In Tales of Suspense #51, Stan Lee introduced Marvel readers to The Scarecrow, a character who carried the same name as a Batman villain. Over at DC, Scarecrow has a chemical that makes people feel afraid, but Marvel’s Scarecrow couldn’t. He was just really limber.
Now, we meet Mr. Fear, who has the same chemical as the Batman villain–except he shoots it in a ray.
We also get to see Ox and The Eel, both from Spider-Man, where they were part of the Enforcers gang. Now they are Fear’s gang–The Fellowship of Fear!
Part of what makes Marvel’s “street-level” books so much fun is how the underworld all starts to tie together. Although Spider-Man would carry a lot of the weight of this effort in the 1970s, it really starts here, in Daredevil, bringing together low-level lowlifes from Tales of Suspense and Amazing Spider-Man, and showing how it’s not just the big pieces of the Marvel Universe that tie together, it’s the littler threads. It makes the whole thing feel very organic.
It’s not clear to me how Eel sneaks up on Daredevil in the panels above, what with him having radar and all. I mean, in this very same issue…
…he knows Ox is coming behind him.
True to Stan Lee’s fantasies about Hollywood (which were almost half a century away from being realized), the big fight happens on a movie set.
This battle ends with the villains getting away. Just about every one of Stan’s 1960s comics has two battles per issue. There’s the first one, where the hero loses, and the second, where he wins.
This time, Daredevil uses his brain and plays possum for the win.
Foggy gets hurt during that second battle and gets hospitalized.
And for reasons not worth explaining, Daredevil fights the hospital staff. Daredevil doesn’t have super strength, but he’s able to toss adult humans around like rag dolls.
