Murdock and Marvel: 1990 Part 2

Comics Over Time

Episode 31 - Murdock and Marvel: 1990 Part 2

As we start the 90s Marvel and DC are approaching monopoly status on comic store shelves, leaving other publishers to look for success at the margins. But if you are a big fan of the Big 2, 1990 was a good time to be reading comic books!

This is part 2 of the podcast. that will feature the year in Daredevil, the Spotlight story and the Takeaway for 1990.

The Year in Daredevil

Appearances: Daredevil #276-287, Wolverine #21, Captain America #368, 374 - 376, Count Duckula #10, Punisher Magazine #8 and 15-16, What if…? #13, 15, 17, 20, Marvel Comics presents #49 and Daredevil: Marked for Death and Elektra Lives Again graphic novels

Writing credits: Ann Nocenti (276-287)

Pencilers: John Romita Jr (276, 278-282), Rick Leonardi (277), Mark Bagley (283), Lee Weeks (284-285, 287), Greg Capullo (286)

Inks: Al Williamson (276-282, 284-285, 287), Williamson and Tom Morgan (283), Doug Hazlewood (286)

• As the year begins, The Acts of Vengeance event continues with Ultron looking to take Number Nine as a bride and Daredevil must try to save her.
• Next, we get an out of timeline story involving Daredevil and a psychologist whose star patient is his wife.
• Back to the current timeline, The Inhumans are set to leave for Pottersville in search of Black Bolts' son and it turms into a road trip for them, Daredevil, Number 9 and Brandy. Meanwhile, Blackheart and Mephisto discuss the finer points of evil and Blackheart is tasked with making Daredevil and the others do evil.
• In Pottersville, the team finds a boy, Pope, with powers who the town is scared of and wants to kill him. They save the boy, but in the aftermath fall into a crack in the earth caused by an earthquake. We then see Daredevil and his companions experience different versions of Hell before a final showdown with Mephisto in which they are aided by the Silver Surfer.
• Next, we get a single (what I assume is out of timeline) story in which Captain America and Daredevil are trying to help an inventor whose fantastic invention could change the world. This social issue focused book will be our spotlight story this week.
• Daredevil finally returns to New York, but his memories are scrambled by the recent trip to Hell. Not knowing who he really is, he assumes the identity of Jack Murdock. Bullseye finds out about the confusion and decides to take advantage of the situation by impersonating the horned hero.
• The rest of the year we see Matt Murdock meet a homeless woman, Nyla, who takes him in and the two become close. Murdock becomes a boxer, like his father, at Fogwell’s Gym and Bullseye continues stealing from the rich and beating up police to ruin the reputation of the once great hero. Ben Urich returns and seems to realize things don’t add up and goes looking for Matt Murdock.
• In the final panels of the year, we see Wilson Fisk at a “Jack Murdock” boxing match and he too recognizes his former adversary.

New Powers, Toys or Places: Still in upstate New York to start the year, we see the team head to Hell/Mephisto’s realm across several books before returning to familiar New York City.

New Supporting Characters: Daniel and Vivian (psychologist and his wife), Pope (Boy in Pottersville’s with powers that the townsfolk want to kill), Victor Cieszkowska (Inventor disillusioned by the US and their people), Nyla (homeless woman that befriends Matt Murdock while he’s going by Jack Murdock, becomes a love interest)

New Villains:

This Week's Spotlight: Daredevil #283 August 1990 “The American Nightmare”

Recap

Why We Picked This Story

The Takeaway

Marvel has won.

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.