The Devil’s Double – Reviewing Daredevil #9 from 1965 and 2023

Devil’s Double Review Archive – CLICK HE RE

Daredevil #9 (1965)

Daredevil issue nine‘s story is about as creative as a soap opera, but it’s also contrived, convoluted, and over-the-top.

Klaus Kruger, a former classmate of Matt Murdock and Foggy Nelson is in town. He’s also the ruler of the nation of Lichtenbad. Karen reaches out to Klaus after hearing that Dr. Van Eyck – the world’s most famous eye doctor – has moved to Lichtenbad. Matt decides to go with Klaus and meet the doctor after he senses that Klaus lied to them about how great Lichtenbad is. Once there, Daredevil investigates the fortified castle and discovers Klaus’ dark secret.

This is the first issue to introduce a former classmate from Matt and Foggy’s past, a plot detail that becomes more commonplace as time goes on, like the way Chip Zdarksy’s uses Robert Goldman in his current run. Matt describes Klaus as a strange one, but the story never clearly defines his motivation intofull villainy. I’m also stumped as to why this villain is so obsessed with the ‘knight and castle’ aesthetic. It seems arbitrary. Considering how extreme this character is, you’d think Matt and Foggy would have noticed something sooner.

Klaus’s plan involves kidnapping “the greatest men in every field to serve me!” When the showdown with Daredevil doesn’t go in Klaus’s favor, he pivots to plan B: releasing a radio-active cobalt cloud to blanket the earth. This story really is chock full of extremes that are downright laughable.

What’s not funny is how Stan Lee writes Daredevil. His quips are plentiful in this issue, but they are a little one-sided. Perhaps it stems from the lack of dialogue between Daredevil and his armed assailants, the robot knights who don’t talk. But even Daredevil’s interaction with the Lichtenbad denizens in the dungeon makes him unlikeable. Daredevil can be sarcastic, but he seems like an asshole here, to be blunt.

This issue also suffers from its order of events. As Matt and Klaus drive to the castle, Matt seems to sense the people’s hatred and fear of Klaus as if he’s some kind of empath instead of using his super hearing to point out how the people aren’t happy with their monarch. Lee does a better job showing Matt’s senses in action later in the issue when Daredevil sneaks around the castle and hears the people conspiring against Klaus through the windows, corridors, and floors.

Speaking of events being out of order, Klaus says Karen told him about how Matt lost his eyesight, but Matt lost his eyesight long before they went to college together.

The issue is truly a campy, Silver Age story. It’s bombastic in some of the right ways, but the unclear motivations for its mustache-twirling villain and the uncharacteristic Daredevil dialogue make this issue insufferable.

Rating: 1.5/5.

Daredevil #658

Typically, after an action-packed issue Chip Zdarsky likes to use his follow-up issue to unpack the lessons learned from the battle and provide an internal look at Matt Murdock as he questions whether this campaign against the Hand is a righteous cause. Issue #658 starts out on the slow side, but it’s unrelenting. Matt and his army (The Fist) barely get a chance to recover and heal much less unpack what happened in the previous chapter.

This issue kicks the Devil while he’s down. The showdown with The Punisher and The Hand ends with Daredevil’s army suffering numerous injuries. Thankfully, the mystical properties bestowed to The Fist have most of the troops on the mend while bedridden. The Devils finally destroy the Lunate Talisman – the Hand’s Secret weapon – but its destruction triggers a failsafe protocol. It’s revealed that Foggy Nelson and Stick have been dead for quite some time and the Hand reanimated their bodies, minds, and thoughts in order to learn the location of Daredevil’s island. On top of that, the Stromwyns are back! Tired of the cat-and-mouse game, they gas the island with Re-Cid – a drug that causes the user to go mad with aggression and violence – causing the Fist to fight amongst themselves. The conflict continues to rise as the Avengers make landfall and demand Daredevil turn himself in.

This only problem with this issue is Manuel Garcia’s art. A lot of the characters look ‘off’ to me. I’d liken it to watching a Batman ’66 fight scene. There are blatant moments when the stunt doubles have “filled in” for Adam West and Burt Ward. Similarly, characters look different from moment-to-moment and panel-to-panel. A lot of the close-ups of characters are treated by hiding their faces in shadow, which is effective for the Daredevils and even when Quinn Stromwyn looks dramatically towards the city from his high-rise penthouse. But at times, the effect looks like a cheap workaround to not have to draw the eyes on some of these characters.

The panels that work best are the ones that are zoomed in on our characters. The wider shots that try to provide a depth of field come off as boring and uninteresting. These are static images, but the presence of so much negative space makes the scene look cheap and cartoony.

Overall, this issue was a good time and continues the forward momentum of Zdarsky’s The Red Fist Saga, even if Garcia’s artwork isn’t the greatest.

Rating: 3/5.

The writer of this piece is: Laurence Almalvez
Laurence tweets from @IL1511