Murdock and Marvel: 1966

Comics Over Time

Episode 4 - Murdock and Marvel: 1966

1966 saw America sink even deeper into Vietnam, with war deaths tripling from 1965 to 1966, Ronald Reagan was elected governor of California, and the first artificial heart surgery was performed. It was a big year in American pop culture as well, with both Star Trek and the Batman TV show debuting and the Beach Boys releasing their “Pet Sounds” album. On the Daredevil front, our hero entered his first full publication year, with a full 12 issues for Duane to revel in!

Preshow

• Our first No Prize award
• Moon Knight Back Catalog

The Year in Comics

New Comics, Creators & Characters

Big Moments

Best Selling Books... and Marvels

The Year in Marvel

Starts and Ends

New Characters

Big Moments

Who's in the Bullpen

• ROOKIE OF THE YEAR: Jim Steranko

The Year in Daredevil

Appearances: Daredevil Issues 12-23, Amazing Spider-Man Annual #3 and Amazing Spider-Man #43

• New Artist for books 12-19: John Romita Sr.
• New Artist for books 20-23: Gene Colan
• More multiple book story arcs this year.
• Murdock leaves New York via a Cruise that gets boarded by Pirates and is kidnapped to the Savage Lands where he befriends Ka-Zar and Zabu
• Referenced DD and Spider-Man's first teamup in Spider-Man #16 during issue 15
• Foggy decides to impersonate Daredevil to impress Karen. Hilarity ensues.
• Interesting Note on Issue 18 “There Shall Come a Gladiator”. Stan Lee only wrote the first 7 pages of this book with “Dandy Denny O’Neil” to finish the story because Stan had to leave for vacation.
• Matt Murdock is abducted by the Owl and brought to his island hideout to defend a Judge who previously sent him to Prison. As Daredevil, he saves the Judge and flies them both off the island just as its volcano erupts.
• Murdock decides he’s going to tell Karen how he feels about her. Even if it means it hurts Foggy. Though that never actually happens before the year ends.
• Daredevil finishes off the year with a final battle with recurring villains The Masked Marauder and the Gladiator.

New Powers, Toys or Places

This Week's Spotlight: Daredevil Issues #22 November 1966 “The Tri-Man Lives!” and #23 December 1966 “DD Goes Wild!”

Recap

Why We Picked This Story

The Takeaway

Batmania and Endgame. The dangers of getting too big into pop culture.

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.