Review by Ian Keogh

Steve Gerber is one of the most under-rated writers to work for Marvel, and most of his 1970s work remains decidedly off-centre and very readable. Everyone has to start somewhere, though, and in Gerber’s case Daredevil readers in 1973 paid the price as Gerber learned his craft. He stuck with blind lawyer Matt Murdock and his superhero alter-ego, writing the feature for just shy of two years, his work also occupying most of Volume 11, but right at the beginning of his career he never found a way to make Daredevil interesting.

The Daredevil Gerber inherited was based in San Francisco, sharing home and superheroic career with the Black Widow, and illustrated by the sublime Gene Colan. Sadly, Colan left to be replaced by distinctly inferior artists, and the while Jon Cooke’s introduction mentions Gerber feeling Black Widow diminishes Daredevil’s appeal as a loner in the darkness, he doesn’t jettison her here.

Glimmers of what would later make Gerber such an interesting writer are apparent in the ideas. Once he’s finished scripting a plot bequeathed by Gerry Conway from Volume 9, there’s a meeting with a jealous Hawkeye followed by Steve Englehart’s team-up with the Avengers, neither of which comes to life, with the most interesting aspect being art from Sam Kewskin. That took Daredevil to a hundredth issue bizarrely celebrated by featuring Jann Wenner, editor of Rolling Stone, then the hottest counterculture magazine in the USA. It’s a resounding bellyflop dream sequence, but the final pages introduce Angar the Screamer. His name is great, as are the hallucinogenic visions he induces, and his standing as the hippie dream gone sour also resonates, but Gerber can’t maximise the potential.

Angar is followed by a couple of other unmemorable new villains who might be dull, but Gerber’s explanation for them is inventive, involving Moondragon and her bizarrely exploitative costume, and allowing for Jim Starlin to supply her origin. While the revelations are good, Gerber again can’t merge the interesting ideas with anything more than a standard battle. The 1970s male Captain Marvel turning up may be a surprise, but is cosmic slop the best use of Daredevil? It’s over-reaching, while any energy is sapped by the art of Don Heck, who was never at home with costumed adventure.

It would be dishonest to even attempt to make a case for anything other than a few ideas and Colan’s art rising above mediocre. There’s so much good Daredevil later that it’s really not worth bothering with this.

In an even more decadent format, these stories are also available in the third Daredevil Omnibus, and in black and white they’re spread over Essential Daredevil Vol. 4 and Essential Daredevil Vol. 5.