Daredevil Villains #7: Stilt-Man
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 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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 Wilbur take Matt to the house?)
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.
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.
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.
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.
I sometimes joke that the MCU has already used up the alpha level villains, and that Stilt-Man will be the villain of the next Avengers movie.
If nothing else, Stilt-Man provides the opportunity for unusual visuals. That may help explain why he made so many appearances along the years, even outside of Daredevil and even though that hardly removes the silly factor. There is also some refreshing variety in meeting a villain that is so cleary too stubborn to realize that he is not going to achieve much no matter what; he becomes a bit of an underdog in denial (which was explored once in a Spider-Man story).
Of course, he is also more than a bit silly, which I guess puts one off-guard when he begins to ramble about how dangerous he is. The end result is a character that is lousy as a villain, but wonderful as a change of pace. It helps that he so easily suits himself to the role of disgruntled blue-collar worker with a chip on his shoulder. That he is rarely close enough by to actually have the chance to physically threaten someone may help as well. And he has those heights and random sci-fi ray guns to wield when true menace is needed – and again, I don’t think he ever actually fired any.
My first exposure to Wilbur Day was in Champions #11-12, where he is shown as a presumed true menace which convinces Black Goliath has to urgently call the Champions for dire help. Of course, the Champions immediately clobber Stilt-Man, although he makes his scape and becomes a convenient reason for Goliath to go on after him and be heroic on his own.
It is just now, 40 years later, that I realize that Stilt-Man would look like a two-pronged rod while being punched by a fully grown Bill Foster. Inexplicably, that was not how John Byrne chose to portray him. Go figure.
All in all, he is a nice character to keep people off-balance when trying to guess his danger level and emotional state, and he brings nice visuals to boot. What is not to love?
Honestly, with a shrink ray and height stuff, I can’t help but think Stilt-Man should have been a Giant-Man villain. It’s not as if that strip wasn’t already a bucket for lame villains.
The only Stiltman story I remember reading is from Miller’s DD run where Turk steals the stilts and DD gets help from Wilbur to sabotage them.
As a champion of C and D list villains…
Well, I think you could make him credible but you’d lose the visual of him towering over people. If you saw him at more variable heights to show off the telescoping nature of the legs.
He def needs to be in an urban environment. stilt-Man in Kansas would be silly (sillier).
Mark Coale said: Well, I think you could make him credible but you’d lose the visual of him towering over people. If you saw him at more variable heights to show off the telescoping nature of the legs.
In the Silver and Bronze Ages, when they were still playing him as a serious villain, they tended to emphasize that he was a dude in power armor fighting street-level heroes rather than getting his tin can kicked in by Iron Man.
Of course, he’s also very generically motivated; his whole “revenge on the boss” thing vanishes outside of a single 1970s fill-in issue of Daredevil (an early script by Chris Claremont, no less!). After this, he’s a generic villain for hire, usually serving as a henchman for someone. Infamously, he even gets an Adamantium suit and fights Thor at one point.
Like another Silver Age armored villain, the Beetle, later stories drop the idea that his armor is a Big Deal against street-level heroes, and he becomes a jobber. (How many folks besides Kurt Busiek remember that the Beetle actually defeated Captain America in a Silver Age Avengers story?)
The difference is that Stilt-Man just has an inherently sillier gimmick — yes, sillier than “mechanical beetle suit” — and that he was played as a joke much earlier as a result. Frank Miller uses him for comedy, and after that it’s all Stilt-Man shows up for.
But at least he still gets to show up, right? He hasn’t become a generic crowd-filler like so many other Silver and Bronze Age petty crooks.
Luis Dantas said: It is just now, 40 years later, that I realize that Stilt-Man would look like a two-pronged rod while being punched by a fully grown Bill Foster. Inexplicably, that was not how John Byrne chose to portray him. Go figure.
Very few artists — even good ones — keep Stilt-Man’s size proportionate from panel to panel in his later “serious” appearances. As Luis notes, he’d look pretty ridiculous otherwise.
Wilbur Day bizarrely showed up in a recent issue of Iron Man, where Cantwell decided to treat him as a serious character again. He was now living on the planet which happened to be where the Ultimo robot originated. I guess Cantwell assumed that Stilt-Man still had access to the Z-ray from a couple 1970s appearances, as I’m not sure how else Day, of all people, would end up on that planet. I can’t say that the plot exactly fit with any prior characterization of Stilt-Man.
“And he has those heights and random sci-fi ray guns to wield when true menace is needed – and again, I don’t think he ever actually fired any.”
He does fire on Daredevil in his first and second appearances. His aim seems to be terrible.
He does manage to actually hit Black Goliath with his Z-Ray in Black Goliath 4 and banish him and Celia Jackson to another world.
Now I kinda want to see a story where Stilt-Man goes to see a doctor for help with vertigo.
Omar said: Like another Silver Age armored villain, the Beetle, later stories drop the idea that his armor is a Big Deal against street-level heroes, and he becomes a jobber. (How many folks besides Kurt Busiek remember that the Beetle actually defeated Captain America in a Silver Age Avengers story?)
Just like how Paste Pot Pete had Cap beat in a story until Sharon Carter made the save.
For being a main event babyface, Cap is always willing to let his villains get some shine before they do the job.
Mark Coake said: Just like how Paste Pot Pete had Cap beat in a story until Sharon Carter made the save.
For being a main event babyface, Cap is always willing to let his villains get some shine before they do the job.
Jack Kirby and Stan Lee seemed more willing to let Cap lose fights with more souped-up villains in the early-to-mid 1960s.
In various books, he loses straight fights to not only the Beetle and (almost) to ol’ Paste-Pot Pete, but also to the Erik Josten Power Man, Kang, and the Super-Adaptoid (in its first storyline, to boot!).
The Executioner drops Cap with a single nerve pinch in one of the Masters of Evil stories in an Avengers issue. But then, Jack and Stan always wrote the Asgardian gods as simply beyond mere mortals in power.
Weirdly, Daredevil does better than Cap against the Beetle and the Trapster in back-to-back storylines. And then he outfoxes Doctor Doom!
Clearly there’s a retcon story to be told wherein Cap steals Silver Age Daredevil’s “improbably beat guys who fight Thor and the Fantastic Four” powers.
The whole “Cap refuses to lose, so he doesn’t” thing didn’t really start to kick in until the later 1960s, and
It’s because, as Kesel once told me, it’s because Daredevil is Bugs Bunny and Spidey is Daffy Duck.
Remember that when you next read that team up issue Karl wrote when they fight the Elmer Fudd stand in. 🙂
Stilt-Man is the not-menacing Doctor Octopus. Make the stilts bendable — and more like arms than legs, obviously — and it’s a whole different ballgame.
Since Doc Ock appeared first, I assume Stan was trying to emulate that success by replacing his maneuverability with S-M’s altitude?
I can only remember one Beetle story, a Silver Age team up between Spider-Man and Human Torch. The artist made him look as creepy as hell in that story, all bug eyes and weird fingers, like a horror movie alien. They probably lost something of the character when they made him look like more of a generic Iron Man type, but I imagine it would be hard for an artist to stay on the right side of the creepy/silly line.
@Omar- But Matt outfoxed Doom by sending orders to his armies to attack neighboring countries. Countless innocent civilians could have been killed in the ensuing war if Doom hadn’t countermanded the orders in time. You couldn’t get away today with having a “hero” risk so many innocent lives to stop a villain without the audience complaining.
These days the hero would actually get all those innocents killed, and the comic will just cruise on. If anyone complains, in six months there will be a story where the Wasp or someone punches him in the face, and everything will be considered even.
Michael said: @Omar- But Matt outfoxed Doom by sending orders to his armies to attack neighboring countries. Countless innocent civilians could have been killed in the ensuing war if Doom hadn’t countermanded the orders in time. You couldn’t get away today with having a “hero” risk so many innocent lives to stop a villain without the audience complaining.
This is true, and likely falls under the category of “Silver Age wackiness.” Of course, in-universe, we can read it — and the whole “Mike Murdock” thing — as early signs of Matt’s mental instability.
Si said: These days the hero would actually get all those innocents killed, and the comic will just cruise on. If anyone complains, in six months there will be a story where the Wasp or someone punches him in the face, and everything will be considered even.
And then a couple of years later, casually starting wars to get out of a bad situation will just become this thing Daredevil does, as if it’s some kind of character flaw that’s baked in and tolerated.
I did not expect to find Stilt-Man so interesting in hindsight, but here I am.
Right now I keep remembering situations of Wilbur surprising readers and even himself. I called him a blue-collar villain in a previous post, and I find that refreshing.
Here is a guy who, instead of insisting that he is unstoppable no matter what, faces Darkstar, has her instantly destroy his Z-Ray weapon, and immediately grows irritated that she so casually destroyed the result of long hours of work in prison. Who can barely hide how he hopes being hired to kill the Falcon will lead to new and higher profile jobs in the future, and then happens to run into a defeated Trapster and realizes that his weaponry his chances improve greatly.
Not the most convincing villain, but quite a palate cleanser from the endless parade of self-assured mob bosses that keep turning out in street-level heroes comicbooks.
The one comic I’ve read with Stilt-man in it was in the first Armor Wars. As you’d expect, Stilt-man went down like a chump to Iron Man.
I think my recent reading of Iron Man’s 2021 Korvac story was the first time I’ve ever read Stilt-Man in a story where he’s not there to be a 5th-rate villain or outright joke – and in that story he barely uses his stilts.
As a matter of fact, Stilt-Man was the trial case for the original Armor Wars.
Back in Iron Man #225 Tony easily defeated Wilbur and field-tested his… “Stark tech dissolver gizmo” is probably the best descriptor… on the Stilt-Man armor before even realizing that he wanted to hunt for all armored villains (and a few heroes) that might possibly have used his technology.
As plot elements go, that gizmo was more than a bit naive in retrospect. How can a device tell Stark tech from non-Stark tech? Does he have access to customized materials that somehow no one else favors?
IIRC that was Wilbur’s first appearance since Amazing Spider-Man #237 – the issue before the first appearance of the Hobgoblin, and a nice little oddity of a tale. Wilbur rightfully points out that Spidey is the one hero that he managed to defeat outright, yet their meeting and fight is almost entirely accidental. To add to the eccentricity, the story happens on Stark Enterprises grounds and involves Iron Man’s supporting cast, yet Iron Man does not even cameo. The whole story has a bit of a soap opera quality to it, and goes a long way towards making a character out of Wilbur.
Prior to that, Wilbur’s last appearance had been in Frank Miller’s first Daredevil run, when Turk stole the armor from him and failed to impress the Kingpin as the new Stilt-Man.
Given his tendency to use lots of stuff besides just his stilts, Stilt-Man is one of the last examples of a particular kind of villain: the low-tier gadget-based villain.
There are a lot of battlesuit crooks, and a few “signature weapon” crooks like the Shocker, but not many characters who turn up with their latest gizmo to augment their existing gimmick.
Former examples like Mysterio, the Wizard, or the Tinkerer keep getting turned into mastermind villains with absurdly advanced technology.
@Omar Karindu- But the Wizard was only really a low-tier gadget villain for his first appearances in Strange Tales. Once he became the leader of the Frightful Four, he routinely led a team that defeated the Fantastic Four and had access to technology like id machines and wonder gloves.
Trivia question
What was the last MENTIOM of Wilbur Day?
Pre Thunderbolts, didn’t the Beetle show up with newer versions of his suit?
I’d also say Crimson Dynamo, but I think that was a different person just about every new iteration.
Michael: But the Wizard was only really a low-tier gadget villain for his first appearances in Strange Tales. Once he became the leader of the Frightful Four, he routinely led a team that defeated the Fantastic Four and had access to technology like id machines and wonder gloves.
I generally agree, but I think Stan Lee still sometimes used the Wizard as a more limited baddie form time to time.
The story that introduces his wonder gloves, for instance, is really him building a new multi-purpose gadget to complement his flight suit and anti-gravity discs, with a bunch of features, holding his own against the FF before losing the gloves and then running away.
And then he comes back with new gloves in time for their newest member — Crystal — to trounce him almost entirely on her own to show off her powers.
That’s villain-of-the-month stuff, not master scheming or team-leading, as is his one-off team-up with Mysterio to attack the Human Torch and Spider-Men, which also ends with their gadgets being turned back against them.
Once he starts showing up with the Frightful Four in tow every time out, then yes, I agree he’s a
@Mark Coale: AFAIK, Beetle only upgraded his armor once before joining the Thunderbolts as Mach-1.
It was a very obvious change, and happened fairly late in his career. He used it against Spider-Man and later as a member of Egghead’s version of the Masters of Evil (against the Avengers) back in the early 1980s.
Before that, at one point (an early issue of Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man, the 1970s series) he began to talk as if he were some sort of well-connected crime lord, but it did not stick.