Hornhead and No Face

The Question- Daredevil

“Hornhead,” as he was often referred to by the “head”-happy Marvel writers of the ‘60s and ‘70s (cf: “shellhead,” “webhead” etc), would seem to be natural fit with Batman, right? Frank Miller’s Daredevil run presaged his subsequent Dark Knight, after all, and his emphasis of Batman as a driven paranoiac has stuck with subsequent creators. But as I’ve said before, I’m wedded to the Batman = Cap pairing.

And so we come the Question. I’ve mentioned before that Steve Ditko’s post-Marvel material for Charlton has been collected in the DC Archive Action Heroes vol II: his Captain Atom and Blue Beetle yarns therein suffered for the lack of a equal collaborator, in my view. But the Question is, unlike the above two, is not a conventional super-hero. Rather, Vic Sage is a pulp hero, like the Shadow, transferred into a mid-to-late 60’s urban environment.

That environment was one that reflected an America that Ditko seemed to not much like. He saw a ravenous, quick-to-judge media; an unthinking, irrational general public; unscrupulous businessmen; squishy relativists and whiny liberals; and above all, dirty hippies!

By this time, Ditko had become a diehard devotee of Ayn Rand’s objectivism, which is premised, among other things, upon ironclad notions of “right” and “wrong” as objective facts. So the Question —while modeled on Will Eisner’s Spirit, the Dick Tracy villain the Blank and other pulp characters— was created as Ditko’s instrument of righting wrongs, which include the types of behavior described above. The Question’s visual design is one of my favorites: a featureless, “blank” face, tailored suit, trench coat and fedora.

These stories are completely singular, in that I don’t believe that Rand’s ideas had a greater representation in the popular culture of the time than in these stories, which would have been more or less regarded by the general public as a part of a genre that was nothing more than a diversion for children. I would be very surprised if anyone could cite any super hero comic book story that crosses the line into pure dogma to a greater extent than Ditko’s Question material does —Ditko’s self-published Mr. A books don’t count, as those stories continue his Question leitmotifs into, as Neil Gaiman pointed out in a BBC documentary last year, the realm of outsider art.

In any case, the Question character wasn’t published from 1967 until 1985 (barring a few stories in the ‘70s), when DC appropriated Charlton’s “action hero” characters. The pairing with Daredevil rests upon Denny O’Neil’s take on the Question in a 1980s series, which (in my understanding) saw to it that the character's philosophies were adjusted; it was probably intended to be DC’s answer to Miller’s groundbreaking DD run (the first eight or so issues have been collected in a trade recently, which I ain’t bought yet). I attended a panel at the New York ComicCon two weekends ago that included O’Neil: he described the mission of Ditko’s Question therein as one of pure “vengeance.”

But two iterations of the Question have clearly become vastly better known than either Ditko or O’Neil’s. Alan Moore’s Watchmen saw the character reimagined as the even more morally inflexible and extreme Rorschach, and Bruce Timm’s Justice League Unlimited animated program used him as a Fox Mulder-styled conspiracy theorist.

Commonalities:
Both are solitary creatures of the night stalking urban areas and rarely interact with other heroes, and are melee fighters of great distinction. Both have endured tremendous personal trials.

Differences:
The Question is not blind and has not had his remaining senses enhanced. He has however been shown to possess something resembling a radar sense, if I can possibly interpret as such the little acknowledged addition of an ability to “talk to cities” that was introduced in a series by Roarin’ Rick Veitch.

Alternate histories:

QU: Charles Victor Szasz is an orphan who, through great struggle, becomes a crusading journalist in his troubled home city. He takes on the guise of the Question in order to challenge widespread crime and corruption in his hometown. He endures many massive setbacks, including the public revelation of his secret identity.

DD: Matthew Murdock is a sightless orphan who, through great struggle, becomes a crusading lawyer in an unforgiving city. He resolves to adopt the identity of Daredevil to combat corruption and crime. He works alone, and is eventually beaten to near-death, after which he reevaluates many of his views. until he contracts cancer; before he dies, Murdock passes the Daredevil mantle over to a friend.