{"id":9399,"date":"2023-11-12T11:02:24","date_gmt":"2023-11-12T11:02:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9399"},"modified":"2023-11-12T11:07:06","modified_gmt":"2023-11-12T11:07:06","slug":"daredevil-villains-7-stilt-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9399","title":{"rendered":"Daredevil Villains #7: Stilt-Man"},"content":{"rendered":"

Daredevil<\/i> #7 doesn’t have a villain – it’s a fight with Namor the Sub-Mariner, who was just about to launch his own feature in Tales to Astonish. <\/em>So we move on to…<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>DAREDEVIL #8 (June 1965)<\/strong>
\n“The Stiltman Cometh”<\/strong>
\nWriter, editor: Stan Lee<\/strong>
\nArtist: Wally Wood<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Sam Rosen<\/strong>
\nColourist: Not credited<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the first instalment of this series, I asked whether people could name ten Daredevil villains. Well, here’s one that plenty of people remembered: Stilt-Man. (In fact, in this issue he’s Stilt Man or Stiltman. He won’t get the hyphen until later. But I’ll go with the more familiar version of the name here.)<\/p>\n

Everyone remembers Stilt-Man, even if they don’t remember a single one of his stories. Once seen, he’s not easy to forget. He is iconically lame. Silver Age Marvel was fairly light on completely ridiculous villains, and when Marvel did stray into this territory, they often leaned into it. But in his debut, Stilt-Man is played mostly straight. He’s certainly presented as a real threat.<\/p>\n

So thing that really makes him stick in the mind is the “what were they thinking” factor. Sure, it’s a struggle to keep thinking of new gimmicks for villains. But… stilts? Even if you’re picking words at random from the dictionary… stilts? Massive, clearly impractical, skyscraper-sized stilts? There’s something adorably mundane about the whole concept of a stilt-themed supervillain, no matter how extraordinary those stilts may be. Did someone have a traumatic childhood experience with a stilt? Even the pros look tentative and awkward moving on stilts. Their height doesn’t translate into an intimidation factor. Nobody has ever looked at a stilt-walker and thought, I bet they’d be dangerous in a fight.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Perhaps it’s a Manhattan thing. When you live in a city of skyscrapers, there are vast inhabited spaces above every street that you can’t get to. It’s all there to see but it’s out of reach. This is why Spider-Man is specifically a Manhattan hero – he rises above the crowd and accesses this sealed-off space. He does it with elegance, lightness and grace. And Stilt-Man does it too. But he does it with stilts.<\/p>\n

The story opens with Daredevil dealing with a runaway car, apparently set loose by Stilt-Man as a distraction. While our hero is occupied, Stilt-Man makes his debut by robbing a helicopter. It’s a payroll helicopter, which we’re invited to accept as the sort of thing that they do in the big city. Was that a thing in 60s New York? Maybe? Stilt-Man terrifies the crew by covering the windscreen in some sort of gunk that stops them seeing and makes it too dangerous for them to try and move. The crew immediately admit defeat and hand over the money. “No ordinary human can cope with the power of… Stiltman!” We’re not told how handing over the loot actually helps the crew get down again. Maybe Stilt-Man helps them to wash the helicopter off before escaping.<\/p>\n

Back at the office, mild-mannered Wilbur Day hires Matt as his lawyer. Wilbur works for Carl Kaxton, and he claims that Kaxton stole a “new type of hydraulic lift” that he invented in his own time. He wants the patent signed over to him. As Marvel legal disputes go, this is remarkably sane. So Matt phones Kaxton, who responds by calling Day a “snivelling worm” and daring him to sue.<\/p>\n

That night, Stilt-Man strikes again, by targeting a rooftop garden party. This is another problem with Stilt-Man, which becomes apparent rather quickly. His main advantage is that he’s very, very inconvenient to fight, particularly if you’re Daredevil, and your main fighting technique is to swing from a cable and hit things with a stick. But that’s a defensive advantage. How does being that high up help Stilt-Man commit any villainy in the first place? We’ve already done “rob helicopters”, and besides, surely they can see him lumbering towards them from a mile away. What else can he do? Peer through windows? Annoy people on viewing galleries? Well, he can rob rooftop bars without having to make his getaway in the lift, there’s that. Although he can’t actually step onto the roof. Instead, he relies on knocking everyone else out with sleeping gas and then collecting their belongings with a giant hoover. This doesn’t feel like a sustainable model for a criminal career.<\/p>\n

Day and Kaxton both show up at Matt’s office and have an argument about who invented the hydraulic lift. At this point Stan remembers that Daredevil can tell when people are lying, and announces that both men are so emotional that Matt can’t figure out who’s lying. This would be a nice little cover if it weren’t for the fact that Matt has several scenes with Wilbur alone, talking about this case, and still doesn’t pick up on the fact that he’s lying. In due course, Wilbur takes Matt to Kaxton’s house, supposedly to prove that Kaxton is Stilt-Man. When Kaxton threatens them with a rifle, Wilbur unexpectedly knocks him out with one blow and then, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear, knocks out Matt too. (Matt’s faking, but Wilbur doesn’t know that. Come to think of it, why does <\/em>Wilbur take Matt to the house?)<\/p>\n

In fact, Kaxton really did invent the stilts, and more besides. Not only does he do massive stilts, he has an “experimental molecular condenser – the most valuable weapon on Earth.” It shrinks stuff. Stan finds another angle on the stilts: the ray gun covers a wider area when fired by Stilt-Man, because the beam spreads out to a wider area by the time it reaches Daredevil on the ground. Naturally, Daredevil manages to turn the device round on Wilbur, who shrinks away into nothingness.<\/p>\n

As for Kaxton, he decides to let the whole thing go. One nice touch is that the expected twist, where Kaxton turns out to be a nice guy in a bad mood, never happens. He’s exactly as awful as he looked all along. He’s just not a criminal.<\/p>\n

There are more than a few plot holes here, then. But there’s a charm to Stilt-Man and his wonky armour, and the B-plot about Day’s mock-innocent persona adds something – even if it makes no sense for Matt not to rumble him immediately. In isolation, it’s a fun issue of Silver Age camp. But it hardly suggests that Stilt-Man is anything more than a one-off gimmick.<\/p>\n

Yet Stilt-Man will be back four more times before issue #100. By the standards of homegrown Daredevil villains, that’s a lot. So maybe, even in the sixties, there was something compelling about the sheer oddness of the idea. He’s absurd, but at least there’s nobody else like him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Daredevil #7 doesn’t have a villain – it’s a fight with Namor the Sub-Mariner, who was just about to launch his own feature in Tales to Astonish. So we move on to… DAREDEVIL #8 (June 1965) “The Stiltman Cometh” Writer, editor: Stan Lee Artist: Wally Wood Letterer: Sam Rosen Colourist: Not credited In the first […]<\/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-9399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daredevil"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9399","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=9399"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9591,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9399\/revisions\/9591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}