The Daredevils 4

 And with issue 4, I think we are up to April 1983.  I had a wilderness year after the UK Captain America comic was cancelled where my parents made it clear how they felt about superheroes - which is part of the reason why I didn't read this title when it was originally released. I am reminded with this issue as to how close they must have been to each other though as this one still has subscription offers for the Scooby-Doo comic, and I distinctly remember that being launched towards the end of the earlier title. 



Behind a dynamic Captain Britain cover, we get another instalment of his story from Messrs Moore & Davis. I don't think it's disingenuous to say that the artwork here seems a step up from the earlier issues - they seem more finished than they did previously - maybe Davis had more time to work on them. Notable this time around for featuring the US villain Arcade, as well as another early appearance of Betsy Braddock. It's an enjoyable romp - particularly when the staffers at Forbidden Planet get annoyed about the possible damage being down to their copy of X-Men 137. 

The Daredevil story comes from issue 162 which, apart from more developments in the Ben Urich subplot is a run of the mill story featuring the Hulk. The art is excellent of course but it's not one of the issues that Miller and co would be remembered for. 

As well as the Spider-Man story, there's a lot of text pages this time. There's a 3 page Alan Moore article about sexism in comics (part 2 to follow) - there's a 3 pager about Stan Lee which says that he is wrong for his insistence that there should be no long term character development in comics, There's a 2 page letter column which allows us to see for the first time how readers were reacting to the comic, and there's a quite barmy 2 page readers survey, which includes questions like "Do you belong to a youth group or cult of any kind? Are you a mod, punk, skinhead, rasta, hippy, biker or just a plain old-fashioned rugged individualist? Are you a New Romantic, a second-hand romantic or a slightly shop-soiled romantic?"

I look forward to seeing how the present the results ! 

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