Synopsis / Summary / Plot
Last issue Daredevil and Black Widow were defeated by Kraven the Hunter. And now Kraven is about to throw unconscious DD off a cliff into a rock-strewn Pacific Ocean. Widow recovers from a drugged dart and staggers forward to stop him but she's too late. DD wakes up as he's falling. However both Natasha Romanoff and Kraven are confused to see him disappear before hitting rocks or water.
Policemen including the duo's friend Paul Carson try to arrest Kraven, but he bowls them over. However Carson manages to stop him enough for BW to down him with a 2-footed flying kick to the head (probably swinging on her Widow's line just off-panel). Still weak from the potion Natasha accepts Paul's comfort.
Before finding out what happened to Daredevil we spend a few panels with Lucretia Jones, the TV reporter who's been investigating Daredevil. Her director warns her about getting too personally involved with the subject.
DD blacked out again when he was teleported, and now wakes to find himself in a metallic building underwater with the hum of machinery behind the walls. And on the walls some raised alien symbols which seem to lead him through a maze to a huge door. Which opens automatically as he approaches it. Inside he finds an alien paradise surrounding a bald but beautiful woman standing motionless with almost no heartbeat. Matt Murdock assumes she in a trance, and touches her to wake her. Her immediate response is to strike him with a lightning-fast chop for daring to disturb her meditation.
The imperious mystery woman betrays the fact that she wasn't expecting him to be able to find his way here, and she wasn't ready to confront her prisoner yet. She claims to be many things including a priestess of Titan and he is her enemy, a Thanos-Thrall. DD doesn't know what she's talking about, but trips her with his billy-club cable when she attacks him again. The Titanian in turn doesn't believe his ignorance and hits him with a mental blast and telekinetically relieves him of his weapon.
Matt plays defeated and asks who she is. The woman is interested that Thanos didn't tell him about her and decides to rectify the situation. She says she doesn't know her own birth name. A computer she created called her Madame MacEvil (a reference to Iron Man #54), but the Titanians named her Moondragon.
When she was a little Earth girl her parents died in a car crash caused by a UFO. A Titanian named Emlot transported her to Titan and took her to the Titanian leaders Mentor and Kazantra. But the couple had enough trouble looking after their young son Thanos. So they told Emlot to take her to the Shao-Lom monastery to be raised by the monks. There she blossomed into an excellent athlete and martial artist, philosopher and geneticist.
But meanwhile Thanos had grown in evil. He conquered Titan (see Captain Marvel #27) and destroyed the monastery, leaving Moondragon its only survivor. She escaped to Earth. But Thanos has set his sights on ruling the universe, 1st step Earth. He has agents on the planet called Thralls. Moondragon is intent on opposing him, in part using her genetic skills.
But 1st she looked round for Earthfolk to use in her plan. In IM#54 she caused a fight between Iron Man and Sub-Mariner to study their fighting skills. Then she learned that Iron Man and Captain Marvel were Thanos' foes. Their conflict was based on the East Coast of the US so she moved her undersea base to the Pacific to keep it hidden from them. Here she allied with a human who convinced her that Daredevil was a Thanos-Thrall. And because the inhabitants of San Francisco treat him as a hero they are obviously all Thralls too, and so must be destroyed. She brought DD here so he can't stop her.
We now learn that Angar the Screamer, Dark Messiah and Ramrod (most of DD's recent foes) were her genetic creations. (We saw her in silhouette with Ramrod in #103.) We see Dark Messiah reforming where he dissipated at the end of #97-98, Ramrod waking from the coma he fell into in #103, and Angar rediscovering his anger (we met him in #100-101). Moondragon has reactivated them all.
But now it's Murdock's turn to get angry. He grabs Moondragon and shakes her, saying in her arrogance she has made false assumptions. If she could really read minds she'd know she was wrong. The priestess of Titan mind-melds with him to uncover his lies, but instead discovers the truth. She realises she's been on the wrong side.
But Moondragon's human ally chooses this as the opportune moment to make his play. And he turns out to be Murdock's law firm boss Kerwin J. Broderick. Who uses 1 of the ubiquitous alien guns to seemingly kill his 'partner'.
And up above a menace called Terrex rises out of the ground near Black Widow and Officer Carson.
I'll be documenting #107 but not #106, so here's a brief synopsis of it:-
Kerwin Broderick explains what's been going on. He's long been the secret master of San Francisco, accepting bribes from the underworld and bribing politicians. But then Daredevil moved to the area and started attacking the villains and new law partner Matt Murdock wouldn't follow Broderick's orders. Then Moondragon came to him for help against Thanos and he realised her science could give him even more power. She created Angar the Screamer, Dark Messiah and Ramrod for him and has now given him Terrex. And when he has merged with Terrex he will have absolute power.
Terrex has the power of life, to make things thrive and grow or make them wither and die (including people). But his default mode is to absorb life from things to make himself grow.
Moondragon isn't dead - she's used her Titanian training to slow her life processes down to almost nothing in order to slow her death. She gets Daredevil to put her in a regenesis machine. But she has to use her mental powers to give him sight so he can follow her instructions to work the machine. She recovers.
They meet up with Black Widow and fight Dark Messiah and Ramrod. Angar and his girlfriend Janice meet Terrex, who senses that Janice is his 'enemy' and so ages her to death. Moondragon reverts Dark Messiah to his human form. Terrex arrives with Broderick in control. DD can't fight well with unfamiliar sight replacing his radar sense so he gets Moondragon to make him blind again.