Daredevil #11

History

By the time issue #11 hit newsstands, the Daredevil Comics franchise was barely a year old but already under the confident editorial hand of Charles Biro and co-editor Bob Wood, the same team that would soon launch Crime Does Not Pay and reshape American comics. Biro had taken the character from its Jack Binder origins — a backup feature in Silver Streak Comics #6 (September 1940) — through the career-making 'Daredevil Battles Hitler' launch issue and into a sprawling wartime anthology; issue #11 continued that formula with cover and story contributions from Biro, Dick Wood, Bob Wood, Frank Volp, Carl Hubbell, Bob Montana, Lin Streeter, and Dick Briefer. The book was published under the Comic House Inc. imprint (the operating brand Lev Gleason used at the time), and the cover — a classic Biro 'tickle-bondage' composition featuring a grotesque villain — was later singled out for inclusion in the Fantagraphics hardcover Action! Mystery! Thrills! Comic Book Covers of the Golden Age: 1933–45 (December 2011), attesting to its place among the most visually striking covers of the era.

Trivia · 8 facts

• On-sale date: April 28, 1942 (cover date: June 1942), published under the Comic House Inc. imprint by Lev Gleason Publications.
• First appearance of villain René Venge (a 'Phantom of Notre Dame'-type antagonist linked to Daredevil's rogues' gallery) and villain Chico, both in the lead Daredevil [Bart Hill] story.
• Last appearance of Pat Patriot (Patricia Patrios), one of the earliest recurring female superheroes in Golden Age comics and a long-running anthology co-feature in this series; she exits here alongside new villains The Mallet and Tiang (both of whom die in the same story).
• Bronze Terror feature (Apache attorney Jeff Dixon) continues, illustrated by Dick Briefer with a notably praised splash page; Dixon was one of a very small number of non-white superhero protagonists in early 1940s American comics.
• Sniffer and the Deadly Dozen story involves the Dozen joining the U.S. Army in exchange for pardons — a 'misfit soldiers' narrative that predates and parallels the concept later popularized by the 1967 film The Dirty Dozen.
• Issue contains two stories with early art by Bob Montana — the artist who would shortly afterward create Archie Andrews for MLJ Comics, making these among his rarest superhero-era appearances.
• Also includes a Daredevil public-service strip promoting WWII War Savings Bonds and Stamps, reflecting Lev Gleason's use of his comics as direct wartime propaganda and fundraising vehicles.
• The cover by Charles Biro was reprinted in Fantagraphics' hardcover anthology Action! Mystery! Thrills! Comic Book Covers of the Golden Age: 1933–45 (December 2011), the only known collected reprint appearance of material from this issue.

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