Episode 7 - Murdock and Marvel: 1969

Its 1969, and comics are returning to normal after the disruptions of the Marvel Age and Batmania.  Small publishers continue to fail, even as Marvel and DC expand their offerings, and small independent publishers begin to test the waters.  Marvel continues its expansion, but does so in some new directions, and Daredevil decides to stop keeping so many secrets. It’s another busy year in the world of comics!

Preshow

• Announcement: Off next week. Next episode will be March 27th.

The Year in Comics - 5 Key points

Prices skyrocket

Batman sales sink to their lowest level EVER

Generational battles at DC and other publishers

Charlie Brown and Snoopy were on the moon

The alternative comix scene continued to expand

The Year in Marvel

With their distribution bottlenecks removed, Marvel continued to expand their publishing line in 1969, although they did so mostly by turning their eye back towards genres that had been left behind in the superhero boom of the mid-60s.  Stan Lee greenlit three new romance / teen titles, two horror/suspense books, and a western in 1969, while continuing to publish all the Marvel superhero titles that the company had expanded with in 1968.  Signs of change were everywhere at Marvel, as Jack Kirby moved to California and new faces popped up in the bullpen with increasing regularity.

New Titles

New Characters

Big Moments

Who's in the Bullpen

• ROOKIE OF THE YEAR: Chris Claremont

The Year in Daredevil

Appearances: Daredevil Issues 48-59 and Avengers #60

• Stan Lee is now listed as Editor as of issue 51, with Roy Thomas being brought in to write.
• Gene Colan continues as artist for most of the books.
• Barry Windsor-Smith gets artist create for issues 50-52
• Old “Here comes…” and Daredevil logo return in issue 48
• Stiltman returns again to go after Foggy, so Murdock acts like a jerk to him and Karen Page (who just returned to the office) causing another falling out of the group.
• Foggy wins the election for District attorney
• Matt Murdock briefly decides to give up by Daredevil, only to get pulled back in
• Saxon’s robot is defeated by Daredevil and is re-programmed incorrectly by Saxon to take out Biggie Benson – which it does before Daredevil can stop it.
• Daredevil is in need of an antidote or could potentially die, but is nowhere to be found. The Black Panther assists in finding him before it’s too late.
• Issue 54 was a retelling of the Daredevil origin story that convinces Daredevil that Matt Murdock is no longer necessary – leading Murdock to fake his own death because Saxon knows Murdock is Daredevil.
• Now only Daredevil, he’s challenged by Mr. Fear (and old foe from early in the DD run) who gets the better of him and makes him look bad. In the rematch, we learn that Mr. Fear is actually Starr Saxon. Saxon battles Daredevil and loses, breaking his neck in a fall from a flying hovercraft platform.
• Daredevil follows a grief-strickened Karen Page to Vermont and her parents' home where he must help tangles with a horseman threatening people that go near the estate – which turns out to be Karen’s father. It is after the events of this story he shows Karen that Matt Murdock and Daredevil are the same person.
• Daredevil finishes off the year taking down Stunt-Master and Torpedo, who were hired by crime boss Crime Wave, much to the dismay of Karen who agreed to marry him if he retired his DD identity.

New Powers, Toys or Places

New Supporting Characters

New Villains

This Week's Spotlight: Daredevil #56 Sept 1969 “... And Death Came Riding!” and Daredevil #57 Oct 1969 “In the Midst of Life...!”

Recap

Why We Picked This Story

The Takeaway

Comics were everywhere in daily life

Questions or comments

We'd love to hear from you!  Email us at questions@comicsovertime.com 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.