Daredevil Villains #37: The Dark Messiah
DAREDEVIL #97-98 (March-April 1973)
“He Who Saves” / “Let There Be – Death!”
Plotter: Gerry Conway
Scripter: Steve Gerber
Penciller: Gene Colan
Inker: Ernie Chua
Letterers: John Costanza (#97), Shelly Leferman (#98)
Colourists: not credited (#97), George Roussos (#98)
Editor: Roy Thomas
We’ve skipped issues #95-96, which are a rematch with the Man-Bull. That brings us to the final Gerry Conway story, which is also the first Steve Gerber story. Although he’s only the scripter, these issues kick off a storyline that runs through to issue #107, and so they’re more a part of Gerber’s run than Conway’s. Spoiler: it’s another of those arcs where Daredevil takes on a series of lesser villains before facing the final boss at the end.
Steve Gerber was still fairly new to Marvel at this point. His first comics were cover dated December 1972. But they included Adventure into Fear #11, the start of his Man-Thing run. Later in 1973, he debuts Howard the Duck. So some of his signature work is happening at the same time as his Daredevil run. In comparison, Daredevil is a minor entry in his bibliography. He plays this book fairly straight, at least while it remains set in San Francisco. Things change when the book moves back to New York, but we won’t get to that for a while. At this stage, there’s a bit of weirdness, but for the most part Gerber’s Daredevil remains within normal parameters for 70s Marvel. This is Steve Gerber showing that he can also be a safe pair of hands.
Exceptional X-Men #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN #1
Writer: Eve L Ewing
Artist: Carmen Carnero
Colour artist: Nolan Woodard
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Editor: Tom Brevoort
THE X-MEN:
Kate Pryde has retired as a superhero and is working in a bar called Lulu’s Tavern in Bridgeport, a district of Chicago. According to Wikipedia, Bridgeport used to have a reputation for racial intolerance but is now one of Chicago’s most diverse areas. We saw Lulu’s Tavern before in X-Men #35.
Kate is depressed, anxious or both. There are a couple of points in the issue where she seems to break the fourth wall, though you could rationalise that she’s talking to herself out loud if you want. She’s taking the fall of Krakoa badly. While she describes Krakoa as her home “sort of”, presumably referencing her semi-detached status as the one mutant who couldn’t use the gates, she evidently feels it as a loss. She worries that the more hubristic aspects of the Krakoan age are going to come back to bite the mutants now, and she’s appalled by her dark-and-violent phase as Shadowkat in Gerry Duggan’s X-Men. Being around other mutants strikes her as living in “the shattered remains of the life I knew”, and since she can pass for human, she’s going to drop out of all that, live a normal life, and try not to think about it.
NYX #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
NYX vol 2 #2
Writers: Jackson Lanzing & Collin Kelly
Artist: Francesco Mortarino
Colour artist: Raúl Angulo
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Editor: Annalise Bissa
THE CORE CAST:
Wolverine (Laura) gets the spotlight in this issue. She’s investigating the disappearance of thirty mostly homeless mutants over a few days (though the one we see at the start of the issue seems quite well dressed). As it turns out, they’re all being enlisted voluntarily by Local, of whom more below.
Laura narrates the issue and spends a lot of it reminiscing about Kiden Nixon, one of the main characters from the original NYX series. We hear so much about Kiden in this issue that it seems likely she’ll be showing up in the end. So far as I can see, Kiden hasn’t appeared since an X-23 one-shot in 2010 – at that point she was living on the streets, but that was 15 years ago, so who knows where she is now.
Laura is living in a dilapidated building in East Harlem, which is presumably why Kiden is on her mind. Back in the original NYX, Laura is a teenage prostitute; she kills a client who draws a knife on her, and meets Kiden shortly after. Her pimp then comes after her, and she kills him. Honestly, she doesn’t do a great deal more than that – the first run is only seven issues long, focusses on Kiden, and spends most of its time just introducing the cast. They move into Bobby Soul’s apartment at the end of the series, and most of Laura’s actual friendship with Kiden presumably takes place off panel after NYX #7 and before Laura shows up in Uncanny X-Men (which, due to insane delays on NYX, had actually happened before NYX finished). So basically, this friendship was always implied more than actually depicted.
X-Force #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-FORCE vol 7 #2
“Igubu Lika-Anansi”
Writer: Geoffrey Thorne
Artist: Marcus To
Colour artist: Erick Arciniega
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Mark Basso
As I said at the beginning of the “From the Ashes” era, I’m not necessarily planning to do annotations for all ongoing titles – we’ll see how the second-tier books are looking after the first few issues.
X-FORCE:
Forge helpfully illustrates the limitations of his powers by confidently building a device that will allow X-Force’s plane to get past Wakanda’s defence systems. Presumably it works, but it has no effect on the magic spell that he actually needs to worry about. In other words, Forge has built a perfect solution to the wrong problem. He spells out later in the issue that he needs to understand what the problem is in order to solve it. (Presumably he could always define “understand the problem” as a second-order problem, but then he’d have to build an entire machine before he could even start solving the main problem, which might take a while.)
X-Men #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 7 #3
“Scott Summers vs. The United States of America”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Ryan Stegman
Inkers: JP Mayer & Livesay
Colourist: Marte Gracia
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
THE X-MEN:
Cyclops tries unsuccessfully to persuade Rogue not to attack Graymalkin; we’ll see Rogue’s side of that conversation in Uncanny X-Men vol 6 #2, which won’t be out for two weeks. Cyclops is clearly aware of the fact that Graymalkin has been turned into a prison over in Uncanny X-Men and thinks that Rogue’s group are hopelessly outpowered by whoever’s in charge of it. Scott evidently had plans of his own to deal with this, and he’s going to have to accelerate them now.
At some point between the end of Krakoa and issue #1, Scott sued the US government over his treatment by Orchis. For some reason, he accepted the Factory as a settlement. So yes, the X-Men are there legally. Scott acknowledges that there was an “implication” that the US government expected the X-Men to stay in Alaska, but seems clear that he never agreed to anything. His ultimate position is that the US government would much rather his group were acting as the X-Men than acting as the Brotherhood, and those are the only two choices he’s offering them. He argues that he’s doing the government a favour by keeping his roster under control, and flags how dodgy they are: most of them are former villains, and Magik’s half demon.
Daredevil Villains #36: Damon Dran, the Indestructible Man
DAREDEVIL #92-94 (October-December 1972)
“On the Eve of the Talon!” / “A Power Corrupt!” / “He Can Crush the World!”
Writer: Gerry Conway
Penciller: Gene Colan
Inker: Tom Palmer
Letterer: John Costanza
Colourist: not credited
Editor: Roy Thomas
I’ve called these issues Daredevil #92-94, but you might have noticed that the cover logo quite clearly says Daredevil and the Black Widow. That starts with issue #92 and continues through to issue #106. During that time, editorial footnotes call the book “DD/BW”.
But according to Marvel, these title of this comic is was still Daredevil during this period. And they have a point. It’s not just a question of checking the copyright warning. The cover design of the time had the title in text just above the cover box, and that still just said Daredevil. The Stan Lee Presents captions on the splash pages still just said Daredevil. And for the most part, despite her equal billing on the cover, the book continued to treat Daredevil as the star and the Black Widow as a supporting character, albeit a prominent one.
The exception is the Project Four storyline, which culminates in these issues. But it’s a major exception. Gerry Conway introduced the subplot back in issue #87, as soon as the book relocated to San Francisco, and it’s been building ever since. In previous issues, we’ve learned that on her very first mission as a Soviet spy, the Black Widow and freelancer Danny French were sent to steal something from the mysterious Project Four. Project Four turned out to be a bunch of scientists working on a mysterious and allegedly powerful artefact. It’s a weird energy globe thing, and it’s the macguffin for the whole arc. Danny French has had it all this time, but he’s never figured out how to use it.
Phoenix #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
PHOENIX #2
Writer: Stephanie Phillips
Artist: Alessandro Miracolo
Colour artist: David Curiel
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Annalise Bissa
PHOENIX:
She’s still running around answering every interstellar distress call she can find, and she’s still terrifying to all the aliens she’s trying to rescue. We’re told that she doesn’t require food, oxygen and so forth, but that she’s still “exhausted” – presumably emotionally, though I suppose it could mean that because she has a human mind, she still needs sleep. She doesn’t much like or trust Corsair, but see below regarding this book’s take on Corsair.
SUPPORTING CHARACTERS:
Corsair is rescued by Phoenix from a damaged spaceship which is about to explode. According to Corsair’s account – which it’s strongly suggested that we should be very sceptical about – the Starjammers have abandoned him “for no good reason”. This has prompted him to try and become a hero. He started investigating a series of disappearances from Gameworld (the casino planet that featured prominently in Gerry Duggan’s X-Men run), and discovered that the captives were being smuggled away by the Black Order to a small moon in a nearby star system. He says that the Black Order shot at his ship, which is why it was damaged when Phoenix found him.
X-Factor #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-FACTOR vol 5 #1
“Red Carpet”
Writer: Mark Russell
Artist: Bob Quinn
Colour artist: Jesus Aburtov
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Darren Shan
X-FACTOR:
This is the fifth volume of X-Factor, a name which has been attached to all sorts of unrelated concepts. Volume 1 started as a reunion book for the original X-Men and changed direction completely in the early 90s to become a book about a team working for the US government. Volume 2 was a miniseries about the Mutant Civil Rights Taskforce, volume 3 was Jamie Madrox’s X-Factor Investigations, and volume 4 was the Krakoan group who investigated mutant deaths. (EDIT: For those asking in the comments, the book about a corporate X-Factor team isn’t in the volume count because its official title was All-New X-Factor.)
This new version of X-Factor is essentially the 1990s government team, but hybridised with Peter Milligan and Mike Allred’s X-Force/X-Statix – though tonally, a better comparison might be Justice League International. That said, it repeats the trick from the first issue of X-Force of introducing a team and promptly killing most of them off, which feels like it might be a homage. To be fair, what we’re actually told is that the team members are “dead or clinging to life”, which leaves a back door for anyone who wants to bring the characters back.
X-Men #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 7 #2
“Invasion”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Ryan Stegman
Inker: JP Mayer
Colourists: Marte Gracia & Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
This issue also includes a back-up strip: the eighth and final chapter of “Weapon X-Traction”, which is basically a Deadpool & Wolverine comedy strip. I’m not going to be covering that.
THE X-MEN:
The X-Men have access to a Cerebro, presumably from one of the satellite locations of Krakoa.
Cyclops is very clear that even in the midst of an alien invasion, the X-Men’s primary concern is rescuing the new mutant that they’ve detected. He does insist that they’re still going to do the superhero stuff and help San Francisco, and acknowledges that the city has been good to mutants in the past (i.e., in the Utopia era), but he makes plain that it’s a secondary objective at best. His interest in relations with the humans seems to be largely instrumental: on a purely practical level, it’s good for the X-Men to be liked.
When he realises that the aliens are a projection of his new mutant, Cyclops’ main concern is to cover it up so that the humans don’t find out. He goes to the length of faking the new mutant’s death. Of course, this is the sort of thing that might count as a legitimate worry about uncontrolled mutant powers, but Cyclops feels there’s a bigger picture. (He surely can’t be that surprised to learn that there’s a connection between his new mutant signal and the alien invasion, but maybe he just figured that mutant powers often emerge for the first time under stress.)
Uncanny X-Men #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #1
“Red Wave”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: David Marquez
Colourist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
This is the sixth ongoing book with the Uncanny X-Men title; the last one was the Matthew Rosenberg run that preceded the Krakoan era back in 2019. The Free Comic Book Day one-shot for this year is effectively an issue #0 of this book, though the opening scene is a flashback to Corrina Ellis’s arrival at the X-Men Mansion, so at least that scene takes place before the FCBD one-shot – in fact, the whole issue probably does.
THE X-MEN:
Wolverine. He hasn’t been keeping in touch with the other X-Men, although he does show up for the death of Miguel, an “old army buddy” we haven’t seen before. They apparently had a bet about who would die last, and Logan feels guilty for cheating by Krakoan resurrection. He advises against joining Cyclops’ group – we saw him leave that group in X-Men #1, and he suggests here that it’s a closed community which is too far under Cyclops’ thumb.
