LATE TO THE PARTY in the mid-1960s was the final addition to Stan Lee's classic superhero lineup, Daredevil. And with this one, Stan took his concept of "a hero with a flaw" even further and gave Matthew Murdock a disability: he made him blind. I've mentioned in an earlier entry in this blog that in 1965 I marvelled at the idea of a blind superhero . Maybe because losing one's sight is one of our great primal fears - often the cover subject of the more extreme 1950s horror comics - and certainly something that scared me silly when I was a kid. Perhaps because of that, that issue of Daredevil , where he battles the Matador, made quite an impression on my ten year old self. Nowhere on the cover does it mention Daredevil's Unique Selling Point. However, Stan does mention that the interior art is by Wally Wood. Is this the first time Stan cover credited an artist? Though I'm quite sure that Daredevil 5 (Dec 1964) was the first issue of that title I saw, I do...
THERE WAS NO PLAN FOR THE INHUMANS , at least not at first. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had introduced Madam Medusa - unheralded - as a member of the Fantastic Four foe group The Frightful Four. And for eight issues of the Fantastic Four comic - 36 (Mar 1965) to 43 (Oct 1965), Medusa haughtied her way through the stories, coldly collaborating with The Wizard and his team to bring about the defeat and/or demise of the Storm family. Tea and antipathy - The Frightful Four's dislike of each other is obvious from the start. So why does Medusa hang out with a group of people she despises. In the end, Stan and Jack never really explained that. While the other Frightfuls each had a clear motive for doing what they did - mostly being previous foes of Johnny (The Human Torch) Storm in numerous Strange Tales adventures - there was no such reasoning behind Medusa's enmity towards the FF. She was literally a character with no motivation. More importantly, Stan's scripts never even hinted ...