3 out of 5

Let’s crunch some numbers.

Dark Messiah storyline (#97 – 107): 2 stars, Mandrill storyline (#108 – 112): 3 stars, Death-Stalker storyline (#113 – 115): 5 stars, Owl storyline (#116 – 117): 2 stars

Total: 12 / 20 stars = 3 / 5.  MATH ACHIEVED!

Daredevil was an interesting title for Gerber, crossing through his formative years as a fill-in writer on Sub-Mariner / Shanna up through getting his feet wet with new books like Marvel Two-in-One and ending during the frenzied peak of his career, when Duck and Man-Thing and Defenders were all going on.  And as those starred storylines above can attest, you can see the attributes of each of these eras during Gerb’s 20 issues on the book.  The letters pages are similarly interesting, with discontent from the readers prompting ongoing promises that the creative team are trying to shape things up, and the lines are very clear as to when the book really becomes Steve’s at issue #113.  But the shake-ups weren’t all down to the writer.  Juggled artists / letterers / colorists were nothing new back in the day, but moreso than the other books onto which Steve would drop-in and drop-out – either as an opportunity, as with DD, or as the Bullpen’s attempt to gather up strands and tie ’em together, something at which Steve was generally capable – moreso than on any of the other billions of Marvel 70s books Gerby touched, Daredevil was plagued with constant art upheavals, attributing to the book feeling like it couldn’t figure out what it wanted to be.  And although Gene Colan’s occasional cameos made classic DD fans happy, until Steve got to use him while writing in his classic gothic narrative mode for the Death-Stalker bit, these one-off Colan appearances further hampered things, like the series couldn’t get by without a helping hand from a classic.  Otherwise we got a dudes ill-suited to the style (Rich Buckler, Don Heck) or, when Colan was present, inkers who embellished his swoopiness way too much for the colorful adventures Steve was initially scripting.  This comboed with some pretty consistently sloppy coloring in the early books and letterers who couldn’t handle the page-filling exposition, dropping bubbles in confusing, flow-halting order.  But after 11 issues (the Dark Messiah bit, wrapping up some Conway leftovers) of aping what came before, with way too many god-like superpowers grandstanding and DD too over-explainy, the series got Bob Brown, instantly formalizing the look and finally able to adequately detail the acrobatics while also maintaining a sense of real space on the page, and then, at issue #113, paired with Vince Colletta on inks… suddenly everything just seemed solid.

The Mandrill storyline isn’t bad, but instantly notable for dropping Black Widow from the name and moving DD back to New York from San Francisco.  The storyline is early Steve and still a little shaky, a little too obviously political and still a little too “big” for a Daredevil story, but it gives him a chance to wrap up some of his own ghosts via Shanna the She-Devils appearance, and also begins to give us a taste of the Gerberverse ethics that the writer would build upon during the Man-Thing years.

Death-Stalker, though.  It clicks.  Right away, Steve has fully given in to how he writes best: an omniscient narrator, with characters serving the text instead of bubble-thoughting their way through the issue.  The issues are drenched in shadow and mystery, and Death-Stalker is a wonderful Gerber villain for DD, supernatural, spooky, and lacking in a clear “take over the world and get money” plot.

Issue #116 gets off to an okay start, Steve thinking, perhaps, to resolve some Black Widow bits back in San Fran, but as he left the book after the next issue, which he only plotted for Claremont, Chris does his ham-fisted shtick and slots DD’s narrative style back to the “let me explain everything I’m doing and come up with forced reasons why I can’t stop the bad guy” era, but that aside, is left with the task of closing out everything for the next writer, so the issue is just like a downhill slope into a puddle of shrugs.

Gerb definitely had bumpy runs on other books, but normally it would be on something formative, and he would jump off the ride once he’d gotten it spinning.  Daredevil was slightly different.  Maybe not Marvel’s top-seller, but not a no-name book, and with some classic runs already under its belt.  So it took Steve longer than usual (something he addressed in the letters) to figure out how to write it; it took editorial an unfortunate amount of time to settle into an art crew; and given the opportunity to do The Defenders, Gerb had to leave just as he was getting into something good, the ending unfortunately piddling out as a result.  Not a great read overall, then, but historically fascinating for followers of the writer.  (Like me.)