Daredevil didn’t have a super villain he could call his own until he ran into the Owl, Leland Owlsley, in his third issue.
In his first two exploits, the Man Without Fear had dealt with the crime boss who’d had his father murdered for refusing to throw a prize fight, and then Electro, a castoff super-powered enemy of Spider-Man’s.
But Owlsley was an original, a Wall Street wizard and criminal mastermind who possessed a mutant ability to fly, or rather glide, augmented by certain experimental drugs.
“To glide, the Owl must leap from a height of not less than 20 feet,” noted The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. “The distance he can glide is affected by ambient air currents and the original height from which he leaps. The Owl’s glide ratio (rate of drop to distance traveled) has demonstrated enough variation to presume some form of psionic assistance.”
Owlsley’s wealth enables him to employ sophisticated technology, such as silenced helicopters, and he bought himself a flashy lair — the Aerie, which looms from the New Jersey Palisades toward Manhattan. As you might have guessed, its imposing Art Deco-ish façade resembles the face of an owl.
The Owl also has talons — razor-sharp mechanical ones — and wears vaguely wing-like capes that help him to maneuver in the air.
Leland Owlsley even made it into the superb Daredevil TV show, though in a less flamboyant form.
The ever-alliterative Stan Lee introduced the villain in a story titled The Owl, Ominous Overlord of Crime! Owlsley has framed his accountant for his own crooked financial dealings and driven him to suicide. But when authorities accuse him of involvement, the Owl demonstrates his contempt for their allegations by choosing the name of a lawyer from the phone book at random — Matt Murdock.
Daredevil’s career as a defense attorney often provided a useful plotting springboard for superhero adventures.
“I’ve always preferred Daredevil to Spider-Man,” Orson Welk recalled. “I used to like Spidey a lot, and I think he has one of the best assortments of villains in comics history. Doc Ock, the Scorpion, the Green Goblin, the Vulture, the Chameleon, the Sandman, the Lizard, the Rhino — all great characters.
“By comparison, Daredevil’s villains always seemed kind of anemic to me: the Owl, the Matador, and the Stilt-Man all seem like B-listers. The Gladiator was pretty badass, I admit. I always thought Mr. Fear had a lot of potential, as did Death-Stalker (despite his bad ’70s name). The Kingpin had to be borrowed from Spider-Man, and Bullseye was effective, but wasn’t created until the late ’70s and has been overused since.
“And Spidey has had a well-developed cast of supporting characters over time, whereas DD’s has been fairly limited. But I think I outgrew Peter Parker and his problems, whereas the schisms Matt Murdock has in his personality remain interesting to me.”
I remember when I first saw the cover of Daredevil 1, I regarded the character as a variation on the Spider-Man template — a cheerful, acrobatic costumed crimefighter. It was only when I read the story that the differences became apparent.
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