Real Name: Lightning (see comments)

Identity/Class: Extradimensional/alternate reality (Earth-58914) canine

Occupation: Guide dog

Group Membership: None

Affiliations: Daredevil (Matt Murdock), Foggy Nelson, Karen Page

Enemies: None

Known Relatives: None

Aliases: None

Base of Operations: Manhattan, NYC

First Appearance: Comics Feature#33 (January-February 1985)

Powers/Abilities: Lightning was a trained guide dog, but was also an excellent actor (for a dog), as well as being extremely athletic and trained to fight humans.

Height: Unrevealed
Weight: Unrevealed
Eyes: Unrevealed
Fur: Brown and black

History:
(Comics Feature#33) - Lightning the Super Dog was the crimefighting partner of the vigilante Daredevil. Like his master, Lightning feigned being much more mild mannered in his secret identity, playing the role of Matt Murdock's guide dog.

Comments: Created by Mark Evanier.

   "In the summer of 1980, Marvel Entertainment Group President James E. Galton and Marvel Comics Publisher Stan Lee,...traveled west from their New York corporate headquarters to establish an animation studio in Los Angeles. In conjunction with the Emmy and Oscar-award winning animator David H. Depatie and his longtime production associate Lee Gunther, Galton and Lee formed Marvel Productions, Ltd.... The primary reason why Lee and Galton wanted to start a production company was that they had been repeatedly disappointed with the ways in which other producers had portrayed the Marvel Comics characters in cartoons, live-action TV and feature films, and they felt they could do a more accurate job of bringing their characters to the large and small screen." - Robert Strauss, Comics Feature#33

   If the idea of Marvel setting up a Marvel studio to make movies around their characters so they could do a more better and (generally) more faithful versions of them sounds familiar, then it should, because that's basically the story of how we've ended up with the MCU. Naturally, Stan Lee had the idea decades earlier, though with far more mixed results, not least because while they developed ideas, they were then still trying to get other studios to buy them and pay to turn the ideas into finished products. They had numerous live-action movies in early stages of development - Captain America, Doctor Strange, Fantastic Four, Roger Corman's Spider-Man and X-Men are mentioned in Strauss' article in Comics Feature - but the only one mentioned that actually made it to the screen during the lifetime of Marvel Productions was...Howard the Duck. They also got ABC sold on a live-action Daredevil series to the point where a pilot script was completed, but it was in animation that they had the most success, both with Marvel characters (1981's Spider-Man, Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, 1982's Incredible Hulk, and later Pryde of the X-Men) and developing cartoons on behalf of others (Dungeons and Dragons, G.I. Joe, Transformers, etc.). However, more successful doesn't mean completely successful, and there were still a lot of ideas that never made it beyond the development stage. There's not a ton of information available on most of these, but the article in Comics Feature#33 did at least provide concept art for a few, and snippets have emerged over the years from those who were involved in the development stage.

   Mark Evanier on the Daredevil cartoon:
   I wrote the bible and pilot and pilot for that Daredevil cartoon series…or rather, I should say I wrote a bible and pilot for it. Others had done several of each and ABC wasn’t happy with any of the approaches. I was hired to take over and much of what I did involved throwing out concepts and alterations that others (including Stan Lee) had done to the basic premise. By that point, there were a lot of characters and gimmicks a lot less faithful to the premise than any superdog. I basically turned it back into the version of Daredevil drawn by Wally Wood. Matt Murdock did have the seeing-eye dog, which was not an illogical thing for a blind guy to have, and the dog sometimes aided him a la Lassie but wasn’t any sort of superdog.

   ABC agreed to buy the series and it was even announced in the Hollywood trade papers…but then a gent who worked for Marvel said the wrong thing to a top exec at ABC who, I suspect, was looking for an excuse to not buy the show and to give the time slot to another project that he preferred. Whatever the reason, we woke up one morning to find that Daredevil was off the schedule, never to return. My agent and I had a brief argument with Marvel over a bonus I was to receive if the series was picked up…and they finally paid it to me because they had to admit the series was picked up. It was just dropped again.

    I think NBC later considered the show but networks generally don’t like picking up things that their competitors have passed on.

   I do love the fact that Lightning is playing his part in maintaining the secret identities, looking much thinner and disheveled when Matt is out of costume. So much so in fact that I fully expect Matt to be inspected by the ASPCA, because that's clearly not a well cared for dog! I assume that Lightning was the name Daredevil called him by, and that Matt called him something different, otherwise all of Lightning's hard work acting would be for naught.

    This profile was completed 8/05/2021, but its publication was delayed as it was intended for the Appendix 20th anniversary 's celebratory event.

Profile by Loki.

CLARIFICATIONS:
Lightning has no known connections to:

images: (without ads)
Comics Feature#33, p46, pan4 (main image, heroic)
Comics Feature#33, p46, pan1 (main image, disheveled)
Comics Feature#33, p49, pan1 (leaping into action)
Comics Feature#33, p49, pan2 (resting at Matt Murdock's feet)

Appearances:
Comics Feature#33 (January-February 1985) - credits unknown

First Posted: 09/21/2021
Last updated: 09/20/2021

Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.

Non-Marvel Copyright info
All other characters mentioned or pictured are ™ and © 1941-2099 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved. If you like this stuff, you should check out the real thing!
Please visit The Marvel Official Site at: http://www.marvel.com

Special Thanks to www.g-mart.com for hosting the Appendix, Master List, etc.!

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