One Sentence Overview: Having kidnapped the creator of the molecule condenser, Stilt-Man turns up in San Franscisco to take revenge on his old enemy, Daredevil.
Steve Gerber's only be on the title a few issues but he's taking a breather - perhaps to take some time out to work on creating everyone's favourite duck. So instead we have a fill in issue by up and coming youngster, Chris Claremont. Claremont would, of course, become Marvel's next big thing the moment he got his hands on X-Men when he would be genuinely brilliant (for a while, anyway) but this is a few years before all that. Are there any glimmers of the great writing yet to come in this tale?
Sadly, it doesn't appear so. Claremont's plot involving old Stilty is distinctly run of the mill. We are presented with a saga of revenge, kidnap and blackmail that feels a little like a step back to the old time story telling of the 60s rather than the 'message' oriented work of Conway or Gerber.
One of the reasons why bringing back DD's old enemies grates that, like Electro, the Purple Man and Man Bull previously, there's the whole convoluted thing of having a reason for getting the villain all the way over from the East Coast in the first place. As I read, I'm beginning to realise why there's been a general reluctance in creators over the years to move the action away from New York where everyone hangs out - because you have to come up with an original and believable concept for having your erstwhile foe turn up in your new location. Usually you settle, like Claremont, for revenge. Which I guess is okay. It's very human for someone like Wilbur Day to seethe his time away resentfully looking to get back at his old enemy. But it just means that every villain has the same idea and that can be a little tiresome.
Claremont quite cleverly decides to revisit Stilt-Man's origins in this issue, going back to his first encounter in issue 8 and bringing back not just Wilbur Day but his employer (who, in that story, was initially suspected to be Stilty). However, in pre-interent and Marvel encyclopaedia days, it's interesting to note that Claremont makes a schoolboy error in mis-remembering the employer's name. He's presumably working from memory because, here, we don't have Carl Kaxton, Day's employer in issue 8, but William Klaxton.
(Perhaps Chris has confused Day's old boss with the first English printer, William Caxton?) Okay, so it's much easier to get hold of information on character's names these days, but it still seems like a very clumsy mistake (also see: Phil Hichock/Kingston).Claremont's trademark character ruminations are already in place in this story. It's the fact that he uses this with secondary characters that perhaps marks out the very fine storyteller that he would become. Here, Day's henchman, Endros, an otherwise one dimensional thug, is given a little bit of background detail that helps demonstrate Claremont's great empathy for his characters. Thinking that some kids are messing about outside the warehouse where Kaxton/Klaxton is being held, he thinks about how he wouldn't mind 'skulling' the kids who keep disturbing him. It's only a little moment but it's a nice detail.
Chris' love of female characters is well demonstrated in the latter half of the book where he gives a lot of space to the Widow tackling Stilty rather than Daredevil, giving a chance for him to demonstrate her balletic abilites. However it's DD who comes to the supposedly independent woman's assistance and lands the killer blow. Tasha's response? An infuriatingly meek "Matt, hold me, hold me tight..." Oh, they won't like that on the letters page!
With Gene Colan having left the book, we have our second new penciller in two issues. This issue though it's regular inker, Syd Shores, who steps up to the mark. Shores does a fine job, not as dramatic as Gene perhaps, though he does a very fetching Black Widow.
Syd seems to have a way with the ladies. Never mind all the recent talk of women's liberation in the title's letters pages. Here Stilty's kidnapped his old employer's daughter, who is presented in Fay Wray helpless damsel in distress mode, complete with slinky mini-dress.
In addition he hilariously introduces Stilt-Man in a disguise that makes him (unintentionally, I presume) look like Norman Osbourne with a pencil moustache.
Obviously Day felt that having the Goblin's ambience would make him more menacing and acceptable to the San Franscisco thugs.Cast
Daredevil/Matt Murdock
Black Widow/Natasha Romanoff
Stilt-Man/Wilbur Day
Carl Kaxton (here presented erroneously as William Klaxton)
Endros
Barbara Klaxton (sheesh! which is obviously Kaxton - grrrr, Chris!)
Rating: 4 out of 10
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