By Stan Lee & Wally Wood (Marvel Illustrated Books)
ISBN: 0-939766-18-3
Here’s another look at how our industry’s gradual inclusion into mainstream literature began and one more pulse-pounding paperback package for action fans and nostalgia lovers, offering yet another chance to enjoy some of the best and most influential comics stories of all time.
After a few abortive attempts in the 1960s to storm the shelves of bookstores and libraries, Marvel made a concerted and comprehensive effort to get their wares into more socially acceptable formats. As the 1970s closed, purpose-built graphic collections and a string of new prose adventures tailored to feed into their all-encompassing continuity began oh, so slowly to appear.
Whereas the merits of the latter are a matter for a different review, the company’s careful reformatting of classic comics adventures were generally excellent; a superb and recurring effort to generate continuity primers and a perfect – if fickle – alternative venue to introduce fresh readers to their unique worlds.
The dream project was never better represented than in this classy little crime-busting cornucopia of wonders with crisp black and white reproduction, sensitive editing, efficient picture-formatting and two superb epics from the first “hot run†of the very variable Man Without Fear …
Matt Murdock is a blind lawyer whose remaining senses hyper-compensate, making him an astonishing acrobat, mind-blowing martial artist and living lie-detector. Very much a second-string hero for most of his early years, Daredevil was nonetheless a striking and popular one, due in large part to the captivatingly humanistic art of such modern Michelangelos as Wally Wood, John Romita and Gene Colan.
DD fought thugs, gangsters, a variety of super-villains and even the occasional monster or alien invasion. He quipped and wise-cracked his way through life and life-threatening combat, before under the auspices of Jim Shooter, Roger McKenzie and Frank Miller, the character transformed into a dark, moody avenger and grim, quasi-religious metaphor of justice and retribution…
After a shaky start, with the fifth issue Wally Wood assumed the art chores where his lush and lavish work brought power, grace and beauty to the series. At last this mere costumed acrobat seemed to spring and dance across the rooftops and pages. Wood’s contribution to the plotting didn’t hurt either. He actually got a cover plug on his first issue.
This brilliant black and white collection begins with the Daredevil #6’s ‘Trapped by the Fellowship of Fear!’: a minor classic wherein the Sightless Swashbuckler had to defeat not only the blockbusting Ox and electric assassin The Eel but his own threat-specific foe Mr. Fear who could instil terror and panic in victims, courtesy of his deadly gas-gun…
Another villain debuted in #8’s gripping industrial espionage thriller with meek, mild Wilbur Day hiring Nelson & Murdock to retrieve the rights to a stolen technology patent from industrialist Carl Kaxton. However, the case led to a clash with a bizarre and terrifying menace in ‘The Stiltman Cometh!’ Moreover Day proved to be far more than he at first appeared…
It’s easy to assume that such resized, repackaged mass market paperback collections were just another Marvel cash-cow in their tried-and-tested “flood the marketplace†sales strategy – and maybe they were – but as someone who has bought these stories in most of the available formats over the years, I have to admit that these handy back-pocket books are among my very favourites and ones I’ve re-read most – they’re handier, more accessible and just plain cool – so why aren’t they are available as ebooks yet?
© 1965, 1982 Marvel Comics Group, a division of Cadence Industries Corporation. All rights reserved.