Tuesday 3 April 2007

The Colour Purple


Daredevil 154. Boy I loved that issue when I was a kid I must've reread it a thousand times. It's got it all - a hero in peril, a damsel in distress, four (that's right count 'em four) 'major' supervillians (yes, I considered the Jester a major supervillian in my youth so sue me) and a pair of purple fetishists.

In this issue Dardevil awakens to find he's been captured by Zebediah Killgrave aka The Purple Man. Hey stop sniggering, the Purple Man is a dangerous villian, his awesome power is not be taken lightly!!

Old Purp has thrown everything but the kitchen sink at DD in this issue:

*GASP* He has dropped DD into the yard at Ryker's Island Prison!

*GASP* All the crazy, blood-thirsty inmates are under his command!

*GASP* He has DD's current beau Heather Glenn in his thrall holding a gun to her own head!

*GASP* He has recruited Mr Hyde, Cobra, Gladiator and the Jester to kill DD!

*GASP* He knows DD's secret identity!

*GASP* He says really mean things to him!

It's a classic 70s superhero throwdown (brilliantly drawn by the great Gene Colan)as DD battles Glad and the boys, kicking asses and taking names. Purp's plans really go down the drain when fellow purple fetishist and sometime hero Paladin shows up and shoots him.

With everything lost Purp runs for the watchtower with DD in pusuit. He's too arrogant to admit defeat so he attempts to use the Watchtower's flashlight to blind his foe only to discover:

*GASP* It has no effect. It isn't an act like Killgrave assumed.

*GASP* Matt Murdock IS REALLY BLIND!

Killgrave's reaction is a classic moment:

He of course goes over the wall and down to the rocks below.

That moment really got me where I lived when I was a kid. The villian undone by his superior attitude to the feeble blind lawyer. *Mwah* Pure brilliance. Isn't that what Daredevil comics are all about.

If it ain't it oughta be!

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