The title closes the year out with a decent battle against The Beetle.
Usually stories that put a character in a whole new environment don’t work, but in this case DD and Beetle, two city slickers, fight in the rocky mountains, and it works pretty well.
This is one of the first full-page drawings in DD, and a rare early example of Stan Lee shutting the fuck up and letting the art tell the story. It really wasn’t until the 2000s that comic book creators en masse figured out that you could tell a story that relied heavily on images rather than words.
But Daredevil was one of the books that led the way on the early adopters of this style of storytelling, especially during the Frank Miller period.
But this is what I really want to talk about: Mike Murdock, Matt’s alter-ego, who he claims is his “twin.” At this point in the story, Karen Page, Matt Murdock’s love interest, and Foggy Nelson, Matt Murdock’s best friend, hang out with Mike a lot more than Matt. And, they both know he’s Daredevil. In the sequence above, Mike Murdock stages a phone call to convince his friends that he’s not Matt Murdock. In other words, he’s revealed his biggest secret—that he’s DD—but only one layer deep into his identity.
At the same time, Matt, Mike and Karen are in a love triangle.
People deride the Mike Murdock storyline as far-fetched, but so is a guy with super-senses. I think it’s just great comics.