Daredevil’s best Marvel Comics fight was against a vacuum cleaner

It’s a scorcher in New York City. As the sun shines on Spider-Man and his team of Avengers, Fantastic Four, and X-Men, it shimmers and sticks to the blacktop as the heroes defend New York City from demonic forces determined to bring hell to Earth. This is Inferno, the backdrop of 1989’s Daredevil #262, by untested Marvel editor Ann Nocenti and star-artist-on-the-rise John Romita Jr.

Daredevil then fights against a vacuum cleaner on that scorching hot day. Und he loses. And it’s great.

It shouldn’t work. This should be an entry in some “Top 10 Silliest Fights In Marvel History” list. Yet, there’s a deadly seriousness to the issue that elevates a lowly household appliance into something transcendent. Readers are forced to confront the difficult question of who will win. Daredevil … or a demon-possessed vacuum cleaner?

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Nocenti, at the time of the publication of the book, was one year into an unfinished run. A Marvel editor best known for overseeing Chris Claremont’s epic tenure on Uncanny X-MenShe had joined the book to fill in for Frank Miller and has never left.

Nocenti began his career with Marvel by responding to an ad. The Village Voice that she’d mistaken for a job in writing smut, wasn’t a traditional fit for comics. Still, she became a quick advocate for the medium, saying, in one intervew, “I sincerely lied […]Pretending to know what a comic is. I was astonished by the explosive energy once inside the citadel […]. This whole situation seemed to be subversive. Why was all this psychedelic power crammed into such tiny, badly-printed packages?”

John Romita Jr. was her partner in the book. He comes from a much more distinguished family. His father-slash-namesake was a comics legend, the one time Art Director for Marvel, and Romita Jr. had already proven his prestige with storied runs on The Amazing Spider-Man & Uncanny X-Men. His intense linework fueled Nocenti’s creativity to boiling points of emotion.

They experienced huge swings during the year leading up to. Daredevil #262. They tackled the first story featuring Kingpin since Miller’s fabled 1986 “Born Again” arc, often lauded as the greatest Marvel comic of all time. Romita Nocenti and Romita were the creators of Daredevil’s iconic femme fatale Typhoid Mary. Before Mary turned the knife and crushed Matt Murdock’s heart, Mary broke his mind and dropped him off a bridge.

DaredevilIn the immediate aftermath, #262 is opened. Daredevil is left to perish under a bridge and faces his most formidable foe: A vacuum cleaner.

Let’s take a step back

Image: Marck Silvestri/Marvel Comics

The line wide Marvel event comic “Inferno” was born out of a conflux of simmering story beats, behind the scenes drama and the shifting market for comic books that resolved themselves in a crossover that spread through 14 series and 40 issues where hell literally breaks free on Manhattan. The fiction of Marvel Universe had little to no connection with Daredevil. Editorially, Nocenti was responsible for the X-Men.

Given her close involvement in the arc — and the undeniable fact that no comics writer can resist word play — it made sense that Nocenti would want DareDevilTo tie in to an event that all kinds of hell beasts cause havoc. As the beasts in question aren’t from ActualHell, but there’s more Stories from the CryptInferno is a nether dimension of the sane, called Limbo. In most cases, Inferno’s carnage ends up looking like a B-Movie type of horror.

Not in Daredevil #262. A vacuum is seen creeping over to the body of a man who has been beaten and bloodied. While the narration confirms what we already know, the art allows us to see the opposite. “A vacuum is an inanimate object. A dead thing. A vacuum can’t breathe or think. The vacuum lacks will. […]Vacuum is stupid metal. A vacuum can’t hurt you.” All this as the malicious machine mounts Matt Murdock, twisting techno-organic tendrils around his neck.

Matt Murdock’s pissycat

Image: Frank Miller/Marvel Comics

Beginning with Frank Miller’s shift from merely drawing DaredevilDrawing Helping to plot it, Matt Murdock was beaten to death. This is what makes a Daredevil story modern. Alex Maleev, Brian Bendis, and Alex Maleev defeated the hero, exposed his identity, and sentenced Matt to death in their title run. Murdock is now in an unending, downslope spiral. Ed Brubaker took over where the two left off. Writer after writers have chipped away at the hero — a ruined romance here, a family betrayal there, more concussions that you can count.

But as the first consistent writer to follow Miller’s seminal run, it was Nocenti who elevated the crucifixion of Matt Murdock from a one-off quality to a fundamental theme of the character — the devout Catholic Matt Murdock’s own mortification of the flesh. This man is broken and fallen. He must be punished. He must be punished. DaredevilRomita and Nocenti revere this moment in #262 as demonic or not demonic vacuum cleaners. They’ve spent their entire time together tearing down Daredevil’s life. He’s not a superhero, he’s hardly a man, and in this fallen state even a household appliance is getting the best of him.

The night before his Crucifixion, praying in the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus cried “Abba, Father, all things are possible to thee; remove this cup from me; yet not what I will, but what thou wilt.” (Mark 14:36 RSV) In his own agony, beset by a vacuum, Daredevil cries out.

It’s a scene where Romita, inker Al Williamson and colorist Max Scheele stretch to their most impressionistic. The idea of color and shapes take over crisp art. Murdock trades Stick, his father-figure and mentor. He’s tired, his right leg broken, his body bruised, his will no longer present.

Image: Ann Nocenti, John Romita Jr./Marvel Comics

Like a child, Matt screams, “I’m dead, I wanna stay dead! […] I don’t wanna be born!” The vacuum creeps nearer with a sinister “Vrrrrrr.”

Daredevil cannot defeat this vacuum. Stick also knows it. But, most important, the readers believe the man who has no fear can fall to the vacuum right now. Stick asks Matt to trust in something greater than him, perhaps not God but similar. The reason that Daredevil can defeat a vacuum cleaner isn’t that he is a trained brawler or that he can do tricks with a billy club or that a childhood accident that took his sight and replaced it with a sonar sense. Daredevil can have the certainty of what he hopes for and the conviction that he has seen. The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen has blind faith.

It is not an uncommon trait to have the ability to be persistent. It’s a great trait to have – despite being defeated, fall and then rise from the ashes again. It’s why we root for Rocky to go the distance, or for Luigi to rescue his brother from the haunted mansion. Daredevil’s uniqueness is in the fact that there is no good reason to doubt his ability to do what he does. The Man Without Fear can’t be driven by desire, but by faith. His faith in God, his friends and city. Even when he doubts, and he often does, he pushes through — and keeps the faith.

Romita and Nocenti give Daredevil the moment of victory. His faith that the world is not a cold, dead place gives him the strength to rip the vacuum’s cord from his neck. “I don’t care how cruel, how dark, how horrible – I want life! All of it!” he screams as he rends the very bag from its motor. “It’s dark, but it’s mine!”

Image: Ann Nocenti, John Romita Jr./Marvel Comics

Nocenti’s writing has never been subtle. You need to hear what Nocenti is trying to say: The human spirit has resilience. The Daredevil of her Daredevil will defeat Ultron using only a stick and a stone. He’ll travel to the pit of Hell itself to battle the devil. He is confident that he will overcome any impossible hurdle he encounters, as can we. It doesn’t matter if we’re facing a global pandemic or the shadow of war or a depression so deep that something as small as vacuuming seems insurmountable. It is possible to overcome.