Daredevil #6, Feb. 1965
Written with the fabulously flawless fantasy of… Stan Lee
Illustrated in the magnificently modern manner of… Wally Wood
Lettered in the screamingly sophisticated style of… Sam Rosen
This may be a bad issue, but the villains are actually pretty well-matched for Daredevil. Ox, an idiot from the Enforcers (who suck), the Eel, a guy with a slippery costume (who sucks), and a new guy with a gun that shoots fear gas (who is, sadly, the least sucky of the bunch). What I’m trying to say is that Daredevil sucks. Not in so many words, of course.
A wax figure sculptor accidentally discovers a gas that fills people with fear while trying to find a way to bring his models to life, so he becomes a masked villain named Mr. Fear. You’d do the exact same thing if you were him, don’t lie. He recruits two other villains who he knows won’t be too hard to control, Ox and the Eel, and together they stage a bank robbery by hiring some filmmakers to film them, so it seems like it’s all pretendies.
Daredevil happens across them and nearly stops them, but he gets hit by one of Mr. Fear’s fear gas bullets and runs away like a little scared baby. They encounter each other a couple more times, each time ending in the same way. FINALLY Daredevil overhears Ox talking about the fear gas and puts two and two together. His master plan to combat the fear gas? Stand next to a fan, and blow it back at the bad guys. Well… it works, I guess.
I can’t believe it seriously takes four times before Daredevil realizes that the gas is what’s making him suddenly afraid. He even specifically says, “It was right after Mr. Fear fired that pellet at me! All of a sudden, I became almost petrified! All I could think of was trying to escape! What’s happened to me? Have I turned… coward?” Of course not, you stupid idiot. Anybody in the world would figure out exactly what was going on in that situation.