Murdock and Marvel: 1985

Comics Over Time

Episode 23 - Murdock and Marvel: 1985

This year Marvel is all about the cash grab, and so we get Secret Wars II, a bunch of vaguely copyright-infringing kids books, and some fantastic Bill Sienkiewicz art that makes everything else worth it. Let’s talk 1985 in comics, Marvel and Daredevil.

The Year in Comics

Notable and Newsworthy

• Comics and Sequential Art: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33476.Comics_and_Sequential_Art

Industry Trends

Eagle/Kirby Awards

Dan's Favorite

The Year in Marvel

Events & Happenings

New Titles

New Characters

Series Ending

Who's in the Bullpen

• ROOKIE OF THE YEAR: Peter David

Dan's Favorite

The Year in Daredevil

Appearances: Daredevil #214-225, Fantastic Four #281, Marvel Tales #181, Spectacular Spider-Man #108-109, Marvel Fanfare #23

Writing credits: Denny O’Neil (214-18, 220-222, 225), Frank Miller (219), O’Neil and Jim Shooter (223), Jim Owsley (224)

Pencilers: David Mazzucchelli (214-17, 220-223, 225), Sal Buscema (218), John Buscema (219), Dan Jurgens and Geof Isherwood (224)

Inks: David Mazzucchelli (214-17, 220-221, 225), Ian Akin and Brian Garvey (218), Gerry Talaoc (219), Kim DeMulder (222-223), Mel Candido and Bruce Patterson (224)

• The year starts with the conclusion of the Micah Synn story that took most of 1984. Synn is weakened and running for his life. Daredevil saves Synn from Kingpin’s men and some homeless men before himself asking for help.
• Next was an interesting if not confusing western inspired story taking place in two different places and times that seemed to have a connection to Daredevil
• We learn in a story with the Gael that Glorianna works for the I.R.A. as the Old Woman of Beare
• We get another story with the Jester who breaks out of prison just so he can kidnap a noted actor and take his place for a tv production of Cyranno De Bergerac. In that story we see Daredevil dress up as the Jester and lead police around as a distraction allowing the Jester to finish his flawless performance.
• We got a really fascinating story from Frank Miller in which Matt Murdock doesn't appear as Daredevil at all nor does he even speak.
• Next, we get a tragic end to a long-time character. This will be our spotlight for this week.
• The follow-up to that story takes Daredevil/Murdock to Venice, Italy in which he succeeds in getting the patents back – but it doesn’t help his feelings of guilt.
• The Mudd Brothers kidnap Glorianna and Daredevil and Black Widow come to her rescue.
• We get a tie-in to Secret Wars with a character called the Beyonder that…in all honesty… Didn’t make much sense.
• The year ends with Daredevil taking down a new villain, the Saturion, and returning a locket to a blind man and then taking on another Spider-Man villain – the Vulture. There is also an epilogue with Black Crow was never followed on.

New Powers, Toys or Places

New Supporting Characters

New Villains

This Week's Spotlight: Daredevil #220 July 1985 “Fog”

Recap

Why We Picked This Story

The Takeaway

Quality counts less than we’d like.

Questions or comments

We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [e-mail] 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.