The Daredevils #1

Jan 1983. Cover price 50p.
56 pages. Colour & B&W.
Marvel Comics Ltd.

Edited by Bernie Jaye.

Cover by Paul Neary.

Free cover-mounted badge.

Contents:

.2 This Is It, Frantic Ones! advertisement for Hungarian Rings toy.

.3 The Secrets of Daredevil's Billy Club! w: Roger McKenzie; p: Frank Miller, i: Klaus Janson. / Contents / Indicia

r: Daredevil (Marvel Comics) #159 (Jul 1979).

.4 Captain Britain A Rag, A Bone, A Hank of Hair... w: Alan Moore; a: Alan Davis, lettering by Jenny O'Connor.

12 'Inside Comics' "The Importance of Being Frank" text feature by Alan Moore.

18 The Perfect Mailing Company subscription advertisement.

19 Daredevil Marked for Murder w: Roger McKenzie; p: Frank Miller, i: Klaus Janson, lettering by Jim Novak.

r: Daredevil (Marvel Comics) #159 (Jul 1979).

27 Collector's Corner advertisement for The Perfect Mailing Company.

28 Daredevil poster by Garry Leach.

29 Fantasy Fever (half page) in-house advertisement for Starburst. / The Magazine of Motion Pictures (half page) in-house advertisement for Cinema.

30 Garry Leach - Early Artwork illustrations by Garry Leach.

34 Fanzine Reviews by Alan Moore.

42 Bullpen Bulletins (half page) text promo (uncredited). / Earth 33⅓ UNTITLED ["There are days when I hate being a Skrull"] w: Tim Quinn; a: Dicky Howett. / Competition (quarter page) prize of Paul Neary original artwork.

43 Spider-Man "To Die a Hero!" w: Stan Lee; p: John Romita, i: Mike Esposito, lettering by Sam Rosen.

r: partial The Amazing Spider-Man (Marvel Comics) #52 (Sep 1967).

46 News Feature by Frank Plowright.

52 Two More Winter Specials from Marvel (half page) in-house advertisement for The Savage Sword of Conan and Avengers Marvel Treasury. / Have You Heard the News? (half page) in-house advertisement for the Marvel Superheroes and Rampage merger.

53 Comic Mart classifieds.

54 Marvel Classifieds

55 Marvel's Winter Special Explosion! in-house advertisement for Winter Specials.

56 Marvel Sweatshirt Offer! advertisement.

The Daredevils is a small move in the direction of the Marvel magazines (Starburst and Doctor Who Monthly) while retaining the focus on comics. It isn't entirely successful in marrying strips with text pieces, but there is a lot to love within. Paul Neary's cover is rather good, though the heavy blue background tends to make the cover text (including the price) somewhat difficult to discern at a glance.

Also, the circle with "1st Great Issue" is a positioned with all the skill and care of a drunken bull in a china shop. I've never understood why the area beneath the free badges were allowed to go out without something under the gift. It would have been the perfect place to position the text, meaning that the cover didn't look so bare once the badge had been removed - as most younger readers would do this as soon as possible. A cover deprived of any embellishments should be as appealing as one with them intact.

Alan Moore's Captain Britain strip opens with the titular hero dead, which would be a problem if it were not for the fact that, in comics, characters have a remarkable tendency to come back from such inconveniences with regularity. As two figures - a father and daughter - work amid vast machinery to reconstitute Brian Braddock's skeleton from a fragment of thigh-bone, we get to see glimpses of his lonely past; Muscles form on the bare bones, circulatory systems grow, and finally skin appears. His personality forms anew from these snatches of personal history, just as his body grows.

A familiar costume reappears on the still-quiet body, and Brian's spirit is plucked from the Pool of Being to be rejoined with his body. Reappearing in Darkmoor, on the eighth of September, 1982, Captain Britain - unaware of the ministrations made over his lifeless body by the mysterious pair - rejoices at being home, on the right Earth at last. His saviour, revealed to be Merlin, displays an array of appearances - partially channelling Nicol Williamson (with a dash of Ming the Merciless) in one panel - before the tale concludes.

Despite this being the beginning of a new chapter in Captain Britain's life, there are enough ties to the past with which to root future stories firmly within established continuity. It is especially reassuring that everything that has gone before is accepted without revision - this is still (more or less) the guy we've been hanging out with all this time, and the fact that Brian's been brought back to life shouldn't render any victory through his sacrifice meaningless. He still died. What's more, there's worse to come.

Within a very small page-count the story manages to fill in a lot of information, and it really does serve as the perfect jumping-on point. Alan Davis works his magic on visuals, ensuring that things look as good as they read - you can't ask for more. Well... actually, I can. It's far, far too short to feel remotely like we have been properly reacquainted with him after his journey to the other side. Leaving him at the standing stones, celebrating life, feels too easy. It would have been nice to have another page or two, with him working out how to move forward from this point without looking too Tichborne about it.

Come to think of it, would a reconstituted body maintain precise physical blemishes and marks which could identify an individual? An errant birthmark or mole, and the gig would be up. How would one go about explaining how a scar had miraculously disappeared, or that they are now in possession of an outie when they had an innie? How much of his DNA was originally altered by Merlin, and has that been reproduced exactly, or are there further changes made to his physiology which would be shown by intensive medical investigation? So. Many. Questions.

Listen, don't you kids try and talk to me about comics! I've been reading the damn things for the past twenty two years and I'm bitter, jaded and cynical in terminal proportions.

Alan Moore is tremendous value for money. I could read him espouse the relative merits of the pancakes versus waffles debate, and here he is elegant and eloquent in appraising the work of Frank Miller - before he started to use a weird, grotesque, mis-proportioned style. While I'm not convinced that the subject is entirely appropriate to spend so long on, Moore makes it worth reading - a better use of the space taken up here would be with Moore's opinion of the state of British comics in 1983.

We get proof of Frank Miller's skill at handling composition with a reprint of a Daredevil strip, wherein a bounty is placed upon the Man Without Fear's head. A number of film clips are shown of Daredevil in action, and Mr. Pondexter offers those gathered $2000,000 up front, with the remainder of the half million dollars paid upon receipt of Daredevil's corpse or other conclusive proof of his demise. This raises a dilemma for me - how would this other proof be authenticated? Really, all one would need to do is get a Daredevil costume, dress someone in it, then kill them. Nobody (at this point) is aware of his secret identity, after all.

Matt fields questions from reporters about his kidnapping, and Ben Urich contemplates that "there's more to Matt Murdock than meets the eye." Which is probably not intended as a shout-out, but I'm going to go ahead and imagine Ben kicking back and watching Transformers cartoons in his free time. As Matt goes about his business, a number of people observe his activities, reporting back to on events. Eventually any pretense at covert observation is dropped, and Matt and Foggy are accosted by the agents of Eric Slaughter, who demand Daredevil turn up for a meeting on the docks.

What is it with Marvel Comics characters hanging out at the docks?

Daredevil, of course, turns up at the appointed time, and discovers a number of armed men in hiding - waiting for the opportunity to kill the hero. Which ought to be a nerve-wracking moment of high tension, but we know that there is no way Daredevil is going to get killed off. He makes his move, demanding answers, but the men respond by opening fire. Picking off the gunmen one by one, Daredevil manages to get one to talk, but before he can learn who has put out the hit on him his source of information is killed. The man behind the attempt on the hero's life is... Bullseye.

Garry Leach's poster art is superb, and deserves to be published in a high-quality print. Despite having an eye out for this in better quality, I've never seen it reproduced. Subtle and minimalist, the towering buildings looming high behind Daredevil as he leaps into action. It feels as modern an image as it did back in the early eighties. It is accompanied by a page of his younger artwork, which is a revelation - his style improved greatly between the ages of 11 and 16, and makes me want to see the intermediate steps. These "behind the scenes" features are well worth the time to put together, and show the evolution of an artist's ability.

Alan Moore reviews Lew Stringer's Fantasy Express #04, the Martin Lock-era Fantasy Advertiser (#75), and Triple Echo Vol.1 #04 by Steve Roberts in the appropriately named Fanzine Reviews. At a single page, albeit one without cover repros of the zines in question, there isn't much room for elaboration or in-depth examination. It is always appreciated when these titles are highlighted, but such features need to be have enough room to breathe.

High quality content can only take a title so far, thus we must suffer a Spider-Man reprint. The Kingpin places J. Jonah Jameson and Spidey in an inescapable death trap, from which (naturally) they escape. The long-running Spider-Man title (under whatever name it was using that week) was the obvious place to corral his adventures safely away, so placing him in The Daredevils is extremely annoying - they've been reprinted so often that anyone with a fondness for the character would have already been familiar with the story.

News Feature brings all the latest up-to-the-minute news from Stateside about exciting developments such as an ongoing Alpha Flight series, the introduction of the Hobgoblin, Doug Moench leaving Master of Kung-Fu and Moon Knight, and the cancellation of The Brave and the Bold. At two pages (with most of that space taken up with cover repros) this still feels overdone. I'm not sure I like comics publishers promoting comics in general in this way - it would be too easy to promote Marvel titles over those of other publishers, which is why having a distance between publishers and news is always preferable.

A very accomplished issue, despite the inclusion of Spider-Man. An excellent poster is the icing on the cake.