Number 2196: Daredevil “slapping you to H... and back”

Daredevil is after a murderer in “The Case of the Killer Who Hated Death.” The law arrests Tonia as the murderer. Tonia is Bart “Daredevil” Hill’s friend, so he goes all out to find the real murderer. Like most costumed vigilantes in comic books he has no qualms about illegally breaking into prison and punching a prison guard with his fists, or hitting someone with his deadly boomerang...if it will help Tonia.

The story and art are signed by Charles Biro, who was also the editor.

From Daredevil Comics #3 (1941):

Number 2065: Daredevil aces the spinning chair

After his symbolic appearance in the splash page, Daredevil doesn’t show up in this story until page 10. The story is mostly about Daredevil’s secret identity, Bart Hill, joining the Air Corps and learning to fly. He survives the Air Corps physical, shown as a spin in an office chair (page two). On a training flight he even takes out a Japanese sub!

This story appeared in Daredevil Comics #10, cover dated May, 1942. It was written and drawn shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Patriotic fervor was high in those days.

Number 1282: The Claw and the Clawites

The Claw, here making his appearance from Daredevil Comics #27 (1944), was billed as “The World's Worst Villain.” The thought struck me when looking at him, he may not have been exactly the world's worst, but he was the tallest. I'm sure that if the Claw was around today some sharp sports agent would find a way to get him a multi-million dollar contract playing professional basketball.

I also like the little devils that do the Claw's bidding. But someone, for lack of a better name, came up with “Clawites.” It has a certain ring...the Claw and the Clawites. Could've been a rock band from the era in which I grew up.

Artwork on this tall tale is by Bob Q. Siege, who also worked for editors Charles Biro and Bob Wood on Crime Does Not Pay.

Number 1199: Homicidal hobo

Frank the Tramp is so bad he doesn't know how many people he's killed. “I guess hundreds —” he says to himself. “I kinda forgot —” Whew. Now that’s a bad guy. Frank avoids detection for a long time the way real-life serial killer Henry Lee Lucas reportedly did, by traveling around and varying his methods of dispatching victims. As Frank puts it in his final attempt at murder, “I've killed people all sorts of ways, but never with a live wire!”

In my opinion this story from Daredevil #22 (1943) is really only interesting because of Frank, not because of Daredevil, who just steps in when necessary. Certainly not by Daredevil’s kid gang, the Little Wise Guys, even though Frank’s crime spree is stopped because of their suspicions. Frank’s two wives are there to build up the story and provide Frank with victims. The critics of comics, crime comics especially, were sensitive to this sort of thing. Biro followed a criminal’s career, right up until the criminal’s bad end. That wasn't anything new in fiction, but in four colors, sold to children, it caused alarm.

This story is by Charles Biro* and drawn by Norman Maurer.

*According to David Hajdu in The Ten Cent Plague, Biro also used Virginia Hubbell as a ghost-writer, but the Grand Comics Database credits this story to Biro.