Beyond Cincinnati: Bengal vs. Daredevil

Daredevil #258
Writer: Fabian Nicieza
Penciler: Ron Lim
Inker: Jim Sanders III
Letterer: Diana Albers
Colorist: Bob Sharen
Editor: Ralph Macchio
Editor-in-Chief: Tom DeFalco
Released: May 3, 1988

On Jan. 22, 1989, the Cincinnati Bengals played in Super Bowl XXIII, which featured one of the greatest finishes of any sporting event I've watched. Unfortunately for the Bengals, they were on the losing end.

Eight months earlier, in his first appearance, a Marvel villain who shared their name and color scheme debuted with a pretty tough match-up of his own: taking on the Man Without Fear himself, Daredevil.

“Daredevil” #258, by Nicieza and Lim, came during the ongoing run of Ann Nocenti and John Romita Jr. It's by definition a filler issue, but it sure doesn't read that way.

The story opens not in Hell's Kitchen but in Vietnam (in 1968), where an American soldier, Janes, is holding a rifle to the head of an emaciated villager. The rest of his unit is split between amusement and disgust until a grenade is lobbed into their midst. Willie Lincoln hurls it away but it detonates soon after leaving his hand, seriously injuring and blinding him.

In the present day, Willie awakens and calls another member of his unit, one of the only ones that can understand what he's going through. But the man who answers the phone is attacked and murdered by a guy wearing a tiger-striped mask. He picks up the phone and says, in Vietnamese, “Did the jungle breathe?” – similar to something Janes asked the villagers on the opening page. Willie heads over to the legal clinic where Matt Murdock, aka Daredevil, works and asks Matt to help him get in touch with hornhead.

A flashback reveals Bengal, the killer in the tiger mask, was a child who survived after the soldiers opened fire, massacring the village in the wake of the grenade attack. He's hunting down members of the unit but finds Daredevil waiting when he tries to make a move on Willie.

Daredevil attempts to reason with his foe, who removes his mask, expecting that to illustrate why he's on this mission of vengeance. Of course, he doesn't know Daredevil can't actually see. It's not until Bengal speaks that DD begins to pick up on the fact that he's not from around these parts.

Bengal vanishes into the shadows and Daredevil confronts Willie, who fills him in on the rest of the story. As he and his fellow soldiers were evacuated by a chopper piloted by James “Rhodey” Rhodes (because even before being acquired by Disney, the Marvel Universe was a small world after all), the enraged, grief-stricken boy jumped onto the landing bar of the helicopter. This somehow prevented the chopper from reaching the needed altitude, so Janes stomps on his arm until he lets go and plummets to the conclusion of his origin.

A few days later, Bengal and Daredevil face off in Central Park, trading blows over several pages. DD finally gains the upper hand, while mentally lamenting the tragic effects of war. He brings the unconscious assailant back to Willie's apartment, unsure what to do with the grown man whose traumatic childhood set him on this path.

When Bengal wakes, he looks at Willie's face and... I don't know, but something happens that makes him jump from the sixth-story apartment. Daredevil, having apparently never read a comic book, assures Willie the assassin could not possibly have survived a fall from that height.

I think the idea was that Bengal figured out Willie wasn't one of the ones who shot the other villagers and felt remorse. But they tried to cram a lot of stuff into that final page, and it wasn't very clear.

Despite that, this was a solid story that didn't require any knowledge of then-current Daredevil events. It's probably among the Vietnam-centric Marvel stories that have since been retconned to feature the nation of Sin-Cong, thanks to the sliding time scale that keeps all the events perpetually modern.

I'm a fan of Nicieza and Lim, but I'm glad I didn't read this story when I was 8. It's very intense and balances the atrocities of war with the idea that some of these young men were in over their heads and not solely to blame for those atrocities. It would have been too much for 8-year-old me. It's practically tame compared to some contemporary content, but the violence and intensity are necessary for the story.

Nicieza would continue Bengal's story in “Marvel Comics Presents” #15 and in the pages of “New Warriors.” I remember him mainly from “Avengers: The Initiative,” where he served on a shadow squad assembled by Henry Peter Gyrich (who never met a super team he didn't mess with).

In the interest of equal time, I'll have another post soon about a character who shares a name(ish) with the Bengals' opponent, the Los Angeles Rams.