Murdock and Marvel: 1975

Comics Over Time

Episode 13 - Murdock and Marvel: 1975

It's 1975. Things are improving a bit in the world but in comics the race continues to fill up newsstands. With that, we start seeing more company causalities if you weren't D.C. or Marvel. We have 2 comic gods duking it out in the rookie of the year and in the spotlight this week, we see Daredevil take on... A comic book character!?!?!

Preshow

• Recap of Dan and Sienna's C2E2 and their panel

The Year in Comics

The Big Stories

Industry Trends

1975 Top 10 comics

The Year in Marvel

Average of about 40 comics per month published, for a total of 474. Most were in the Marvel Universe. Tons of new titles, and also tons of cancellations. They were trying for new markets and new readers.

New Titles (and lots of reprints)

Series Ending

New Characters

Big Moments

Who's in the Bullpen

• ROOKIE OF THE YEAR: John Byrne

The Year in Daredevil

Appearances: Daredevil #117-128, Deadly Hands of Kung Fu #8, Giant-Size Defenders #3, Thor #233, Defenders #24-25

• A number of writers worked on Daredevil this year: Starting with Chris Claremont and Steve Gerber in 117, Gerry Conway in 118, Tony Isabella in 119-122, Len Wein and Marv Wolfman in 124. Marv Wolfman finished the year as writer.
• William Robert (Bob) Brown provides art for most of those and is joined by Klaus Jansen starting with issue #124
• The year starts with the Owl trying to steal Daredevils mind but he agrees to release him if Black Widow kidnaps someone – who turns out to be Shanna the She-Devil. The two women work together to trick the Owl and save Daredevil.
• Daredevil lost his billy club at the end of last year, but it returns thanks to Ivan Petrovich. Though Black Widow returns to San Francisco.
• Next Daredevil takes on the Circus of Crime and saves New York City from being hypnotized and lose all their money. Though one member – Blackwing gets away.
• Daredevil then sees Pop Fenton, his dad’s old trainer, and attempts to save him and his former boxer – now priest – Father Gawaine from Juan Aponte who’s been working with a doctor who’s recreated Iron Man villain the Crusher strength formula. After the battle, he dies in Pop Fenton’s arms.
• New Years arrives and Black Widow comes to visit and they attend a New Year’s Eve party thrown by Foggy Nelson – though Widow isn’t happy about it. Though it was for the best because agents of Hydra attack being led by El Jaguar. We learn they are after Foggy because SHIELD is intending to have him join their advisory committee. Eventually Foggy is captured by Hydra when Foggy gives himself up to save Black Widow from the Dreadnought.
• Black Widow and Daredevil scour the city looking for Foggy and end up fighting El Jaguar and Blackwing who turns out to be the son of Supreme Hydra – Silvermane – as Fury’s forces head into a trap. They are able to avoid the trap with Life Model Decoys.
• In a final battle with Hydra, the Black Widow destroys the Dreadnought by shooting it in its only weak spot. Daredevil then goes up against Jackhammer and easily defeats him. El Jaguar is knocked out by Dum Dum Dugan, and Man-Killer is incapacitated when Ivan places a jamming device on her exoskeleton. With their plan failing, Blackwing and Silvermane make a hurried escape and the remaining Hydra agents are captured.
• Next Daredevil takes on Copperhead – a real life recreation of a 1930s comic book. This two book arc is this week’s spotlight.
• A new Torpedo show up looking to complete an important mission but when he’s killed during a battle with Daredevil, former pro quarterback Brock Jones takes the costume and wants to complete the mission. Those two then fight as Jones attempts to explain the mission. In the process they destroy the home of an innocent family. When the mother yells at them for the destruction, they stop fighting and leave.
• As the year ends, Murdock says he’s done being Daredevil but it doesn’t last long as he’s needed to take on Death-Starker who’s stealing artifacts from museums in an attempt to build a powerful weapon. In their final battle, Death-Stalker ends up disappearing while standing on a platform near a mysterious Sky-Walker.

New Powers, Toys or Places

New Supporting Characters

New Villains

This Week's Spotlight: Daredevil #124 Aug 1975 "In the Coils of the Copperhead!" and Daredevil #125 Sep 1975 “Vengeance Is the Copperhead!”

Recap

Why We Picked This Story

The Takeaway

Inmates running the asylum

Questions or comments

We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [e-mail] or find us on Twitter @comicsoftime.

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THANKS TO THE FOLLOWING CREATORS AND RESOURCES

Music: Our theme music is by the very talented Lesfm. You can find more about them and their music at https://pixabay.com/users/lesfm-22579021/.

The Grand Comics Database: Dan uses custom queries against a downloadable copy of the GCD to construct his publisher, title and creator charts.

Comichron: Our source for comic book sales data.

Man Without Fear: Kuljit Mithra’s Daredevil site contains a staggering collection of resources about our hero, including news, interviews and comic details.

The American Comic Book Chronicles: Published by TwoMorrows, these volumes provide an excellent analysis of American comics through the years. Because these volumes break down comic history by year and decade they are a great place to get a basic orientation on what is happening across the comic industry at a particular point in time.

Joshua and Jamie Do Daredevil: A fantastic podcast that does a deep-dive into Daredevil comics. This ran from 2018-2020, and covered most of the first volume of Daredevil, and was a fun way to get an in-depth look at each issue of Daredevil from 1-377.

My Marvelous Year: This is a reading-club style podcast where Dave Buesing and friends chose important or interesting books from a particular year to read and discuss. This helped me remember some fun and crazy stories, and would be a great companion piece to Murdock and Marvel for those who want more comic-story-specific coverage.

BOOKLIST

The following books have been frequently used as reference while preparing summaries of the comic history segments of our show. Each and every one comes recommended by Dan for fans wanting to read more about it!

Licari, Fabio and Marco Rizzo. Marvel: The First 80 Years: The True Story of a Pop-Culture Phenomenon. London: Titan Books, 2020. This book is sort of a mess, as the print quality is terrible, and Titan doesn’t even credit the authors unless you check the fine print. It’s like this was published by Marvel in the early 60s! But the information is good, and it is presented in an entertaining fashion. So its decent, but I would recommend you see if you can just borrow it from the library instead of purchasing.

Wells, John. American Comic Book Chronicles: 1960-1964. Raleigh: Two Morrows, 2015. Not cheap, but a fantastic series that is informative and fun to read.

Wright, Bradford. Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. This is the revised edition.

Marvel Year By Year: A Visual History. New York: DK Publishing, 2022. The academic in my rails at using information from any work that doesn’t have an author credit, but this is a decent (if very surface) look at each year in the history of Timely / Marvel from 1939 to 2021.

Cowsill, Alan et al. DC Comics Year by Year: A Visual History. New York: DK Publishing, 2010. Because its nice to occasionally take a peek at what the Distinguished Competition is up to.

Dauber, Jeremy. American Comics: A History. New York, W.W. Norton & Company, 2022. An excellent, relatively compact history of the domestic comic industry from its 19th century origins through to recent 21st century developments. An excellent successor to Bradford Wright’s Comic Book Nation.