Daredevil #258 (1988): 1st Bengal

This issue introduces Bengal, a Vietnamese assassin who was orphaned when U.S. troops slaughtered his village during Vietnam.  He’s killing all the members of that platoon, and one of them is a friendly old blind vet named Willie who is under Daredevil’s protection.  In the end, Bengal realizes that Willie was a nice guy back in ‘Nam and runs away.  In flashback scenes, we see that Will Talltrees (Red Wolf) and Jim Rhodes (the black Iron Man) were also in Willie platoon.  Part of the ridiculously small world of Marvel.  No explanation why Bengal doesn’t still try to kill those two characters.  That would have been a cool way to weave the character into the Marvel Universe.

If anyone cared about Red Wolf.

Good fighting, and a really nice touch when the villain dramatically reveals his own face to Daredevil in an attempt to silently explain his motivation…

This is an odd fill in team.  Fabian Niceiza is still a new writer at this point—his future Deadpool fame is years away—so I guess having him write a Daredevil story isn’t all that weird.  But Ron Lim is a “big” artist.  Cosmic stuff.  “Clean” lines and such.  It doesn’t work great with DD, especially coming smack in the middle of Ann Nocenti’s morally complex, gritty run.

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