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CLAW
The Original Daredvil's Arch Nemesis
Friday, May 18, 2007
One of the Golden Age Daredevil's first foes was the impervious Claw. The Claw battled Bart Hill's alter-ego in Silver Streak Comics #7 in the early 1940s. What thereafter ensued were some of the most exciting chases, battles and escapes in comics history. The Claw, huge, menacing and able to breathe flame, shoot lightning and enlarge himself at will, suffered a series of fatal blows. Daredevil used his boomerang to gouge Claw's eyes. He whammed the massive monster with a metal girder. He even used a stick of dynamite to explode the Claw's esophagus and injure him from the inside out. But none of this killed the resilient rebel. By the time Daredevil got his own comic title, The Claw had resurfaced, this time antagonized by another villain, The Ghost who also sought to and (seemingly) successfully extinguished the menacing creature at several turns. Once striking him in a vital neck artery, the Ghost was sure he'd secured final victory against his nemesis. But before long and after the disappearance of the Ghost, the Claw was back again. Finally in Daredevil #31 (July 1945), readers were promised "The End of the Claw." And after years of rendering bullets, explosions, boomerangs and hand-fighting powerless, the Claw goes out in a lackluster blaze of gory when he's cut down by an electrical deathray in the comic's final strip. 
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