Daredevil: "I, Murderer!"

Daredevil #44 (1968)

By Stan Lee, Gene Colan, Vince Colletta*

Background: Matt felt forced to reject Karen and the two broke up. She then quit Nelson & Murdock.

So, What Happens? Daredevil is distraught after breaking up with Karen but can't find her or explain his feelings. The Jester crime spree continues with mixed results, until he realizes someone is eventually bound to discover his secret identity and decides to fake his own death and frame Daredevil for the crime. He visits the police in his civilian identity stating he will reveal DD's secret ID at midnight on the Washington Bridge. Daredevil hears the claim and goes to investigate, but the Jester first calls for help, then makes it look like Daredevil is attacking him. In front of the TV cameras, the Jester seems to fall to his death pushed by Daredevil, with everyone unaware he had hidden a little submarine under the bridge. Framed, Daredevil is shot at by the police and forced to escape. Later, the Jester - now back in costume - promises on TV to capture the "murderer" Daredevil. The hero tries to stop him, but is felled with gas and captured by the police.

Notes: *Vince Colletta is credited for the inks, but apparently this was a mistake and the real inker was Dan Adkins

Something Silly This Way Comes: Setting aside the number of factors that need to work together for the Jester's convoluted plan to succeed, what kills someone when jumping off a bridge is the impact, not the drowning. The Jester is a wanted criminal and yet the police don't make any attempt to capture him.

Review: There is nothing inherently wrong with this story, except that it's predictable. The Jester's plan is one of those convoluted and improbable strategies that usually end up succeeding in Silver Age comic books, and once that's clear it becomes more of a matter of "how" than of "if". Unfortunately, this time the "how" is a bit of a mess, as the Jester relies on people behaving the way he hopes they will rather than on careful planning. All Daredevil had to do was going to the bridge as Matt Murdock, or stopping instead of fighting back, and the Jester's machinations would have been for nothing. In short, it feels like Stan took the lazy way out this time. This extends to the Jester himself, who looks a little hit and miss, randomly switching between lunatic and strategic thinker depending on what the story needs. Marvel is full of crazy villains, but they tend to work best either when there is method to their madness or when they are full-blown fools. Here, the Jester is something in between: his crazyness is more like egocentrism and tends to become an end in itself, good for characterization but not much more.

Surprisingly, the most interesting part of the story is the single page with Foggy angry at Debbie for taking part in a march protest (it was 1968 after all). At first glance, Stan is quite sexist and has Matt stating that Debbie can't be sensible since she is a female. On a deeper level however, she shows to be socially-involved, and with enough personality to stick to her ideas despite Foggy disagreeing. Considering most women in comics at that time would only worry about their hair or clothes, this is quite forward-writing by Stan.

Like in issue #42, the art is ok but not stellar, especially in close ups. At first glance, Colletta seems a worse fit than Adkins for Colan, except there was a printing mistake in the credits and the inker was Adkins all along, so judging from other issues they did together it may be more of a case of rushed work. Either way, some perspectives and proportions are off, with characters occasionally sporting inhumanly long legs (look at the falling Jester on page #15) or sketchy faces. This seems to get worse towards the end of the book, increasing the likelyhood of a deadline problem after all.

Final Verdict: A below average story with below average art deserves a below average grade. 2/5