Daredevil & Black Lives Matter: the Sequel

I discussed Marvel’s representation of George Zimmerman’s 2013 trial for the murder of Trayvon Martin in a previous post. Though the KKK-based Sons of the Serpents had infiltrated the NYPD and New York judicial system, the Daredevil #28-29 story arc ends with Matt Murdock’s trust in the law unshaken.

That was before Zimmerman was acquitted.

Daredevil #31 reprises the Sons of the Serpent while again alluding to the Zimmerman trial. The issue was released mid-September, two months after Zimmerman’s acquittal. Mark Waid, now co-authoring with artist Chris Samnee, scripts Murdock’s narration in response to a live-televised verdict on a case that “has had the whole nation riveted—and sharply divided—for months.” The defendant “stands accused of following and shooting a ‘suspicious-looking’ Black teenager in her building — — who, as it turned out, was an honor-student tutor visiting a neighbor’s kid.” The defense team “built their strategy around self-defense, exploiting the fact that there were no witnesses but there were clear signs of a struggle. The prosecution, by contrast, paints her as a racist, armed vigilante who provoked a confrontation with an unarmed boy.”

Despite the change in gender, the parallels are overt. Zimmerman’s 911 recording includes his calling Martin a “real suspicious guy,” and the “honor-student” detail echoes popular descriptions of Martin. Zimmerman was acquitted on grounds of self-defense, despite the prosecution contending that he provoked the confrontation while acting against police instructions. Since Samnee’s art depicts only the courtroom, including one image of the female defendant, Waid may have updated the narration to include similarities later in the production process, since Zimmerman’s acquittal likely occurred after Waid scripted the issue and Samnee had begun penciling it.

The details serve only as a preamble to the Sons of the Serpent inserting false footage into the Black D.A.’s post-acquittal press conference, revealing the jury’s names and addresses and instructing viewers to attack them. Waid names the DA “James Priest” (possibly an allusion to Christopher Priest, one of the first Black writers and editors at Marvel in the late 70s and early 80s) and describes him as “more powerful than Al Sharpton and Cornel West combined,” making his (apparent) call to “show these repugnant cowards what justice is all about” a reflection on real-world Black activists — or at least the power they were perceived to hold.

Previous Sons of the Serpents episodes turned on a similar trope, casting a nonwhite character as a primary villain, but in this case it’s revealed that the DA had nothing to do with the doxing. Waid and Samnee also depict white police officers assaulting the DA.

Riots follow, “stoked by Serpent agitators planted city-wide.” Again, as with every previous Sons of the Serpent episode (in 1966, 1970, 1975, 1991, and 1994) Marvel is most concerned not with white supremacist violence but with the threat of violent Black protests. Waid reprises that narrative theme in the context of the early Black Lives Matter movement, which emerged in the immediate wake of the Zimmerman acquittal. Though Waid’s Daredevil narrates, “I can’t tell if I just saved a responder or a protestor,” Samnee depicts a white and open-handed officer narrowly escaping a trashcan thrown by a Black figure. The same page includes a white protestor throwing a Molotov cocktail, as well as a close-up of the open fangs of two police dogs.

Daredevil narrated prior to the verdict: “I am very protective of the jury system in this country. It’s far from perfect, but it gives citizens a voice in how justice is achieved, and that voice is generally reasonable and trustworthy. And then there are days like these.” Though Daredevil is depicted as heroically opposing the white supremacists controlling the legal system, his and so the authorial critique never extends to the system itself.

A #32-33 side plot into rural Kentucky both reaffirms the Sons of the Serpent’s KKK identity and also retcons a pre-KKK history. Samne’s costume design for the leader includes a pointed hood, and historical images of lynchings include glowing snake poles instead of burning crosses. Though the organization’s 1966 appearance had been its first appearance within the Marvel storyworld, Waid now establishes that the group is a secret society with a “200-year history.” Though Waid’s Daredevil insists “there’s nothing magical about bigotry and hate,” the retconned occult organization originally worshipped the biblical serpent, with “men of power and entitlement committing unholy acts of violence and cruelty” on “a million innocents.” Merging time periods, Samnee draws an anachronistically blonde man in a toga whipping a dark-skinned man, who, despite the Greek architecture in the background, is tied to what appears to be a wooden mast. The horrors of American slavery turn out not to be American at all.

Now, as Daredevil recaps in #34, “Instead of parading through the streets in hoods and robes … … they’ve gone undercover.” Javier Rodriguez, who returned as penciller on the same issue, draws a dozen white men removing their Sons costumes, throwing them into a bonfire, and redressing as businessmen, firefighters, and police officers, before dispersing into New York streets.

To battle the Sons’ current influence, Daredevil and a colleague hijack New York’s airwaves to reveal that the city has been receiving disinformation designed to destabilize it (an allusion to two previous Sons of the Serpent plots). Waid’s Daredevil scripts an anti-rage speech:

“Let that be our job. To shoulder that rage. Because if we as New Yorkers are going to take our home back from a band of manipulative bigots, we have to rise above our anger. […] They tell us our enemies are the immigrants down the street. Or the food stamp family next door. They encourage us to turn our fear into rage …”

The referent of “we” and “us” seems to be white New Yorkers, or at least non-immigrant ones and ones not in families receiving government food assistance. That changes:

“Pay close attention to your colleagues and peers. Ask yourselves which ones are constantly telling you exactly what you want to hear about your problems — — that it’s the blacks or the wingnuts or the one percent or the have-nots out to get you — — and then decide if that anger serves them more than it serves you. The “friends” and “comrades” who make you feel like a victim? Those people. They’re the enemy.”

While animosity toward “the blacks” has no white counterpoint in the speech (“wingnuts” presumably refers to any set of seemingly crazy people), the “one percent” and the “have-nots” are oppositional economic positions, and while “friends” is neutral, “comrades” connotes leftists. Though white supremacy could attract both white working-class members and white millionaires, nothing in Waid’s portrayal suggests the organization has leftist leanings. All of these varied viewpoints are dangerous because they leave “you” vulnerable to manipulation. Waid warns against, not white supremacy specifically, but political division generally.

After he is blackmailed into defending a leader’s son, Murdock declares under oath that he is Daredevil to reveal that the two judges are vying for leadership of the white supremacist organization, causing a platoon of armed and costumed Sons to storm the courtroom in #36, the series finale. Daredevil is victorious by forcing the Sons of the Serpent into the open.

The series also forces into the open how little Marvel changed since the late 60s and early 70s when fear of Black political movements spurred the creation of the original Sons of the Serpent stories, reprising them in response to later racial conflicts, including both the Rodney King and Trayvon Martin court cases.