your attitude fits especially with the “Marvel style” method that Stan Lee worked with and encouraged, where the artists were often uncredited co-writers. Turnover on Daredevil seems common compared to many other Silver Age books (especially those that remained in print like ASM, FF, and so on), and the fact that it morphed into a “try-out book” once Stan left also had an effect.
I mean, even with your list, it includes Kingpin (famously on loan from Spider-Man) and Mr. Hyde (on loan from Thor, perhaps less famously). Even King Cobra was on loan from Captain America. Other Spidey spares like Ox and Electro show up at least twice within the first 100 issues. And the Zodiac were on loan from Iron Man. Heck, Mr. Kline was a leftover from a time when Marvel almost merged the books. I wonder what would have happened had DD and Iron Man been “merged” like Power Man & Iron Fist did. I doubt their tag-team would have worked, but it might make for a quirky Exiles world one day.
Even Purple Man, though a DD villain, only got “hot” once he was used by Bendis in ALIAS and PULSE and became a primary adversary to Jessica Jones and Luke Cage. Then he started going after the Thunderbolts and Daredevil almost became an afterthought. To say nothing of his daughter landing up involved with ALPHA FLIGHT, of all franchises. It’s like if Doc Ock had a kid and they wound up linked to, I don’t know, Power Pack. How delightfully random!
On the other hand, there is some potential in some of the villains who never showed up again, and it is somewhat of a shame no one tried since. At least to keep things more organic, even if it is easier to just stick with the Kingpin.
In a lot of ways, the only native villains DD had who stuck around and got built up were Bullseye, Typhoid Mary, Owl, Gladiator, Bullet, and to a lessor degree, Stilt-Man. But aside for Owl, none of them are boss types. And the Owl often was unstable for many of his later arcs from the 80s on.
I am interested on Paul’s thoughts on Micah Synn, though that’s almost 100 issues from now. Now THERE was a bizarre idea…but so is Kraven, and he won’t go away.
AMRG> I wonder what would have happened had DD and Iron Man been “merged” like Power Man & Iron Fist did. I doubt their tag-team would have worked, but it might make for a quirky Exiles world one day.
Would it have been a Power Man & Iron Fist-style merger, or just like Iron Man’s old Tales of Suspense split-book with Captain America?
The thing is, it’s very easy to see Matt Murdock slipping into an Iron Man book’s regular cast as Tony Stark’s lawyer. It’s much harder to see Daredevil as co-headliner without it turning into Angel Summoner & BMX Bandit.
Jesus Christ. Does the world really need a limerick about raping a mixed-race woman to death?
I’m suitably disgusted.
“Sure, she falls for Broderick’s social position, but isn’t that precisely the sort of thing that enlightened people are meant to see through?”
Since when?
I’ve loved Moondragon since her New Defenders days, but I’ve never gone back to explore her origins. So messy, but I’m glad writers kept her around.
Interesting that she’s taken on the same fluidity as many of Marvel’s women with intangible powers. She’s had her short stint as a villain, been challenged by a doppelganger, integrated her dark side, and been powered up to absurd levels. She’s basically the non-mutant equivalent of Jean Grey with a little Scarlet Witch and Invisible Woman thrown in.
Oh God — I read the Paste Pot Pete article. If his origin really is inspired by that limerick, then the fact that he carries his “paste” around in a literal pot is…disturbing.
I (thankfully) did not click on that Paste Pot Pete link, but considering how cavalier some 1960s Marvel comics were with the phrase “sloppy seconds,” I am not surprised. I distinctly recall Ben Grimm using that phrase at least twice. It was usually out of context (usually in regards to a tag team brawl), but still, ick.
@SanityOrMadness — I believe the idea in 1971 was to merge Iron Man and Daredevil into a Tales-style split book. But some story threads would have likely been interwoven between. Both Mr. Kline and before that, a bit with the Zodiac, were linked between DD and Iron Man. And I agree that while Matt could have easily become a corporate lawyer at Stark Enterprises, his costumed alter ego would have been little more than a distraction for Iron Man’s foes unless Stark handed out a spare armor. Plus, Matt as a corporate lawyer would have made him less appealing to the average reader than someone who was a public defender and/or a prosecutor (or assistant to a D.A.). Like I said, it wouldn’t have worked. But then again Luke Cage and Iron Fist seem like clashing premises initially yet they managed to gel. Essentially, an interesting “what if” imagining.
Then again, Stark tended to lose his company, or be detached for it, conveniently at whatever period of time rich people were seen as bad socially. That happened in the 70s and early 80s but diminished during the “greed is good” era of Reagan and Bush Sr.
Let’s be having any Paste Pot Pete slander here.
Let’s NOT.
All these years and still no edit post function. 😉