26.08.2026: DAREDEVIL (1964) #236 - AMERICAN DREAMER
Read this on the recommendation of a friend (Hi, Bear!) - I'm not a huge Daredevil fan, but I've read a few comics before and have a vague understanding of his timeline, so I'm not coming in blind.
The following is a pretty rambling recap. So, Black Widow works for a clandestine organization that goes unnamed in the issue, and is more or less under an employ of a doctor with cooky theories about the human mind and body. One of his experiments have gone haywire, a man by the name of Agent Hazzard, and Natasha is sent to deal with it. This comes shortly after Daredevil had to deal with a supersoldier named Nuke, who also went haywire and went on a murder spree. Also, all of Black Widow's co-workers seem incredibly misogynistic. Cool!
Agent Hazzard himself, the titular American Dreamer, is mentally unravelling. All the conditioning and mental experimentation done to him is coming undone. This would've been bad enough, if he was just your usual run-of-the-mill supersoldier, but as it turns out, the good doctor's experiments left him with an ability to stop other people's hearts - an ability that he lost control of. He sees the doctor who experimented on him, turned him into a weapon, in random people - a woman who went to highschool with him, a random man on the street, and even his own mother, whom he loves very much, and, without meaning to, stops their hearts.
I find Hazzard to be a pretty compelling character - he's aware of his own deterioration, he's aware that he's dangerous, but at the same time, he can't really stop himself. He sees Daredevil as Satan, come to take him to Hell, and almost welcomes it - though he won't go without a fight. He's been taught to kill, but they never taught him how to stop.
While at his mother's, he meets Tommy, a child that his mother took care of. Tommy, of course, wants to be a soldier - so Hazzard teaches him, after a fashion. He imparts on him a rambling, incoherent speech, in which he expresses that taking a life leaves you, the one who pulls the trigger dead, and compares himself to a piece of meat.
Widow and Daredevil don't stop him, exactly - he takes hold of Natasha's gun, and shoots himself, right between the eyes.
That's not entirely the end, though - the last image of the story is Tommy, with one of Hazzard's guns, rendered without eyes in the art by the shadow of his helmet, pretends to shoot out the window, while the 4th of July fireworks explode outside.
Hazzard's return, back from the Hell of war, brings nothing constructive - only death, planting seeds for another 'good Joe' to take his place.
