DAREDEVIL #37 (1968)
by Stan Lee and Gene Colan
We last saw Doctor Doom flying into space, and we last saw Daredevil barely surviving a fight with Trapster.
Based on the cover, Doom feels pretty good about his chances.
Doom has heard about Daredevil’s fight with Trapster “over the radio”, as he explains while he beats the crap out of Daredevil.
It’s quite unusual to see Doom fighting with his fists, but he justifies it saying that Daredevil is far too weak for his weapons… which is a very Dr. Doom thing to say.
The fight takes place in the subway, and a crowd of bystanders decide to intervene to defend Daredevil.
Doom does NOT appreciate.
Weirdly enough, the bystanders take time to inform us about the properties of the protective screen created by Doom. That’s some clunky exposition that doesn’t feel natural at all… if we really needed this explanation, I would’ve preferred to see some captions.
Doom leaves the scene, carrying Daredevil to his limousine.
Strangely enough, Doom rides shotgun and not in the passenger’s seat.
That’s reserved for Daredevil, who makes short work of Doom’s security guards.
Even the driver takes part in the brawl, leaving Doom to take the wheel.
I don’t know why, but I find this sequence hilarious. Maybe it’s the thought of Doctor freakin’ Doom having to steer the car to stop it from crashing.
Or it’s the fact that Daredevil is causing the limousine to shake so much that Doom has to activate the emergency jet brakes. (!!!)
But Daredevil is eventually subdued and brought to the Latverian embassy.
In case you’re more familiar with the brooding Daredevil of his appearances after the 80s, the 60s Daredevil can be a bit much with his constant attempts at humor.
The best part of this comic is that Doctor Doom absolutely does not give a crap about it.
Now… get this. Doctor Doom put Daredevil in a dungeon, with a secret passage that he expected Daredevil to find, and that leads to… this.
No, Doom didn’t shrink Daredevil… he just build an oversized room, that he can flip upside down…
…and this is all in an attempt to turn Daredevil crazy?
What the…
I’m sure a room like this would be extremely disorienting, but come on, are we supposed to buy that a superhero would be driven to the edge by a glorified roller coaster!?
Doom decides that now is the perfect time for a monologue, and so narrates to Daredevil how things ended after Fantastic Four 60.
My main criticism of that issue was that we were not shown the consequences of Doom trying to surpass the barrier put up by Galactus, and here it is.
We could’ve seen all of this in the Fantastic Four issue, but no, we just HAD to wase an entire page on the Watcher and a couple on the Inhumans.
But at least we have the amazing fact that the first meeting between Doctor Doom and Galactus is in a Daredevil comic, of all places.
Pretty cool stuff. Note Daredevil wondering how the heck did he end up in a different room at the end of the monologue… once again, I think there was some disconnect between Stan Lee’s script and Colan’s interpretation.
Doom has brough Daredevil here to use the Hypnoticon ™, which Daredevil informs us is a device that is used to hypnotize people.
Thanks, DD. We couldn’t have figured it out on our own.
Naturally, since Daredevil is blind, this device does not work.
Daredevil tries to fight him, with Doom boasting that he’s called “the most dangerous man alive”.
I don’t remember seeing this definition in his previous appearances, but he’s not exactly wrong.
But Doom has Daredevil right where he wants: the perfect spot to trap him inside a cylinder where he can subject him to the Body-Transferral Ray ™.
Oookay.
Leaving aside the fact that Doctor Doom has had the power to transfer his mind since Fantastic Four 10 without the need for a machine…
THIS is the full plan of Doctor Doom:
1) find Daredevil at the end of his fight with Trapster
2) beat up Daredevil
3) bring Daredevil to his lair
4) trap Daredevil in a dungeon, expecting him to escape
5) trap Daredevil in a rotating oversized room, expecting him to go crazy
6) hypnotize Daredevil, expecting him to… I have no idea
7) trap Daredevil into the machine
8) swap bodies with Daredevil
If all Doom wanted was to swap bodies, why didn’t he just throw him into the cylinder as soon as they arrived at the Embassy!?
And that’s the cliffhanger! Which is basically a repeat of the middle part of Fantastic Four 10.
Daredevil significance: 0/10
This has absolutely no impact on Daredevil’s history.
Doom significance: 4/10
This is technically the conclusion of one of Doctor Doom’s most important storylines, and it’s his first scene with Galactus (who I don’t think will meet him again until Secret Wars in the 80s). Despite this, it’s all in flashback, and while it’s neat to see, it’s all information provided in Fantastic Four 60.
Silver Age-ness: 6/10
Daredevil’s personality is firmly in the 60s, as are the public’s reactions.
Does it stand the test of time? 3/10
This is pretty bad. It’s somewhat refreshing to have a villain with a ton of personality after the extremely boring Trapster, but that’s it.
Doom comes out as a terrible match for Daredevil. He’s just too powerful to take Daredevil seriously, which is fun at first but gets old quickly. The fight scenes are much worse than the Trapster issues: Gene Colan is at his best when he can stage some creative fights, but all we get are brawls where one guy can’t even feel the punches.
Doom’s plan is also a letdown. There’s nothing wrong with Doom having a very convoluted plan… it’s one of his signatures after all… but they need to make sense. Doom throwing Daredevil from one trap to the next feel like the story is stalling for time.
It was a Doombot all along
We’re not shown any Doombot, but figuring out if this is the real Doom is tricky. We know that the one who had Silver Surfer’s powers had to be the real Doom, so the one in the flashback is 100% Doom. One of the typical clues for Doom is if he uses his mind transfer power, since it’s not something that his Doombots possess. So the fact that in this story Doom needs a machine to swap bodies COULD mean that Daredevil is dealing with a Doombot.
Take over the world / Destroy the FF!
This story doesn’t explain why exactly Doom wants to swap bodies with Daredevil, but since next issue we’ll learn that it’s a plan against the Fantastic Four, I’ll put this in the “Destroy the FF!” category.
Crazy tech
The Body-Transferral Ray ™ of course. I don’t think it’s ever used again; perhaps the writers decided that giving Doom two completely different methods to swap bodies was redundant, and the previously introduced method already had some lore behind it.