Daredevil #8

Featuring: Daredevil
Release: April 1, 1965
Cover: June 1965
12 cents
Written with the inventive genius of Stan Lee
Drawn with the artistic brilliance of Wally Wood
Lettered with the scratch penpoint of S. Rosen
20 pages

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Fantastic Four #40	Reading order	Sgt. Fury #19
Daredevil #7	Daredevil	Daredevil #9

Wood repeats a cover trick from last issue, using a newspaper headline to provide the text for the cover.

We open with some action. An out-of-control driverless car is careening toward a woman. Fortunately, Daredevil is on hand to save the day.

He needs the woman to keep screaming in order to locate her. Not clear why his radar sense isn’t sufficient.

This issue introduces a new villain. He goes by Stiltman, and the reason for the moniker is evident.

Stiltman as a concept seems goofy by today’s standards. (I would argue Wood’s previous villain the Matador was goofy by any era’s standards.) That said, he’s been an enduring Daredevil villain, even though his shtick seems limited.

We see here his armor is bulletproof and he is able to easily rob aerial vehicles with his stilts.

As DD converts his billy club into a snooperscope, Wood gives us the inner workings of the device. The versatility of the billy club is one of his additions to the character.

Matt touches his secretary’s face. With permission, I wouldn’t consider this an unprofessional way for a blind person to recognize a colleague’s face, but a bit of googling tells me this is more common in fiction than real life. Matt is also flirting some while he does it. Foggy interprets the scene as romantic, and he is upset. The triangle between Matt, Karen and Foggy remains identical to Tony, Pepper, and Happy. Down to the fact that the hero’s concern isn’t about their superhero activities, but their physical impairments: Matt thinks blind people can’t marry, and Tony thinks people with heart problems can’t marry.

Wilbur Day hires Murdock, claiming his employer Carl Kaxton stole his hydraulic lift invention. Kaxton claims he is the actual inventor of the lift.

Apparently Matt rents two apartments in the same building, one under an assumed name. His law practice must be lucrative. In the secret apartment, he has a gym and lab. He must have installed a secret stairway behind a sliding bookshelf. My landlords often required I get permission to hang a picture on the wall.

Stiltman isn’t so much unbeatable as awkward to fight. He’s high up. Daredevil tries to climb his legs, but Stiltman can grease his legs or otherwise knock Daredevil off.

If I may spoil the ending, we learn Day had been lying. Kaxton was the inventor and he the thief. It makes for an interesting aspect of Stiltman, that in his secret identity he seems so meek and unassuming. Even the name, Wilbur Day, is hardly villain material. Not from a company with villain names like Victor von Doom.

In the end, Stiltman shrinks to nothingness. Same thing happened to Porcupine. Also Dr. Doom; though he got better.

What do we make of Stiltman? On the positive side, there’s his non-standard secret identity. But also everything about him is pretty unique amongst the many, many super-villains that already exist. Now unique in a good way? It’s kind of a goofy name and power set. Is it formidable? The comic tries to make us think so, showing the various ways Daredevil is stymied by the stilts. Good or bad, the character is an enduring one to this day, a lasting contribution to Daredevil’s rogues gallery.

There’s one thing nagging me about this story, and I can’t decide how intentional it is. A bit of googling hasn’t found me any other commentary on the matter. The conflict between Day and Kaxton is a question over who is actually the creator of the Stiltman technology.

Wally Wood’s run on Daredevil is famously short because he and Lee will run into conflict, specifically over Lee not crediting or paying him for his role in writing these Daredevil stories.

When I read about a conflict between one person who is the actual creator of Stiltman and another who just tries to claim credit for it…

Now Lee, not Wood, is providing the final script for the issue. So perhaps I’m reading too much into any similarities to behind-the-scenes conflict. Or perhaps Lee was fine with the allusions. Or perhaps Lee didn’t get the joke.

It’s also plausible Lee had some input into the plotting of this issue and the idea of Stiltman. Lee generally asserted verbally discussing the plots for many of these issues with the artists beforehand. Wood admitted they had a couple of these plotting sessions, but Wood described them as he and Stan staring at each other silently until Wood suggested a story idea.

This particular plotting session may have ended differently, however. Kirby may have been the originator of the idea of Stiltman.

Jack designed new characters for a number of books where he did not work directly on the interiors. Sometimes, he did this by designing a new villain (or someone) on a cover and then Don Heck (or whoever) would use that cover as a model for drawing the interior. Jack also sometimes whipped out a sketch for a character. Wally Wood told me that one day, he and Stan were trying to figure out what could happen in the next issue of Daredevil they were going to do. Jack happened to walk into the office and he was dragged into the meeting, whereupon he suggested Stiltman and did a little sketch…and then Wood expanded on that sketch. We don’t know (and will probably never know) how often this happened and which characters had uncredited Kirby input.

Mark Evanier, quoted by Kirby Museum

Whether Wood was attempting commentary on his relationship with Lee or I’m reading too much into it… either way, Wood’s time with Marvel is just about done. And Ditko won’t be far behind him.

Rating: ★★★☆☆, 55/100
Significance: ★★★★☆

I read this story in Daredevil Epic Collection vol. 1: The Man Without Fear.

Characters:

• Daredevil/Matt Murdock
• Stiltman/Wilbur Day
• Karen Page
• Foggy Nelson
• Carl Kaxton

Story notes:

• Daredevil saves woman from driverless out-of-control car with time bomb inside.
• Club doubles as snooperscope, a shotgun mike he can use to scan city sounds.
• Cutaway of billy club shows: switch; retractable microphone; transistors and batteries; miniature tape recorder; switch; spring reel for cable; cable; hinge; chamber for projectiles; reflector shield.
• Karen still suggesting Matt go through with Dr. Van Eyck’s operation to restore his sight.
• Wilbur Day works at Kaxton Laboratories; claims Kaxton stole patent to his hydraulic lift he’d invented on own time.
• Cutaway for Matt’s apartment shows: sliding bookcase, secret stairway, gym, lab and electronic workshop.
• Complex radio receiver inside mask. Horns are twin antennae to pick up radio signals and amplify Daredevil’s radar power.
• Stiltman robs penthouse.
• New York Daily Press reports on Stiltman.
• Kaxton claims he’s the inventor of the devices.
• Radar functions as lie detector.
• Kaxton’s car has fancy gadgets, an alarm that detects when being followed, and an electro-shock.
• Day wants to steal Kaxton’s molecular condenser.
• Wilbur Day shrinks to nothingness from the invention he stole.

Previous	#369	Next
Fantastic Four #40	Reading order	Sgt. Fury #19
Daredevil #7	Daredevil	Daredevil #9