Daredevil #124, page 3

Before the time of the plague, I was browsing tables at the NJ Comic Art Convention. Amid the knot of sudoriferous misanthropes set up at the show (not counting Will), I came upon a table with a gorgeous Colan/Palmer Daredevil #91 page. Secondary to the aspirational pricing barrier, the page was stickered as "DD/Black Widow break-up page." I nodded indulgently at such perfidious mendacity, and held my peace. My scathing 35 page dissent is available upon request.


There can be only one.


The Black Widow breaks up with Daredevil on this DD #124 page from the twilight of Gene Colan's long and fruitful association with both characters.


Natasha Romanoff and Matt Murdock met in DD #81, paired up in DD #84, and their partnership lasted for forty issues, from 1971 until 1975. The Black Widow reappeared in the Daredevil comic over the coming decades, but never in a co-starring role again.


If Stan and Jack's Fantastic Four run of 102 issues (plus six annuals) is the Mt. Everest of history's greatest comics, and their Thor stretch is K2, then Gene The Dean's nearly unbroken, 81-issue string of Daredevil comics from #20-100 (Sept. 1966 - June 1973) deserves its own peak in the Himalayas, as well. Colan returned to pencil a handful of issues between 1974 and 1979 (this is one of them), and a final eight-issue gift to the fans in 1997.


Gene had many years of fine work ahead of him in 1975 when he returned to draw the Widow/DD split. It's not even his final instance drawing Natasha and Matt, but this page does seem like an affectionate window on a lost time, never to be repeated.


Oh yeah... underneath the art correction in panel four is another Daredevil figure that looks pretty identical to me. Maybe writer/editor Len Wein asked Klaus Janson to portray more melancholy in DD's glutes via an art correction.