Murdock and Marvel: 1978

Comics Over Time

Episode 16 - Murdock and Marvel: 1978

This week Marvel starts to steady the ship, even as the Distinguished Competition is kneecapped by their corporate overlords. Prices go up! Prices go down! Great new companies sprout up! Established companies die! And as usual there are predictions about the impending death of comics. Welcome to 1978, everyone.

Preshow

• Listener Mail from Zach
• Duane at Fan Fusion (https://www.phoenixfanfusion.com/)

The Year in Comics

Notable and Newsworthy

• Dr. Strange TV Movie: https://archive.org/details/dr.-strange-1978-movie

Industry Trends

Eagle Awards

The Year in Marvel

Chaos continues and a big name leaves...again.

Events & Happenings

New Titles

New Characters

Series Ending

Who's in the Bullpen

• Marvel Comics in the 1970s by Eliot Borenstein (https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501769368/marvel-comics-in-the-1970s/)
• ROOKIE OF THE YEAR: Frank Miller

The Year in Daredevil

Appearances: Daredevil #150-155, Marvel Two-In-One #37-39, Human Fly #9, Thor #271, Marvel Team-Up #73 and Fantastic Four Annual #13

Writing credits: Jim Shooter (150), Roger McKenzie/Shooter/Kane (151), McKenzie (152-155)

Pencilers: Carmine Infantino (150, 152), Gil Kane (151), Gene Colan (153-154), Frank Robbins (155)

• The year begins with Daredevil looking for Killgrave. Meanwhile, another of New York’s elite that was manipulated by Killgrave hires the Paladin to hunt down Killgrave as well. Eventually Daredevil and Paladin meet, briefly fight and part ways.
• After a bad dream, Murdock decides to come clean to Heather Glenn about his Daredevil secret and tell her that Maxwell Glenn is innocent and he’s working to find the person responsible. While waiting for Heather to come home, he answers her phone and learns Maxwell Glenn has committed suicide in prison. When she arrives, he still comes clean and Heather blames Daredevil/Matt for everything including Maxwell Glenn’s death. She then disappears.
• In the Marvel Two-In-One, Matt Murdock is called on to represent Ben Grimm as he’s trial for causing too much damage in New York but leads to Daredevil briefly working for the Mad Thinker whom is out to get Grimm. However, with the Help of Vision and Yellowjacket, they are able to take down the villain.
• Knowing he can’t fix his relationship with Heather, Daredevil orchestrates an intervention/meet-up between Debbie Harris and Foggy Nelson in Central Park – which leads to them deciding they are going to get married again. While in Central Park, Daredevil has another run-in with the Paladin.
• Next Daredevil is lured into a trap with Heather Glenn as the bait by Mister Hyde and Cobra. After a lengthy battle that includes the Billy Club being destroyed (again) and Hyde and Daredevil falling from the 12th floor of Glenn’s apartment complex, Daredevil is captured.
• That leads to an epic final show-down in which Daredevil must take on the Jester, Gladiator, Hyde, Cobra (and briefly Paladin) who are under the influence of Killgrave. This will be our spotlight story for the week.
• The year ends with Daredevil experiencing mysterious headaches which is causing him trouble with his radar sense. We also learn Death-Stalker is working on a plan to get Daredevil.
• At the Storefront, Murdock interviews and hires a new assistant. During the walk to dinner, Murdock learns Black Widow is in town with the Avengers so he bails on Becky Blake and Foggy. As Daredevil, he invades Avengers mansion taking down Beast and Captain America and calls out Black Widow saying “She’ll pay dearly”

New Powers, Toys or Places

New Supporting Characters

New Villains

This Week's Spotlight: Daredevil #154 September 1978 "Arena"

Recap

Why We Picked This Story

The Takeaway

The Strange Case of Jack Kirby

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.