Daredevil Villains #22: Stunt-Master
DAREDEVIL #58 (November 1969)
“Spin-Out on Fifth Avenue!”
Writer: Roy Thomas
Penciller: Gene Colan
Inker: Syd Shores
Letterer: Sam Rosen
Colourist: not credited
Editor: Stan Lee
Roy Thomas created a lot of new villains for Daredevil. Very few of them had any lasting impact. Stunt-Master is as close as we get to an exception.
Not because he stuck around in Daredevil, mind you. We’ll see him again in issues #64 and #67, after which he vanishes. But in 1974, he was dusted off to join the supporting cast of Ghost Rider, and he stuck around in that book for a couple of years. By the standards of the new villains created in Roy Thomas’ Daredevil run, this qualifies as a resounding success.
But that’s a little unfair. Roy Thomas’ strongest ideas, and his top priorities, were more about the book’s existing cast. He could see perfectly well that Matt and Karen’s relationship needed to advance somehow. So the previous story ended with Matt unmasking to Karen, allowing the book to move on to a new status quo. In this phase, Foggy is the DA, Matt is the assistant DA. Karen loves Matt, but she wants him to retire as Daredevil. Matt says he will. Soon. Really. Honest. Karen gets increasingly frustrated and alarmed until the penny drops that he’s never going to do it.
You’d struggle to say that Karen was a rounded character here, and she’s still quite a reactive one. Even so, it’s a step up from the way Stan Lee used to write her. More to the point, we’ve moved from years of Matt fantasising about being with Karen (and vice versa) to an actual relationship that is utterly dysfunctional from the word go. Karen goes straight from being lovelorn to the sinking feeling that this is never going to work.
This issue opens with Matt addressing a jury about the scourge of organised crime and jury intimidation that is blighting the city – the work of “the man known only as Crime-Wave.” We’ll come to Crime-Wave. Suffice to say that he was introduced in a sub-plot in the previous arc, he hasn’t shown up on camera yet, and that we’re going to get two issues of Daredevil fighting his minions before we reach the man himself. Crime-Wave gets a huge build-up, and Stunt-Master is part of that.
A lengthy flashback fills in the action since last issue. Matt has his heart-to-heart with Karen after unmasking. Matt reveals to the public that he faked his death in the Starr Saxon arc. Foggy appoints Matt as a prosecutor to help him deal with Crime-Wave. Finally, Matt tells Karen that he’ll retire as Daredevil. Oh, except that he has to appear in the United Fund Parade first, because he’s already promised to do it. (How did they get in touch with him?)
At the parade, Daredevil is just about to announce his retirement when Stunt-Master makes his debut. He’s exactly what you’re imagining – a costumed motorbike stuntman. But it’s the Marvel Universe, so he has a jet-propelled bike. He’s a down-at-heel ex-Hollywood stuntman hired by Crime-Wave to kill Daredevil, and he’s going to make his name. It’s never really clear what attracted Crime-Wave to hiring this loser in the first place, though he brings in another Californian villain in the next issue, so presumably he was meant to have contacts there.
To his credit, Stunt-Master can steer his rocket-propelled death-trap without splattering himself against a wall. But the problem with a motorcycle stunt gimmick is that once you’ve jumped at the hero and missed, what next?
Well, Karen begs Matt to leave Stunt-Master to the police – he’s just a normal guy on a bike, after all. But of course, Daredevil can’t resist fighting him. We get some action with Daredevil jumping on to the bike and clinging on as they fight through the streets, until eventually the bike crashes. Having defeated one of Crime-Wave’s henchmen, Daredevil is so excited at the prospect of hunting down Crime-Wave himself that he decides not to retire after all. So Karen runs off in tears while Daredevil lets the public cheer him. And then we get the end of the trial that opened the issue, where the accused was Stunt-Master, and of course he gets convicted.
Stunt-Master is just here to provide a fight while Thomas sets up Crime-Wave and screws with Matt and Karen’s new relationship. And he’s got a gimmick that fits the times. With his generic codename and costume – which isn’t bad exactly, but it’s not very inspired either – Stunt-Master is a knock-off Evel Knievel action figure. But if you’re going to ride a bandwagon like this, it’s odd to make him a villain. All the more so because his fighting style doesn’t really lend itself to Daredevil. He rides at the guy. If he misses, he turns round and rides at him again. It’s a bit limiting. You can see why he might have had more staying power in Ghost Rider, a book which actually needs bikers.
Thomas must have thought twice about Stunt-Master as a villain, because when we see him again, he’s back in Hollywood (which seems like a remarkably early release for someone who’s been convicted of attempted murder, even in the Marvel Universe ). In issue #64, he’s trying to go straight but gets press ganged by crooks into doing one more job; he gets to be the hero, and gets a pilot for his own TV show. By issue #67, they’re filming that pilot, although poor Stunt-Master’s job in that issue is to get clocked over the head by Stilt-Man.
In these issues Stunt-Master never entirely becomes a hero; he goes from being a guy who flirted with being a supervillain to one who’s happy to play the role of hero but mainly just wants to earn some money. There’s something in that, and the stunt biker angle is something different in small doses. He’s not a great fit for Daredevil, though.
Mark Waid eventually brought Stunt-Master back as a Daredevil villain, writing him as a malignant narcissist with a terminal illness who was willing to kill people just for one last burst of fame.
It doesn’t fit very well with his persona as an affable D-list celebrity — even one willing to put himself on the line for others — from most of his appearances.
But I suppose it could be extrapolated from the fact that his first appearance has him willing to kill someone he’s never met just to get some cash and a rep.
Ghost Rider had a few biker supporting characters over the years. After Stunt-Master and the Hollywood setting were written out, Michael Fleischer brought in Flagg Fargo, another Evel Knievel manque with a more arrogant personality.
Daredevil v.1 #65 is a also a bit odd on the Stunt-Master front. Both Stunt-Master’s thought balloons and Stilt-Man’s dialogue suggest that Stunt-Master was a costumed criminal for longer than one fairly sad attempt at killing Daredevil, with references to a life of crime and bank robberies.
Incidentally, the panel of Stilt-Man clocking Stunt-Master from DD v.1 #65 story was used as an action shot in Stilt-Man’s entry in the Deluxe Edition of the Official Handbook.
Grrr…I mean Daredevil v.1 #67, not 65.
Wasn’t Stunt-Master the actual inspiration for Ghost Rider? They kind of liked the concept but he was a bit limited, so they retooled it.
Oddly, Roy Thomas’s most enduring villain is Turk, who shows up in issue 69 as a gang leader working for Taurus and is brought back by Roger McKenzie and Frank Miller as comic relief.
@Omar Karindu- it’s still odd for Stunt-Master. Waid wrote him as a bitter man killing homeless people. I mean, you could say he snapped. But it still seems like Waid did this for the sake of a twist, since originally Waid suggested that this was a new Stunt-Master who really was a sociopath.It probably would have been better to go with that idea. I mean, Waid likes writing his villains evil but in this case Stunt Master was a villain who reformed in his second appearance, written by his own creator, so making him an irredeemable monster is just jarring.
Of course, the really bizarre character assassination of Waid’s DD run was the Shroud. Waid portrayed him as a psychotic stalker obsessed with Julia Carpenter. This was crazy, since the Shroud was introduced as a hero and had always been a hero prior to Waid’s run. This left the Shroud unusable as a character for years and Jed MacKay seems to be trying to fix him over in Moon Knight right now . Although since Hank Pym never recovered from slapping Jan, and the Shroud is much less important to the Marvel Universe than Hank Pym, the Shroud is probably going to be stuck with the stalker label permanently.
In fact, I’m not sure whether Waid originally intended the Shroud to be a complete villain. In Waid’s first arc with the Shroud, he is clearly mentally unstable but he seems genuinely concerned about Julia. And readers of the Spider-Man books know that she really is in a coma. And Matt promises to find her at the end. In the second Shroud arc, though, he’s just a creepy stalker.
Then again, I have to wonder if Waid’s depiction of the Shroud as a villain came about because he misunderstood Slott’s Amazing Spider-Man run. In issue 696, Julia gets rid of her ID before she falls into a coma. The hospital staff wonder why and they note she mentioned a “flash of gold”. In issue 699, we see that Dr. Octopus has a golden gizmo that he plans to use to switch bodies with Spider-Man while also copying Spider-Man’s memories into him so he can take over Spider-Man’s life. The clear implication was that Julia was hiding from PETER because she realized that Ock would learn everything Peter knew once Ock used the device on Peter. But I have to wonder if Waid read issue 696 but not issue 699 and assumed Julia was hiding from her ex, the Shroud.
Technically, yes, Turk is introduced in a Roy Thomas issue. But the focus in that story is more on the gang as a whole than Turk as an individual (which is how I’ll be dealing with that issue when we reach it). It’s another 90 issues before Turk returns and becomes a recurring character in his own right.
@Michael: With regard to the Shroud, I think it’s even simpler than that: Waid liked the idea of a foil to Daredevil, so he used the Shroud. Both are blind vigilantes with compensatory senses, and both are tied up with comic-booky forms of “the East.”
And Daredevil’s long-ago relationship with a spider-themed hero — the Black Widow — is mirrored by the Shroud’s failed relationship with a different spider-themed hero — Julia Carpenter.
So Waid had the Shroud suffer the kind of nervous breakdown Matt had in prior runs int he title, but without Matt’s resilience. So the Shroud is there to be who Daredevil could become without his support system and his heroic resolve.
Come to think of it, I wonder if part of Waid’s revival of Stunt-Master was similarly conceived: a stuntman *is* a “daredevil” in the colloquial sense, and some of Stunt-Master’s scheme — faked deaths, the “new” version who’s really just the old version — play off of Daredevil’s checkered past of faking his death and concocting fake personae to be the “real” or “new” Daredevil.
This doesn’t make any of that a good use of the Stunt-Master character, of course.
@Michael – Actually, the Shroud being less important probably makes him more capable of being redeemed as most people aren’t paying close enough attention to his continuity to care that much. When Hank Pym does something like that, everyone notices. When the Shroud does, it’s mostly crickets.
The Shroud, with a much lower profile than Hank, can have his personality careen around wildly at the whim of his current writer and the vast majority of readers won’t notice.
At the risk of being that pedantic guy:
It’s Evel Knievel, not Evil.
Stunt-Master’s real name should have been Evil Knievel. I think we’d all have a stronger opinion of Thomas’ script had he been so ingenious.
I’ve fixed the typo. Thanks.
I like the Shroud. His whole “I’m a supervillain running a supercrime team but only to destroy crime from the inside” shtick made for some entertaining moments, especially since he was partnered up with a whole pack of obscure goobers straight out of the Spider-Woman series… (LA had the BEST obscure goobers. Needle? Tatterdemalion? Digger? Brothers Grimm? Aw yeah)
So I hated it when he went off the deep end for a while, and I hope that he can get back to a place of healthier nutjobbery after he’s done being a Darkforce portal in Blood Hunt. It seems like McKay wants to redeem him as a character after some pretty dodgy years, and I can dig it. (I was NOT surprised at the revelation that Shroud was appearing in Moon Knight–as soon as they mentioned Kali, I was like ‘literally only two characters are associated with Kali, and we know where Nekra is…’)
Stunt-Master is indeed an interesting but limited character. His appearance in Avengers some years back (the Busiek run) where he attempted to destroy a forcefield by crashing his motorcycle into it was perhaps the height of his uselessness.
I’m honestly surprised Stunt-Master (or someone new using the identity) wasn’t a member of a state team during the Avengers Initiative era. Given how many other obscure heroes they dug up… I’m sure he’d have been a hit in Tennessee or North Dakota or something.
A new Stunt-Master was assigned to Georgia, although I think it was solely mentioned in one of those tie-in Handbooks which listed the Fifty State Initiative teams.
Funny timing with The Fall Guy hitting theaters this weekend.
I wasn’t familiar with Stunt-Master but I agree, sounds like there’s some potential there, I might check out what Waid did with him, looks like he had a two-parter during his run.
Chris V- by gosh, you’re right. I -thought- I’d seen a Stunt-Master listed, but he didn’t come up the first time I looked. They really did recycle the identity!
“a stuntman *is* a “daredevil” in the colloquial sense”
Okay, this might be a dumb question, but does the above quote from @Omar actually explain the rationale behind a lot of DD’s villains? I mean, walking on stilts, fighting bulls, riding jet motorcycles — all of those activities require a certain level of fearlessness. Is that how they connect to the themes of this book (at least in Lee and Thomas’ minds)? It’s seemed to me like they’re just throwing random ideas at the wall, but maybe there is a method to their madness after all.
Also, count me in as a fan of the Shroud, although I couldn’t tell you his current status quo. I’m just glad when he shows up.
@Thom H.: If they were, it was pretty inconsistently done. The Owl, Klaus Kruger, the Organizer and the Ani-Men, the Plunderer, the Masked Marauder, the Gladiator, the Leap-Frog, the Exterminator, the Jester, and Lee’s version of Starr Saxon don’t play to that theme, and that’s aside from Lee ringing in villains from other books.
Lee’s take on Daredevil does paint him as a risk-taker, though, like having him try to take on the Sub-Mariner or going up against two (then) Thor-level baddies bereft of his super-senses. So there may be something to it.
As to Stunt-Master, Evel Knievel’s late-1960s troupe of stunt performers was called the Motorcycle Daredevils, so that probably did inspire Roy. Other than revamping Starr Saxon as a second Mister Fear, though, none of Thomas’s other villains for Daredevil seem to play with that theme.
But then, Stunt-Master is the only new villain Thomas introduces who appears in the book again after his introductory storyline.
Most of Thomas’s villains fall into one of three categories: 1) the mastermind with a secret identity who is exposed by the end of the arc; 2) the one-off henchman working for said mastermind; 3) a gang of toughs with a memorable name, but no memorable individual members. This will continue into the couple of Gary Friedrich issues between Thomas’s last and Conway’s first (at which point the new villains become memorable for all the wrong reasons).
It doesn’t help that Thomas only stays on the book for about twenty issues, and around half of them use previously established villains.
@Thom H- re: The Shroud’s current status quo- Recently, Moon Knight seemingly died. A new Moon Knight showed up who was unstable and violent. It turned out to be the Shroud. Tigra gave him a What The Hell, Hero speech. The Shroud agreed to seek psychological help, saying he only wanted to be a hero. Happy ending, right?
Except that then Blade, who now inexplicably rules most of Earth’s vampires, and is served by Bloodstorm, a servant of the former vampire lord Varnae, who was an Atlantean sorcerer, makes his move. He uses Atlantean magics to turn the Shroud and other Darkforce users into a portal to the Darkforce Dimension to block out the sun so the vampires can take over. So the question is (a) is this Blade, Varnae, both or neither and (b) how will the Shroud be affected by being turned into a Darkforce portal?
“Recently, Moon Knight seemingly died. A new Moon Knight showed up who was unstable and violent.”
Not to make the obvious joke, but how did anyone notice the difference?
Aw man, what a twist. It’s revealed that he doesn’t have multiple personalities at all, there really are three or more Moon Knights.
I have two likely answers for you, @Drew. Not necessarily in the same space, mind you…
1. He admitted upfront that he was not Spector and indeed had different voice, speech pattern and knowledge.
2. He had a blind rage.