{"id":11209,"date":"2025-08-10T11:52:21","date_gmt":"2025-08-10T10:52:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11209"},"modified":"2025-08-10T11:52:21","modified_gmt":"2025-08-10T10:52:21","slug":"daredevil-villains-57-the-kingpin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11209","title":{"rendered":"Daredevil Villains #57: The Kingpin"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>DAREDEVIL #170-172 (May to July 1981)<\/strong>
\n\u201cThe Kingpin Must Die!\u201d \/ “In the Kingpin’s Clutches”<\/strong>
\nWriter, penciller: Frank Miller<\/strong>
\nFinisher: Klaus Janson<\/strong>
\nColourist: Glynis Wein<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Joe Rosen<\/strong>
\nEditor: Denny O\u2019Neill<\/strong><\/p>\n

We’ve skipped issue #169 (which is a Bullseye story), and so we go straight from Elektra to Frank Miller’s other major addition to the series.<\/p>\n

The Kingpin had been around since 1967 as a Spider-Man villain. I don’t normally cover guest villains in this feature. But the Kingpin is an outright import into Daredevil’s rogue’s gallery, even if he’ll continue to be shared with Spider-Man.<\/p>\n

On one level, there’s nothing new in Miller’s Kingpin. He’s built entirely out of elements taken from earlier Kingpin stories. But the Kingpin had never really worked before in the way that he does under Miller. So we should take a look at the Kingpin stories that came before this.<\/p>\n

The Kingpin debuted in Amazing Spider-Man<\/em> #50-52 (1965), by Stan Lee and John Romita Sr. It’s the “Spider-Man no more!” story, the one where Spider-Man dumps his costume in a trash can. The Kingpin installs himself as head of the New York mobs, and of course Spider-Man comes out of retirement to defeat him. At this stage, the Kingpin has some Silver Age gimmickry such as an “obliterator beam” in his cane – which will keep showing up for years to come. But the main premise is that the Kingpin plans to run the underworld like business. He seems to think he’s respectable, and takes offence at the idea that killing his opponents counts as\u00a0 murder.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Right from the start, he’s also a physical threat: we’re assured that his bulk is muscle, not fat, and he’s strong enough to take on Spider-Man in a direct fight. But the core concept is there: the Kingpin is a criminal who runs the mob like a business, and who commands respect in the underworld through a combination of money, intelligence, ruthlessness and brute force.<\/p>\n

But Stan Lee didn’t really pursue the idea of the Kingpin as New York’s top mobster. When he returns in issues #59-61 (1968), he’s just a gang leader with a plan to brainwash Captain Stacy. He’s mainly a physical threat, beating up Spider-Man to the point of giving him double vision.\u00a0In issues #68-70 (1969), he’s trying to steal a priceless clay tablet. This one has the first version of the “Kingpin demolishing his hapless sparring partners ” scene, which Miller recycles for Daredevil <\/em>#170. But for Stan Lee, the Kingpin\u00a0isn’t<\/em> a physically imposing character – instead, Lee’s angle is that everyone underestimates the Kingpin because he looks fat and out of shape, and it takes people by surprise to learn that he can actually fight.<\/p>\n

The same story introduces the Kingpin’s wife, Vanessa, as someone who is never to be mentioned in his presence. Lee and Romita come back to her in their final Kingpin story, from Amazing<\/em> #85-85 (1970). We learn that Vanessa and the Kingpin (he still doesn’t have a real name) had a son, Richard, who killed himself after learning that his father was a criminal. The Kingpin refuses to believe that his son could be so weak, and so refuses to tell Vanessa about the suicide. In this version, the Kingpin is using his crime boss status as a way of redirecting his rage at the loss of his son, and Vanessa is the voice of reason trying to talk him out of it.<\/p>\n

Miller makes heavy use of Vanessa, albeit as a preoccupation of the Kingpin rather than an active character in her own right. What he absolutely avoids is the story of Richard Fisk, which was a real wrong turn for the Kingpin. Richard shows up alive and well as the Schemer.\u00a0Vanessa is delighted, but the Kingpin is so upset to learn that Richard hates him that he has a nervous breakdown. The storyline is picked up in Captain America & The Falcon<\/em> #146-148 (1972) by Gary Friedrich and Sal Buscema. Richard now wants to make his dad happy after all, and so he secretly arranges for his father to take over Hydra. It turns out that Richard in turn is being manipulated by the Red Skull, and the Kingpin teams with Captain America to stop him.<\/p>\n

The Kingpin next shows up in Amazing Spider-Man<\/em> in 1976-77, by which time Len Wein is writing. In issues #163-164, he tries to use Spider-Man’s “life force” to get Richard out of a coma. Once again, the Kingpin is primarily a physical threat, and once again, he’s deeply upset at learning that Richard prefers Vanessa to him. Finally, in issues #195-197 (1979), Marv Wolfman and Keith Pollard have Vanessa set the Kingpin a deadline to sever his ties with crime, under threat of leaving him. The Kingpin tries to kill Spider-Man one last time, but Spider-Man manages to survive until the deadline, so the Kingpin lets him go and heads off into retirement.<\/p>\n

And that’s where Miller picks him up, three years later. Miller introduces the Kingpin with the aforementioned scene of him beating up his sparring partners, but also establishes that he’s firmly retired and won’t hear any mention of his previous career. The name “Wilson Fisk” first shows up here, so far as I can see. As part of his efforts to satisfy Vanessa by distancing himself from crime, Fisk is negotiating with the American government to sell them evidence on his ex-colleagues. New York mobsters try to derail these negotiations by taking Vanessa hostage. .<\/p>\n

This, of course, is a terribly bad idea. At first, the Kingpin only wants to get Vanessa back and go back into retirement. But Vanessa is seemingly killed in an explosion, apparently engineered by Lynch, a loyal lieutenant who wants the Kingpin to back to crime for good. The Kingpin avenges her by crushing the other mobsters and killing Lynch; Daredevil lets the Kingpin go for now, in exchange for evidence on the Kingpin’s rivals and the chance to capture Bullseye.<\/p>\n

This becomes the Kingpin’s role going forward: he’s the implacable head of organised crime, comfortable with a stalemate in a way that Daredevil isn’t. While he remains physically imposing, there’s far less emphasis on his fighting prowess and much more on the original and long-neglected concept of him as a supremely effective criminal organiser. However, the idea of running the mob like a business played less as a gimmick and more straight, as evidence of his competence and his superficial respectability.<\/p>\n

Vanessa fares badly in Miller’s stories, getting blown up and then stumbling around in a subplot as an amnesiac bag lady for a while – but then her function was to force him into retirement. Miller had to sideline her somehow, and the alternative would have been simply to kill her. This way he gets to keep her as a weak spot for the Kingpin while blocking her from actively interfering in the plot. He gets the benefit of her humanising him, without her being able to stop him.<\/p>\n

Of course, Miller could have just created a new character to be the figurehead of New York crime. But the original concept of the Kingpin was always perfectly good, and underexplored. And despite Stan Lee’s efforts to present the Kingpin as an underwhelming blob, Romita’s character design was always imposing. Miller undertakes an Ultimate-style reboot of the character, stripping him back to the core concept and doing it properly this time.<\/p>\n

The Kingpin is a better fit for Daredevil than he was for Spider-Man. Spider-Man used to spend a lot of time dealing with crime lords, but he’s more at home with costumed villains. Organised crime is a much better milieu for Daredevil, the lawyer vigilante who’s operating as a street level character. Corruption and untouchability go to the heart of Matt Murdock in a way that they don’t for Peter Parker, and a character who Matt can uncover but never take down is a strong arch-enemy for him.<\/p>\n

He also fits better with Daredevil in terms of power level. The Silver Age Kingpin, able to go toe to toe with Spider-Man, is incontestably superhuman. Apparently he’s meant to just be massively muscular or something, but plenty of scenes only make sense if the guy is a mutant or something. This is necessary if he’s going to fight Spider-Man, but it doesn’t fit with the notion of him as a self-made man. The problem is much less acute when he’s a trained powerhouse fighting a man with a stick.<\/p>\n

Miller recognises the Kingpin’s untapped potential and prunes away years of wrong turns in order to get back to it. In theory, it was all there before, but in practice Miller is the first to really make him work, simply by pruning him back to the strongest elements and putting him in a more suitable comic. This interpretation of the character remains the standard, and rightly so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DAREDEVIL #170-172 (May to July 1981) \u201cThe Kingpin Must Die!\u201d \/ “In the Kingpin’s Clutches” Writer, penciller: Frank Miller Finisher: Klaus Janson Colourist: Glynis Wein Letterer: Joe Rosen Editor: Denny O\u2019Neill We’ve skipped issue #169 (which is a Bullseye story), and so we go straight from Elektra to Frank Miller’s other major addition to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daredevil"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11209"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11307,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11209\/revisions\/11307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}