DAREDEVIL #36 (1968)
by Stan Lee and Gene Colan
Second part of the Daredevil-Trapster fight. Now… where were we?
Hm… this either needs a little more context, Reed and Susan’s marriage is waaaaay more open than we’ve been led to believe!
Let’s back up a little.
The Invisible Girl is glued to the floor, next to a bomb that will explode if anyone else sets foot in the room.
While she wasn’t considered the Fantastic Four’s powerhouse at the time, Susan already had quite a lot of control over her force field. She should’ve been able to just push the bomb out of the window.
Which is EXACTLY how Daredevil gets rid of the bomb.
Daredevil rescues Susan, saying that she has just regained consciousness.
How exactly did she lose it? She was perfectly awake in the last page of the previous issue.
Did she just fall asleep!?
Meanwhile, her husband and her brother notice the explosion and decide to return to the base.
Now, you’d expect the Human Torch to just flame on and fly towards the explosion, but weirdly enough Reed tells him to go on foot to avoid “panicking the crowd”.
Fist: when has THAT ever stopped the Human Torch!?
Second: if you’re in front of the Baxter Building, don’t you expect to see the Human Torch? How is that going to create panic?
Just like the previous page, I blame this on Gene Colan’s unfamiliarity towards the Fantastic Four. I bet the script said “they rush towards the site of the explosion” and, being the artist on a series with a primarily urban setting, Colan didn’t think to make a guy burst into flame and fly.
Just a theory, mind you.
Now we’ve caught up with the first panel I showed, you have the context.
It’s Reed coming back home to his wife, finding her wiping a white sticky substance out of her hair while praising her “free-swinging friend”.
So I guess context didn’t really make it better.
Okay, okay, here’s the full panel.
The fact that Daredevil has super-senses is one of the worst kept secrets in the superhero community. Here’s Reed figuring out he has super-hearing in 1968.
Daredevil has heard Trapster is still lurking around the building; he was hoping to see the explosion that should’ve taken out the Fantastic Four.
I still can’t get over how lame his plan actually was, by the way. The Fantastic Four aren’t invincible, of course, so a powerful bomb might’ve worked… but that explosion didn’t look like a particularly powerful one.
Leaving aside the fact that the Invisible Girl would’ve been able to contain the explosion with her force field, or at the very least shield the others. I’ll grant that if SOMEHOW she wasn’t able to use her force field, the explosion would’ve definitely killed her and the Human Torch. I have a few doubts that a simple explosion can kill a guy with elastic powers, but okay, let’s say Reed dies too.
What about the Thing? That is a guy who can take a hit from an extremely angry Hulk and still get back up! And he wasn’t even present when the bomb exploded!
So even if we give Trapster the benefit of the doubt and assume that EVERYTHING went right… he would’ve killed only three of the Fantastic Four and would’ve made the Thing utterly determined to kill him.
TL, DR: Trapster sucks.
I’m also stalling for time because the ensuing fight isn’t terribly interesting.
The fact that Trapster is on a flying platform does help Colan have some fun with Daredevil’s acrobatics…
…but once they land, it’s basically a fight against a normal guy with a weird gun.
Trapster does put up a better fight than I expected, but this just isn’t Daredevil’s day because when he tries to capture Trapster when he makes a run for the subway…
…Daredevil manages to fall down the stairs and knock himself out.
We’re informed by a thought balloon that Trapster was indeed arrested.
That’s the importance of the villain of the story… we’re not even shown his defeat.
Daredevil passes out after rolling under the platform (how did he end up there with no one even noticing?).
Once Daredevil regains consciousness, he hears metal boots approaching him, immediately thinking of Iron Man.
Daredevil DOES have an enemy who wears armor, but it’s fair to assume he would recognize Stilt-Man’s boots.
But no, it’s not someone as lame as Stilt-Man or Trapsters. I guess Stan Lee recognized that he chose the wrong Fantastic Four villain for the last two issues, so he corrects the course.
Today we are easily jaded by the surprise appearance of another book’s villains, but at the time it would’ve been reasonable to be shocked.
Up to this point Doctor Doom had appeared outside of the Fantastic Four book only twice, against Spider-Man and against the Avengers. Not only Daredevil wasn’t selling nearly as well as those books, but considering what happened during the last Doom story, everyone probably assumed Doom would return on the Fantastic Four book.
Historical significance: 8/10
This is actually a rather important story for Daredevil, for reasons completely unrelated to the Trapster story: in a couple of scenes I didn’t show because it would take FAR too long to provide the appropriate context, Foggy Nelson is asked to run for District Attorney AND we are re-introduced to his love interest Debbie Harris, who will become his wife and then his ex-wife.
Without those sub-plots, this would just barely qualify as a 1/10 for being the introduction of the Doctor Doom fight.
Silver Age-ness: 4/10
For the asbestos glue AND for sidelining the Fantastic Four without a credible reason.
Does it stand the test of time? 0/10
Trapster CAN be an interesting villain, but he’s a horrible match for Daredevil. If we’re keeping any consistency in how his super-glue works, he only needs to hit Daredevil ONCE to take him out of the fight. The fact that he simply can’t hit him, AND that he’s stealing the Wizard’s gadgets as well, doesn’t make him credible as a threat.
But it’s also a problem for Daredevil. Trapster is a normal human with a fancy gadget; he’s not even supposed to be a great fighter. At best he’s a passable brawler, while Daredevil is supposed to be among the very best hand-to-hand fighters. Him not being able to deal with Trapster after the glue gun is dealt with is just inexcusable.
The Fantastic Four ALSO get a raw deal out of this. Even if we grant that the Human Torch can’t touch Trapster because of the asbestos glue (and that’s a BIG “if”), what is the excuse of Mister Fantastic and the Invisible Girl?
In short: nobody has a good show in this issue. The only saving grace, again, is Gene Colan’s art with some crazy perspectives. But you can show Daredevil swinging around Trapster’s floating platform so many times before it becomes boring.