DAREDEVIL #38 (1968)
by Stan Lee and Gene Colan
This brief Daredevil saga has been rather disappointing, but at least the ending has a really cool cover.
As a reminder, Daredevil is now stuck inside Doctor Doom’s body, which in turn is stuck inside Doom’s dungeon. This allows artist Gene Colan to experiment a little.
The balloons are excited in the typical Stan Lee fashion, reminding us that we shouldn’t miss a single “ZOK!”.
Whatever that is.
Daredevil is in a pretty dire situation, but he has a trick up his armored sleeve: ask Doom’s guards to let him escape.
AND IT WORKS.
This is monumentally idiotic. You mean to tell me that Doctor Doom didn’t tell his guards that he was switching minds with Daredevil!?
COME ON!!!
Oh but we’re not done with stupid plot points! While Daredevil escapes, Doctor Doom is strolling around New York in Daredevil’s body, when he realizes that he can’t see.
You didn’t IMMEDIATELY realize that you’re blind!? I’ve joked before that Daredevil’s super-senses sometimes make his blindness a non-factor, but this is beyond ridiculous!
And we’re STILL not done: even if he can’t see, Doom’s brilliant deduction is that Daredevil isn’t ACTUALLY blind… he’s just “obscuring his normal vision” to gain super-senses.
There is NO REASON for Doctor Doom not to realize that Daredevil is blind. None whatsoever.
Back to Daredevil’s plan: calling the Fantastic Four.
Naturally the Fantastic Four found it more than a little strange that Doctor Doom is calling them on their “special radio frequency”. Reed reluctantly admits the possibility of Doom switching bodies.
“If anyone could succeed at body transferal”? Reed, you’ve switched bodies with Doom yourself !
What’s going on!? Why is everyone suddenly forgetting that this isn’t the first time this has happened? Did they inhale too much fumes from Trapster’s glue or something!?
Back again to Doom, who is attacked by his own henchmen.
But even without his armor, Doom is still a badass.
I’m disappointed by the lack of sound effects. I was promised a “ZOK!” earlier.
In addition to his badassery, Doom also brought with him the Ring Imperial ™ to prove his identity.
Doom uses the ring to mind-control the minions to attack Daredevil. These guys are having the worst day ever.
Daredevil explicitly doesn’t use any of the weapons in Doom’s armor because, since he doesn’t know anything about them, he’s afraid he could kill the henchmen.
Fair enough. But Doom’s armor shouldn’t allow any of these blows to harm him.
Daredevil does manage to adapt his fighting style to compensate for the armor’s weight, and interestingly he notes that the more he’s in the armor, the more he feels like it’s a part of him.
Decades later Doom will trap Reed in his armor and we’ll learn that the armor slowly warps the mind of whoever is wearing it into thinking like the real Doom. I wonder if this is what is happening to Daredevil.
Daredevil’s fight is interrupted by the cops, who “save Doctor Doom” from his own minions.
I don’t know about his way of thinking, but the situation (or the armor?) is definitely making Daredevil scarily good at Doom’s way of speaking.
Daredevil is finally able to catch up to Doom before he gets to the Baxter Building. So I guess that, with the exception of the interruption by the henchmen, Doom has just been calmly strolling?
Doom lets him go, so Daredevil goes back to the embassy to contact his ministers and order Latveria to declare war to every country on its borders!
And Doom learns this from the news, NOT from Daredevil.
Let’s take a step back, because this is utterly ridiculous.
Doctor Doom switches bodies with Daredevil and then walks towards the Baxter Building. During this stroll, while he’s in Daredevil’s body:
1) Daredevil (in Doom’s body) calls for the guards and convinces them to let him escape
2) Daredevil figures out how to use Doom’s tech to call the Fantastic Four
3) Daredevil walks towards the Baxter Building (at least I hope that’s where he’s going!)
4) Daredevil fights the henchmen (for considerably longer than Doom does)
5) Daredevil walks to Doom’s position
6) Daredevil walks BACK to the Latveria embassy
7) Daredevil figures out how to use Doom’s tech to call his ministers
8) The ministers declare war on the surrounding countries (how long would this take?)
9) The media gives the news of the declaration of war “in a matter of minutes”
Doom’s timeline, on the other hand, is this:
1) He leaves the Latverian embassy MUCH earlier than Daredevil (he’s not trapped in a dungeon!)
2) He fights his henchmen. This shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes, tops.
3) He talks to Daredevil supporting character Debbie Harris; she barely gets a word in before he shoves her aside, so even giving him a delay of one minute is a lot.
4) He talks with Daredevil once he catches up to him again. Two minutes if we’re generous.
To make a long story short (too late, I know!): Doom is interrupted for five minutes and he STILL hasn’t reached the Baxter Building. During this Daredevil has gone back and forth to the Latverian Embassy and he’s been interrupted more often for more time, AND we have to allow some time for the news of the declaration of war.
How slowly is Doom walking? When did he expect to reach the Baxter Building!? Daredevil is running circles around him WEARING THE ARMOR!!!
Doom should’ve just taken a taxi. Which is exactly what he does now.
I never thought I would ever see Doctor Doom get a taxi.
Also note that one of Latveria’s neighbors is allied with “Red China” (it is 1968 after all), and that Doom is certain that Latveria would be obliterated by them.
Let’s just get this over with, shall we?
Doom and Daredevil switch bodies again, and the latter destroys the mind-swapping machine.
With the idea that Doom won’t be able to build another because “it must have taken nearly a lifetime to build the transfer machine”.
Sounds legit.
Doom allows Daredevil to leave, because he’s been amused by the whole incident.
Well at least SOMEONE was amused by this awful issue.
Historical significance: 2/10
Sadly this story DOES have a very minor impact: it leads directly into the “Guest Star Bonanza” (Stan’s words) of Fantastic Four #73 where Daredevil, Thor and Spider-Man meet the Fantastic Four, in one of the extremely rare cases if Jack Kirby drawing Spider-Man.
Doom significance: 0/10
Mercifully, this has absolutely no impact on Doom’s history.
Silver Age-ness: 10/10
On the Marvel scale, of course, but we had Doctor Doom fight his henchmen, get a taxi, and even Daredevil in Doom’s body being saved by the police. Not to mention Doom’s “brilliant” deduction of Daredevil’s powers and Doom’s… “plan” (more on that below).
Does it stand the test of time? 0/10
This was reeeally bad. The story completely wastes Doom, who’s stuck walking around doing nothing most of the time. At the end of the day, not a lot has happened. The action is also lackluster: unlike in previous issues Gene Colan doesn’t have a lot of room to experiment.
We don’t even get a single “ZOK!”.
It was a Doombot all along
I truly hope that this was a Doombot because Doom is just awful here.
Take over the world
Not this time. Daredevil gets closer to accidentally triggering WWIII than Doom does conquering anything.
Destroy the FF!
The story is pretty ridiculous on its own, but this is what really pushes the Silver-ageness to a 10/10.
We’re not explicitly told WHY Doom switches bodies with Daredevil, but he keeps repeating that he’s going to defeat them. He doesn’t have his tech (except the Ring Imperial ™) and nobody knows he’s doing this.
So the only possible explanation is that Doctor Doom took Daredevil’s body… because he wants to fight the Fantastic Four as Daredevil. Alone. With no weapons.
Even with a Doctor Doom sized ego, the idea that he’s going to defeat the Fantastic Four like this is absurd. So it’s a plan that makes absolutely no sense, that isn’t explained, and that you don’t even notice while you’re reading the story until you stop to think about it and realize “what the hell did I just read!?”.
If THAT isn’t Silver Age…
Crazy tech
The Ring Imperial ™, which is apparently a ring-sized mind control device.