Biography of Daredevil, 1966

The following is a biography of Daredevil in the year 1966.

Biography

Plunder family drama

Cruise to the Savage Land

Resigned to being forever detached from Karen and Foggy, Matt decided to take a cruise to the other side of the world to clear his head and plan his future. The cruise ship, the Odyssey, was soon attacked by a gang of pirates led by the infamous Plunderer—strangely enough, they were armed with ray guns. The Plunderer's crew quickly took control of the Odyssey, but Matt suited up as Daredevil and fought back. He soon got the upper hand, but the Plunderer threatened to send the ship's crew overboard in shark-infested waters, forcing Daredevil to surrender. The pirates took Daredevil hostage from the Odyssey as their only bounty. The Plunderer explained that he was in fact a noble named Lord Parnival Plunder who possessed both a yearning for the sea and a gift for engineering. He took Daredevil captive on his schooner and demonstrated its many technological wonders, including its ability to smoothly transform into a submarine.

Plunder explained that he essentially pirated to spite those who had mocked his dreams of building exceptionally advanced ships like this one. He sought not wealth, for he had plenty, but "pride and revenge." Plunder gave Daredevil the ultimatum: by the time they reached Skull Island, he would join the crew or be killed. Skull Island was in the Savage Land, a mysterious realm found beneath Antarctica which Plunder had found while searching for Atlantis. The submarine traveled for thousands of miles through a vast undersea channel until it finally surfaced on the shores of Skull Island. To Plunder's surprise, the island was in flames. The swamp men of the Savage Land had rebelled against Ka-Zar, the land's mighty champion and de facto leader.

The swamp men had left the island since the attack. Plunder led his crew ashore and they began unloading supplies—the excitement of the situation deemphasized Daredevil's ultimatum. Plunder's crew were suddenly attacked by Ka-Zar and his saber-toothed tiger Zabu. Daredevil tried to convince him that he wasn't an enemy, but the musclebound Ka-Zar beat him down all the same. Ka-Zar used a rock to knock the Plunderer's blaster shot astray, striking and detonating a cache of explosives and forcing Ka-Zar and Zabu to flee. Daredevil slowly came to and realized that Ka-Zar's beating knocked his radar sense out of commission, rendering him well and truly blind. He tried to escape, but shrapnel from the explosion struck him in the arm and took him down. Recognizing that Daredevil was costumed similarly to the X-Men, who had helped him previously, Ka-Zar took Murdock's helpless body to his cave home. He left to retrieve some healing ju-ju berries from a ravenous plant creature, but in his absence, a huge ape man named Maa-Gor entered the cave.

Family heirlooms

Deprived of his radar sense, Daredevil was forced to rely on his wits and combat training to supplement his human-level senses against the colossal, bestial foe. Despite his best efforts, Daredevil was soon all but defeated, but the Plunderer and his crew arrived, and the captain sent Maa-Gor running with a shot from his blaster. It soon became clear to the crew that Daredevil was blind. Plunder had come to the cave looking for Ka-Zar, but brought Daredevil along anyway. Parnival also let out an offhand comment that Ka-Zar was his long-lost brother. They found Ka-Zar and Zabu in the wilds, and Plunderer showed Ka-Zar a cracked silvery medallion he possessed. Ka-Zar revealed that he had one just like it, and the two fit together to form one perfect medal, proving that they were brothers. Ka-Zar held his own half of the medal dearly as Plunderer trapped him in an elaborate metal cage and took him aboard the submarine. The Plunderer apparently desired the completed medallion for reasons yet unclear, but would wait to retrieve it until he had more of an advantage over the mighty Ka-Zar. Ka-Zar managed to hand off the ju-ju berries to Daredevil, who felt his powers slowly returning to him.

The Plunderer's ship traveled to his castle in the British Isles, where his crew enjoyed a bountiful feast in celebration of his victory. By the time they arrived, Daredevil's powers were mostly functional, but he continued to play blind to maintain his tactical advantage over Plunderer. Plunderer took Daredevil into the dungeon where Ka-Zar was held, explaining that he would take the medallion from the Lord of the Jungle. Plunderer explained the nature of the medallion: his father, the first Lord Plunder, had discovered a slab of strange ore in the Savage Land during his globetrotting adventures. The ore, when struck, could produce catastrophic vibrations that destroyed metal objects around it. Lord Plunder carefully chipped off a small piece of the ore and forged the medallion into two halves, storing the central piece in a large vault that could only be opened by the medallion's vibration. Lord Plunder gave the two halves to his sons Parnival and Kevin—Ka-Zar—with the intent of keeping them close and loving. This tale revealed that Parnival's initial claim of searching for Atlantis was a lie.

The Plunderer pushed Daredevil into Ka-Zar's dungeonous pit, demanding that he retrieve the medallion or die. Daredevil let him do it, to get time to devise a plan of action. An enraged Ka-Zar attacked, but a fully powered and prepared Daredevil managed to bound off of Ka-Zar's back and leap out of the cell, kicking Plunderer down. He then helped Kevin out of the pit with his billy club, and Ka-Zar was pleasantly startled at the use of his British name. The two were attacked by Parnival's underling Slagg, who was soon betrayed and killed by the butler Feepers, whom the heroes took down easily. The simpleminded jungle lord dove from the nearest window, intending to flee back to the Savage Land. Daredevil ran after him, knowing he would only get into trouble on his own.

The Plunderer attacks

As Daredevil and Ka-Zar made their escape, they were blasted by an unseen stranger with a grenade rifle, knocking them down. Ka-Zar was rendered unconscious, but Daredevil's keen senses allowed him to remain awake. The man, calling himself Boswell, stole Ka-Zar's medallion half and radioed to Feepers his progress. Daredevil trailed Boswell's car back to the Plunderer's castle, where he witnessed Parnival confronting the traitorous Feepers. Boswell burst in and tried to shoot Plunder, but he dodged and Feepers took the bullet instead. Plunderer knocked out Boswell and took his medallion half, completing it with his own. As Plunderer made his way to the dungeon, Daredevil confronted him, but the police soon arrived with a bound Ka-Zar, accused of Slagg's murder. Daredevil made good his escape through the window as the police split up to find him and imprison Ka-Zar.

Matt recognized that Plunderer now had both halves of the medallion and a malicious desire to use them, but knew that he had to free Ka-Zar first. To truly be exonerated from the crime of which he was accused, Ka-Zar would need to stand trial. With no time to defend him himself, Matt contacted Foggy by cablegram to request his services—and to let him and Karen know he was alive following the attack on the Odyssey. Daredevil returned to the castle and trailed the Plunderer, with a new costume and a group of henchmen in tow, to the submarine landing site. The Plunderer had used the Savage Land ore, which he called the Plunderstone, to craft a "vibra-ray gun" that would atomize metallic objects. His followers wielded weapons that would be unaffected by the vibra-ray. While one guard was briefly separated from the group, Daredevil took him down and donned his costume as a disguise. Plunderer took his sub to a missile base in the north Atlantic, which he and his men conquered in a matter of minutes.

Examining the weaponry, Daredevil figured out that they were plastic, and radioed reinforcements telling them so. He attacked the Plunderer and his men, keeping them busy until American forces arrived with plastic weaponry to subdue Lord Parnival. Defeated, he confessed that Ka-Zar was innocent of Slagg's murder. Ka-Zar's trial had since begun, but it ended early and abruptly when the savage Ka-Zar broke through his bonds and was taken down with gas shells. Matt visited the unconscious Ka-Zar in the hospital, where he met with Foggy and Karen. They were overjoyed to see him, and he likewise. Matt mused that he had "gotten wiser in the past few months" and agreed to come back to work at Nelson & Murdock.

Stragg and the Ox

One day, Matt heard over the radio that the Ox, powerful strongman lackey for the Enforcers and Mister Fear, had escaped from prison along with one Dr. Karl Stragg after having been captured by Daredevil some one year prior. Daredevil quickly hit the city searching for signs of the fugitives, and soon heard of the Ox rampaging through the streets uptown. In truth, Dr. Stragg had tricked the Ox into a consciousness-switching experiment whereby Stragg's brilliant scientific mind was implanted into the Ox's powerful body, leaving the Ox's simple mind inside Stragg's small frame. Daredevil found the Ox approaching Karen on the sidewalk—she screamed, recalling her and Foggy's previous encounter with the Ox, but Stragg of course had no memory of that confrontation. Daredevil fought him, but the clever and powerful Ox took him down with a blow from a large pipe to the midsection. He dressed the unconscious Daredevil in a spare set of the Ox's clothes and kidnapped Karen, partly to learn her connection to the original Ox and partly to keep her from testifying to the police.

Daredevil awoke in police custody, having naturally been arrested for broadly matching the Ox's description. Foggy soon arranged Daredevil's release, but it was redundant nonetheless as the Ox had made himself known in the streets once again. Karen had been rescued by, of all people, the original Ox in Stragg's body, long enough to lose the new Ox, who grew more and more savage and simple the longer he occupied the brutish body. He went into a rampage on the police station heliport, where he and Daredevil fought once more. Daredevil tried to warn the Ox away from the edges, but he foolishly ran off and plummeted to his death. Given a new lease on life, the old Ox in Stragg's body intended to return to prison to see out his term.

Foggy's Daredevil masquerade

Turned against Spider-Man

One day, Matt, Foggy, and Karen saw a news report of the villainous Masked Marauder and his minions being rebuffed by Spider-Man upon attempting to attack the World Motors Building. Some days later, Matt heard a radio report of Daredevil being sighted in the city: in truth, the Marauder had disguised his goons as Daredevil and sent them one by one after Spider-Man in an attempt to turn the heroes against each other. When Matt suited up and went out into the city, he was confronted by Spider-Man, and the two fought. After an evenly matched contest, Daredevil got the better of him by wrapping him securely to a pole with his billy club cable. Matt knew this wouldn't hold him for long, and fled while he was still at an advantage. He later learned that the Masked Marauder had made off with an XB-390 engine from the World Motors Building during the fight with Spider-Man. He began to suspect that Spider-Man had deliberately distracted him to allow Marauder to make the heist. Returning to the office with Foggy and Karen, Matt looked on desperately as Spider-Man broke through the window and attacked Foggy, thinking him to be the real Daredevil.

Heroes united

Spider-Man interrogated Foggy, but soon relented and left amid Karen's pleas and the realization that Foggy obviously didn't have Daredevil's physique—nonetheless warning him in case he was involved. With Spider-Man gone, Matt noticed that Foggy now sought to sew doubt in Karen's mind about whether he really was Daredevil in order to impress her. Foggy and Karen left, and Matt suited up to take to the streets. Ironically, following this confrontation, Matt was convinced that Spider-Man wasn't his enemy. Instead, he continued to investigate the Marauder's robbery of the XB-390 engine. He listened in on a World Motors meeting from outside their skyscraper window and learned that the Marauder had neglected to steal the engine's fuel formula: while there were other methods of fueling it, this formula was the most direct. Daredevil went to J. Jonah Jameson at the Daily Bugle and convinced him to announce in a TV broadcast that Marauder and his supposed cohort Spider-Man had failed to capture the XB-390 fuel formula. His plan to lure both the Marauder and Spider-Man to the World Motors Building was set in motion.

The following night, Daredevil made his way to the building, but was cut off by an aggressive Spider-Man. This time Daredevil tried to convince him that they were on the same side, but Spider-Man didn't listen. Spidey and his overwhelming strength got the upper hand on this occasion—their fight may have continued, but they saw a large yellow blimp nearby. It was Marauder's blimp, disguised as a World Motors advertising vehicle. Spider-Man faced them head-on, insisting on fighting them without Daredevil. He easily disposed of Marauder's minions, but Marauder himself temporarily blinded him with "opti-blast" from his helmet. Daredevil took over and was naturally immune to the opti-blast because of his pre-existing blindness. As the minions tried to escape in the blimp, Daredevil shot it down with a single bullet, careful not to cause any casualties. As Spider-Man fled and recovered from his blindness, police and reporters arrived and concluded that he was in league with Marauder after all, but Daredevil stood up for his valor. The Marauder meanwhile escaped in the guise of a police uniform: down on the street, he overheard Karen and Foggy talking, and Foggy spoke in such a way as to imply that he was secretly Daredevil.

Foggy goes too far

Matt kept watch on Foggy as his pretending to be Daredevil grew increasingly ambitious. Foggy bought a Daredevil suit from a costume shop, the owner of which, Melvin Potter, struck him as creepy and abrasive. To better help him impress Karen, the owner suggested staging a performative fight for her and convince her that Foggy really was Daredevil. They arranged a meeting at the dark, foggy docks that night. Foggy took a cab there with Karen, and the real Daredevil tailed them. There, Foggy's scheduled opponent arrived, wearing an elaborate suit and calling himself the Gladiator. In truth, Gladiator was the costume shop owner in disguise, who bore a radical hatred of costumed heroes and villains, ironically believing that he could match their power with simply the right equipment. Foggy got into his Daredevil costume in full view of Karen, but the Gladiator had no intention of letting him win, and quickly knocked him out with a single blow. Gladiator saw Karen and went after her, but Matt intervened and fought him himself. Karen fled to the police before she could see any of the true Daredevil in action. Matt soon defeated the competent Gladiator after finding an opening in his armor and knocking him out. The police returned as Matt left the scene, leaving Foggy and Gladiator to come to—the dizzy Gladiator believed that Foggy really was Daredevil, and he was taken into custody. Foggy in turn was confused as to whether he'd blacked out and fought him. Matt knew that he would soon have to confront Foggy for his increasingly dangerous escapades.

The truth comes out

In the next morning's Daily Bugle was an exposé in which the Gladiator declared that Foggy was Daredevil's secret identity. Daredevil (in costume) confronted Foggy in his apartment, telling him it was time to put an end to his charade. Moments later, they heard over the radio that the Gladiator had escaped from jail, sprung by a group of unknown criminals. Daredevil went out to find any trail of Gladiator, but came up empty. When he returned to Foggy's apartment, a group of hoodlums were looking to attack him. Daredevil trounced the lot with a little help from Foggy, who grabbed a gunman from behind at a critical moment. One of the criminals foolishly mentioned the Masked Marauder, revealing the origin of the attack. Unbeknownst to Daredevil, the Marauder had been responsible for freeing Gladiator, and the two planned to unite against him. But news of this fight soon spread, along with the confirmation that Nelson was not Daredevil, and the villains were sent back to square one. For her part, Karen was overjoyed that Foggy wasn't Daredevil, and forgave him for pretending to be.

See also

• Biography of Daredevil, 1964-1965