Murdock and Marvel: 1976

Comics Over Time

Episode 14 - Murdock and Marvel: 1976

Another year of Marvel and DC vying for minds and coins of comic book readers which is consolidating the industry despite some up and coming indie publishers. To that end, Marvel is now publishing over a 3rd of all comics in the U.S. But is it sustainable and at what cost? This week we'll look at all that, the return of Jack Kirby to Marvel and Daredevil's adventure with Uri Gellar in this week's spotlight.

Preshow

• Marvel Unlimited Show on a short break

The Year in Comics

The Big Stories

Industry Trends

1976 Top 10 comics

The Year in Marvel

Marvel puts out over 1/3 of all comics published in America in 1976.

New Titles (and lots of reprints)

Series Ending

New Characters

Big Moments

Who's in the Bullpen

• ROOKIE OF THE YEAR: Bob Layton

The Year in Daredevil

Appearances: Daredevil #129-140, Ghost Rider #20, Daredevil Annual #4

• Marv Wolfman is the writer for most of the appearances in the Daredevil series. Bob Brown (art) and Klaus Janson (ink) start off the year on art. Jim Mooney is on inks when Klaus Janson isn’t (133-139). Bill Mantlo wrote issue 140. John Buscema (136-137), John Byrne (138), George Tuska (Annual #4) and Sal Buscema (139-140) get art credits the latter half of the year.
• 1976 starts with an angry Man-Bull wreaking havoc after losing his court case (despite Matt Murdock representing him) and attempting to steal a heavy statue for the Matador before Daredevil can intervene.
• Matt opens his storefront legal clinic, Foggy loses his reelection campaign for D.A. to Blake Tower and Daredevil stops a human sacrifice in Central Park.
• Next Daredevil must deal with a new hero with impeccable aim in Bullseye, out in public and then under the big top of a circus.
• Daredevil and Uri Geller take down Mind-Wave during his attack on Wall Street. This will be the Spotlight story for this week.
• The Chameleon looking to make a quick buck becoming other people and ends up taking on Daredevil and Torpedo – whom Daredevil still doesn’t trust/believe. We also learn that Deborah Harris is missing but Foggy isn’t telling anyone.
• When been tested for several issue that the Jester is working on a plan to get Daredevil and now we find out what it is – Framing Daredevil for Murder of 3 NYPD. Daredevil tries to clear his name but the fake TV reports tell people to kill all super heroes and he almost gets hung. A final confrontation happens in Jesters deadly murder maze that ends up being more deadly for the Jester than Daredevil.
• Another kidnapping… This time Karen Page. Daredevil works with Johnny Blaze (aka Ghost Rider) to save Page from a new Death’s Head who turns out to be another old villain Death Stalker (who is seeking Paxton Page’s (Karen’s Dad) formulas to free himself). Ghost Rider burns him up with his hellfire. During the whole ordeal, Matt realizes he just wants to be friends with Karen and that he does love Heather.
• In Daredevil Annual #4, Daredevil and Black Panther try to stop a blackmail scheme while Namor wants the new technology to harness the ocean’s tides as power stopped. We get a new villain in Mind-Master, but his attempt to kill them both with mental energy shorts out his own mind in the process, reverting him back to normal.
• Next, Daredevil tries to find the junkie wife of a mad bomber who is devastating the city as well as a runaway boy with hemophilia.
• The year ends with Daredevil taking on Gladiator and Beetle at Grand Central Station after they escape from prison and hijack a train heading to New York. Daredevil saves some innocent bystanders. Gladiator seriously wounds Daredevil's back, but also wounds his partner the Beetle in his rage which takes him out of the action and allows DD to finish off the remaining foe

New Powers, Toys or Places

New Supporting Characters

New Villains

This Week's Spotlight: Daredevil #133 May 1976 " Mind-Wave and His Fearsome Think Tank"

Recap

Why We Picked This Story

The Takeaway

Falling apart from the inside

Questions or comments

We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [e-mail] or find us on Twitter @comicsoftime.

------------------

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.