THROWBACK THURSDAY: Daredevil #183 – Horns & Skulls

Throughout any long-running superhero epic, there are character conflicts that never find themselves resolved, and for good reason. There is no better weapon in the toolbox of a funny book writer than juxtaposition, and the team behind Daredevil #183 understood this when penning the first ever meeting between Daredevil and the Punisher. With a litany of modern interpretations of the relationship between these two almost as iconic as their original meeting, I thought it would be a good time to revisit this historically invaluable issue, which is seeing a reprint this week amongst your regularly scheduled pulls.

There is a lot one can take away from the craft of this issue. I was immediately enamored by the art in this issue more than anything else. Frank Miller has, unfortunately, become somewhat of a laughingstock in the eyes of the modern comic book reader with regards to his art, as the industry has largely transitioned into platforming iconic artists through variant covers. Frank is an artist who is lethal with regards to his interior storytelling ability, each panel of this issue an isolated moment of kinetic storytelling that goes above what the dialogue itself is able to convey. There is a brilliant sense of pace established by his understanding of what goes on between the panels, capturing the most important moments of emotion and motion where he can, leaving the flow of these scenes to be filled in by the reader.

The visuals of this issue don’t get caught up in being as realistic as possible, often ditching an attention to background detail for the sake of focus on our characters and their emotional expression. There are some pretty impactful moments where Miller pulls in close on expression via the characters’ eyes that say more than any overwrought word bubble or textbox ever could, and I often found myself stopping to soak that in. The panel work in general is very diverse, the somewhat lazy white space excused by Klaus Janson’s excellent attention to detail with the coloring.

As for the writing, this story is iconic for the introduction of a conflict between Daredevil and the Punisher that has been unshakable ever since. In classic Miller fashion, the characters here are entrenched in their beliefs without any room for nuance, leading to some questionable decisions that force the audience to think about their own puritanical morality in the face of a monster like Frank Castle potentially doing more good than the stone-code ethics of our title hero. That lack of nuance does have a cost, especially in the depth department of this issue, but seeing Matt try to navigate a subject matter as delicate as drug abuse in teenagers and contend with the effectiveness of the Punisher’s methods is so engaging on the surface that one can’t help but become instantly invested in the conflict of this issue.

It helps that the portrayal of these ideas is played as horrifying as possible. The opening is incredibly dark, but never once does it revel in any sort of romanticization of the subject of teen suicide and drug abuse. There is no room for thoughts and prayers, for any sort of debate, which not only keeps the pacing of this issue clean, but fully cements the reader’s focus on the main conflict of morality at hand. While this is all to be resolved in the following issue, the establishment of this idea is so enthralling here that one could read this and immediately understand why the endless fight between Daredevil and the Punisher has lasted for over four decades now.

Daredevil #183 is one of those Marvel Comics that we don’t see too often these days. It’s rife with grit, moral conflict, and a concrete belief in the values of its characters without feeling the need to paint anything in the kind of corporate sheen to make any one character more forgivable than the other. It’s locked deeply in the era it was written, and yet has continued to influence the genre almost four decades since it first hit stands back in 1982.