Daredevil #47
Daredevil #47, titled 'Brother, Take My Hand!', stands as one of the most socially conscious single issues of Marvel's Silver Age — a self-contained story that wove together the Vietnam War, physical disability, and racial equality at a time when mainstream superhero comics almost never engaged with such subjects directly. Stan Lee himself singled it out as the story he was most proud of across his entire career, a remarkable distinction given the breadth of his output. The issue arrived roughly two years before the more celebrated Green Lantern/Green Arrow 'relevance' era at DC, making it an early marker of the medium's drift toward grounded, humanistic storytelling. It also introduces Willie Lincoln, a Black Vietnam veteran and former NYPD officer — one of the first Black supporting characters to receive this depth of characterization in the Daredevil series.
In "Brother, Take My Hand!", Daredevil brings his heroic presence to the front lines in Vietnam, where he crosses paths with Willie Lincoln, a newly blinded soldier grappling with loss and uncertainty. Back in New York, Lincoln faces a legal battle rooted in his past, leading him to Matt Murdock—whose own struggles with justice and identity resonate deeply with the soldier’s plight. With Gene Colan’s moody artwork and Stan Lee’s grounded storytelling, this 1968 issue delivers a powerful, character-driven tale of resilience and solidarity. Cover by Gene Colan and George Klein.
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The issue emerged from the collaborative 'Marvel Method' workflow that Stan Lee and Gene Colan had developed on Daredevil since Colan joined with issue #20: Lee would outline the plot verbally, Colan would tape-record the conversation and then draw the issue with considerable creative latitude, and Lee would script the dialogue over the finished art. By the summer of 1968, when the story was being assembled, public opinion on the Vietnam War had shifted markedly against the conflict, and that cultural pressure almost certainly shaped the issue's unusually reflective tone. Colan's page layouts throughout 1968 had grown increasingly experimental — slanted, jagged compositions that broke from Marvel's standard grid — and that kinetic visual language gives the USO sequence and the New York courtroom scenes an immediacy unusual for the era.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First appearance of Willie Lincoln, a Black Vietnam veteran blinded in combat who becomes a recurring supporting character in the Daredevil series.
- First appearance of mob boss Biggie Benson, the villain who framed Lincoln on a bribery charge and later attempts to have him killed.
- Written and edited by Stan Lee, penciled by Gene Colan, inked by George Klein, and lettered by Artie Simek; cover also by Colan and Klein.
- Stan Lee publicly cited this issue as the story he was most proud of from his entire comics career.
- The story was structured as a standalone, villain-of-the-month format — no costumed super-villain — making it unusual for the Silver Age Daredevil title and an early precursor to the 'street-level' tone later associated with the character.
- The issue's back matter includes a house-ad page ('Two More Triumphs for Marvel!') promoting Sub-Mariner and Spider-Man titles, which accounts for those characters being indexed to this issue; they do not appear in the main story.
- The main story was reprinted in the Gene Colan Tribute Book (Marvel, 2008), the Stan Lee Marvel Treasury Edition (Marvel, 2016), Daredevil Epic Collection Vol. 3: Brother, Take My Hand (Marvel, 2017), the Daredevil Omnibus Vol. 2 (Marvel, 2023), and The Best Marvel Stories by Stan Lee Omnibus (Marvel, 2022), among several international editions.
- A later Marvel retcon — The Marvels #1 — repositioned the issue's Vietnam War setting as taking place in the fictional nation of Sin-Cong to reconcile the story with the sliding timescale of Earth-616.
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Daredevil entertains the troops in Vietnam, where he meets Willie Lincoln, a black soldier who has just lost his sight due to a combat wound. After returning to New York, Lincoln goes to the welfare department, where Karen Page directs him to Matt Murdock to fight a bribery charge that happened before he went into the service. The mob boss who set up Lincoln decides to eliminate him, but Daredevil puts a crimp in that plan.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).
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