Monday, July 16, 2007

Silver Age Comic Trivia XI

Who was the first costumed villain that Daredevil faced?

Hint: Spider-Man fans would be well familiar with this bad guy (and no, it's not the Ox, again)

Yesterday's Answer: Kathy Kane and her niece Betty were of course the dynamic duo of Batwoman and Bat-girl, featured regularly during the early days of the Silver Age! In the wake of Dr Wertham's 1954 Seduction of the Innocent book, which attacked comic books in various ways, including suggesting that Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson were homosexuals, DC Comics wanted to make it perfectly clear which team their boys were playing for. And thus creating female counterparts to Batman and Robin, in whom the heroes could display great interest, seemed like an easy solution.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you hadn't said "costumed" villain, I would have guessed The Kingpin...but since he's costumed..I don't have a clue. The Vulture??

Pagan Mnemosyne said...

Wasn't it Stilt-Man?

Kimota94 aka Matt aka AgileMan said...

Vulture and Stilt-Man are both good guesses, for different reasons.

The Vulture was only the 2nd costumed villain faced by Spidey (in Amazing Spider-Man # 2, after he'd gone up against the Chameleon in the 2nd story of issue # 1) but ol' birdbrain Adrian Toomes didn't take on DD anytime early in his career (that I can remember).

And Stilt-Man was one of the earlier DD foes, but didn't come along until Daredevil # 8, by which time DD had already thrown down the gauntlet with Electro (the correct answer), the Owl, Kilgrave the Purple Man, the Matador, as well as Mr Fear and the Fellowship of Fear (which was basically just the Eel and the Ox). They could really pack 'em full of super-villains back then, couldn't they?