Murdock and Marvel: 1965

Comics Over Time

Episode 3 - Murdock and Marvel: 1965

Daredevil swings into his first full year, and for both the comics industry and America at large it is a time filled with transformation and more than a bit of fear for what the future holds. Marvel is ascendant. Other companies are trying to adjust, and the world outside the window seems to be on fire. Welcome to 1965.

Preshow

• Duane and Marvel Snap
• Dan and Woodworking

The Year in Comics

1965 was a difficult year in American politics and culture. Comics largely stayed clear of outright commentary on civil rights or war, but Selma, the death of Malcolm X, and the Watts riots made it increasingly difficult for comics to continue ignoring black Americans. Similarly, the Vietnam and rising opposition to it began to change war (and superhero) comics. America and Russia also were accelerating the space race, fueling even more space and science plots.

New Comics, Creators & Characters

Big Moments

Best Selling Books... and Marvels

The Year in Marvel

1965 was another great year for Marvel Comics, as a number of the creators, characters and storylines that would be important to the company’s future enter the picture. Not everything went well, though, and there were a number of missteps, including a line-wide rebranding.

Starts and Ends

New Characters

Big Moments

Who's in the Bullpen

• ROOKIE OF THE YEAR: Roy Thomas

The Year in Daredevil

Appearances: Daredevil Issues 6-11, Journey into Mystery #116, Fantastic Four (1961) #39-40, X-Men #13 and Fantastic Four Annual #3

• New Artist for books 6-11: Wally Wood (who also wrote book 10)
• Daredevil has a costume change starting in book 6. Gone are the yellow hood, arms and legs. All are now red.
• Full page panel poster of Namor vs Daredevil in issue 7.
• First time Daredevil traveled outside New York – Lichtenbad (issue 9)
• More single-story books until we get our first 2-book story arc (Issues 10-11) a suspense thriller involving the Organizer
• Daredevil goes to a monthly release starting in November
• After unmasking the Organizer, Matt Murdock leaves the Nelson and Murdock law firm and New York City.

New Powers, Toys or Places

This Week's Spotlight: Daredevil #7 April 1965

Recap

Why We Picked This Story

The Takeaway

Daredevil is a Soap Opera for boys

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.