Badass Panels, Volume Seven: Daredevil #276

So here's how awesome the Ann Nocenti/John Romita Jr. run on Daredevil is: There's an issue where Daredevil spends twenty-two pages doing nothing but laying around in a park and fighting a murderous vacuum cleaner.

It happens during "Inferno," along with some other great moments, and it's great. And it's not just that I long to see super-heroes engaging in life-or-death struggles against household appliances either--although really, who doesn't? See, in what may be the only case of this happening ever, Nocenti and JR Jr. did some of their best work during company-wide crossovers.

And that's what brings us to tonight's subject, from a little thing you might have heard of called ACTS OF VENGEANCE!

Here's how it all goes down: Due to the evil machinations of Loki, a bunch of super-villains get together and decide to fight people that aren't their arch-enemies (leading to great stuff like Magneto taking on the Red Skull and leaving him buried alive), and Daredevil gets stuck with none other than Doctor Doom. This does not bode well.

And what bodes even worse is that Doom decides to show the Kingpin how to send an assassin after somebody, and delegates his task to ULTRON, THE GENOCIDAL ADAMANTIUM ROBOT, who, if you'll remember from all those times he smacks Thor and Iron Man around, tends to be just slightly out of Daredevil's league.

Even better, Doom decides that the only way to focus Ultron's tendencies to exterminate the Human Race onto one man is to merge all twelve of his previous personalities (including the relatively benevolent Ultron 12), thus creating a robot that's even crazier than normal, what with all the voices in his head and the engaging in robotic mysticism by buliding a sacred mound out of his own discarded heads.

Yes, dear reader, that is awesome.

Fortunately for Daredevil, kicking it in upstate New York for the duration of the story, he has some backup.

Unfortunately, said backup consists of two Inhumans and a woman in what may be the worst exercise outfit in the history of comics:



Meet Number Nine, a genetically modified "perfect woman" with the fashion sense of, well, a blind ninja acrobat, which I imagine is the foundation of her relationship with Daredevil. Her turn-ons include jogging, a good sense of humor, and having existential debates about the nature of freedom with schizophrenic robots. Turn-Offs: Being ritualistically murdered by same.

Ultron takes quite a liking to her when she stumbles on his meditations amidst a circle of Ultron-Heads mounted on stakes, and after smacking Gorgon and Karnak around for a little bit, grabs her and starts hiking up the ersatz mountain, all the while trading thoughts on philosophy and how he'll reach perfection once he gets to the top, at which time he can then go back to killing Daredevil.

Daredevil, meanwhile, does not intend to take this lightly, and decides that desperate times call for awesome measures:



Just so we're clear on this, that is a blind man driving a truck up a mountain of robot heads. Clearly, there can be but one outcome.



Needless to say, driving a truck into Ultron doesn't exactly cause as much damage as Daredevil would've liked, and neither do the combined attacks of Gorgon and Karnak, two of Attilan's mightiest warriors. Therefore, it all comes down to this.



But how, I ask you, how could Daredevil possibly stop a robot that has stood up to the mighty hammer of Thor himself?

Answer: In the most badass way possible.



Oh snap.

Wait for it...



DAREDEVIL BEATS ULTRON TO DEATH WITH A STICK.

Seriously, unless you're a professional shark wrangler, a blind ninja lawyer picking up a branch and hitting a genocidal robot so hard that his head gets knocked off is probably the toughest thing you'll see today.

---

More Panel-by-Panel Badassery:
| Volume One: Captain America #194 |
| Volume Two: Ode to Punching |
| Volume Three: The Question #2 |
| Volume Four: Impulse #3 |
| Volume Five: Batman Adventures #3 |
| Volume Six: Iron Man #200 |