The San Francisco Experiment
This section covers the issues set in San Francisco featuring both Daredevil and the Black Widow, written first by Gerry Conway, then by Steve Gerber.
Daredevil #87: "From Stage Left, Enter Electro!"; 21 pages
Writer: Gerry Conway
Artist: Gene Colan, pencils, Tom Palmer, inks
Matt and Natasha barely have time to settle down in their new home in San Francisco when they find themselves having to prevent Electro from causing havoc on the Coit Tower.
We are now formally at the beginning of the San Francisco era, something Gene Conway had been working toward since the whole Mr. Kline storyline at the beginning of his run. Inspired by a trip to The City By The Bay by Conway (although my suspicion has always been that there was already an intention to relocate DD to the west coast, judging by the later issues of Roy Thomas' run), Matt and new girlfriend/partner Natasha 'The Black Widow' Romanova rented out a mansion and got to work. The move was initially popular enough that the book was retitled Daredevil and The Black Widow for a bit...although that spike was short lived, and led to the next writer, Steve Gerber, moving Matt back to New York and his more-or-less 'classic' supporting cast.
And as for the supporting cast...Conway begins creating it by introducing 'Ironguts' O'Hara, who will serve as Matt and Natasha's police foil for the length of the run, and former Widow associate Danny French. Quite frankly, the new supporting cast never quite caught on with fans, which might be the reason the book resorted to insanely complicated science fiction plots under Gerber. Particularly risible is French, who has a strangely stilted 'hip' patois and is in the mix only to throw some doubts into the burgeoning Matt and Natasha relationship. It always seemed like the romance angle was doomed at the start--which may have been Conway's point--but French is such a cardboard cut-out, you know they could've done better. Luckily, French disappears after the 'Project Four' storyline.
This story is in the phase of the San Francisco period where Conway was, puzzling enough, still using old enemies from Daredevil's New York years. And while Conway had mostly chosen villains that either hadn't been seen for years (Killgrave and The Ox were the villains of the days on either sides of this issue) or concentrated on a character whose identity had a history of changing hands (Mr. Fear), here we have Electro--fresh from an appearance in Amazing Spider-Man #82--roughly two years before in 'real time' but relatively recently in Marvel Time. Electro, in fact, cites Frisco's lack of Spider-Man as being the reason he moved out West and curses DD for showing up. This will become a frequent refrain amongst villains as more and more characters relocate to cities other than New York--hell, the Owl gets to recite this list of woe twice, when he's in Chicago in The Claws of The Cat, and again when DD briefly returns to San Francisco at the tail end of Steve Gerber's run.
The portrayal of Electro is...strange. It's not just that the villain gets his costume tweaked (a redesign that not only doesn't stick, but isn't even portrayed on the two covers to the issues in which it appears). It's that Conway introduces a strange psychological quirk where he continually switches between the colloquial tough-guy-speak the character has always used and a near-Shakespearan, overtly theatrical bluster. Matt dismisses this weird behavior as part of a 'king-size persecution complex,' but does nothing with this insight, preferring instead to rely on his own derring-do to drive the villain away. Not surprisingly, this interpretation of Electro was never seen again--when he pops up again two issues hence, he's back to being just another Brooklyn Bum with super-powers.
But even with the strange mis-cues, the issues succeeds primarily because Conway and Colan take full advantage of the change in setting. Even though we do have Matt complaining that the Golden Gate Bridge is, you know, just a bridge and that the streets are, you know, streets, Gene Colan takes full advantage of this novel setting with lots of cinematic shots of Daredevil swinging against the backdrop of a nearly vertical landscape. Many of the individual panels (like page three's near-ariel shot of the Golden Gate, which makes it look nothing like every other bridge) are simply breathtaking. Conway also gets points for using a recognizable landmark for his combat in the Coit Tower, and in creating with Colan a well choreographed fight scene that allows Daredevil to do what he does best. Colan's panels seem to literally fly and swoop around the circular tower, and should be held up as an example of how to do a straightforward, effective comic book fight scene.
Even with its stumbles, "From Stage Left, Enter...Electro" is a wonderful example of what could've happened in the San Francisco run. Conway was right in the interview elsewhere on the site; San Francisco is very well suited for noir action stories, and here we see why.