F R A N K M I L L E R ’ S D A R E D EV I L AND THE ENDS OF HEROISM Edited by Corey K. Creekmur, Craig Fischer, Charles Hatfield, Jeet Heer, and Ana Merino Volumes in the Comics Culture series explore the artistic, historical, so- cial, and cultural significance of newspaper comic strips, comic books, and graphic novels, with individual titles devoted to focused studies of key titles, characters, writers, and artists throughout the history of comics; additional books in the series address major themes or topics in comics studies, in- cluding prominent genres, national traditions, and significant historical and theoretical issues. The series recognizes comics of all varieties, from main- stream comic books to graphic nonfiction, produced between the late 19th century and the present. The books in the series are intended to contribute significantly to the rapidly expanding field of comics studies but are also designed to appeal to comics fans and casual readers who seek smart critical engagement with the best examples of the form. Twelve-Cent Archie Bart Beaty Wonder Woman: Bondage and Feminism in the Marston/Peter Comics, 1941–1948 Noah Berlatsky Considering Watchmen: Poetics, Property, Politics Andrew Hoberek Frank Miller’s Daredevil and the Ends of Heroism Paul Young F R A N K M I L L E R ’ S D A R E D EV I L AND THE ENDS OF Paul Young HEROISM Rutgers University Press New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Young, Paul, 1968– Frank Miller’s Daredevil and the ends of heroism / Paul Young. pages cm. — (Comics culture) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8135-6382-4 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8135-6381-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8135-6383-1 (e-book (web pdf)) ISBN 978-0-8135-7303-8 (e-book (epub)) 1. Miller, Frank, 1957– Criticism and interpretation. 2. Daredevil (Fictitious character)— History. 3. Comic books, strips, etc.—United States—History and criticism. 4. Popular culture—United States. 5. American literature—History and criticism. 6. Myth in literature. 7. Comic books, strips, etc.—United States—History and criticism. I. Title. PN6727.M55Z96 2016 741.5’0973—dc23 2015032501 Copyright © 2016 by Paul Young All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law. Visit our website: http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu Manufactured in the United States of America I wanted to use a style where the reader had to do a great deal of the work, where a pair of squiggles and a black shadow became an expressive face in the reader’s mind. —Frank Miller, 1991 CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix A Note on the Texts and Images xi Introduction Dealing with the Devil 3 chapter one Our Story So Far 21 Chapter Two Into the Snake Pit 59 Chapter Three The Unholy Three 93 Chapter Four Comics for Comics’ Sake 123 Interlude Daredevil versus the Catechism 179 Conclusion Exposé 209 Notes 245 Index 259 H vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Vanderbilt University and Dartmouth College for the resources they so generously gave me to work on this book. I am also infinitely grateful to my wife, Carolyn Dever, for recognizing and abetting my passion for funnybooks and funnybook scholarship, and my son, Noah, who refuels my old fascination with comics and superheroes with his own passions and reminds me every day what it was like, is like, to feel what one thinks. Leslie Mitchner, my editor at Rutgers, has been encouraging, inspiring, and frank, all of which helped immeasurably. Corey Creekmur, the series editor of Comics Culture, believed in what I was doing before I sent him a single page and has seen me through this with the enthusiasm and faith one could only hope to receive from a fellow traveler in the comics studies field; as a rookie in that bullpen, I can only imagine how much more dif- ficult this project would have been without his support. A very long time ago, Brooks Landon at the University of Iowa let me lecture to his postmodernist fiction course a couple of times about comic-book history, as a run-up to his teaching of Moore and Gibbons’s Watchmen, and thus gave me my first crack at teaching. He didn’t have to, but he did, and I will always be grateful for that experi- ence. He also mentored my BA honors thesis on postmodernist aes- thetics in graphic novels, which he encouraged me to write in the first place; if only I hadn’t dropped comics as an object of study for fear of not being taken seriously in graduate school, I might have done better justice to Brooks’s influence, and sooner. The students in my winter 2015 section of Film Studies 41: The Graphic Novel and Film at Dartmouth College inspired me to return to earlier assumptions and H ix x Acknowledgments claims with fresh eyes. Their passion for the material surprised and thrilled me every week, and despite their understandable trepidation, they accepted my challenge to analyze comics form and style by draw- ing comics of their own and did so fearlessly. Both their dedication and the fruits of their labor taught me much about what I wanted this book to be. If it weren’t for Westfield Comics, Mile High Comics, and Lone Star Comics, I would have had more spending money growing up, but I would have blown it all on records anyway—so no harm done. Thanks for helping my brother and me build the collection that was the engine behind this book. And to Ted Vanliew, the proprietor of Superworld Comics in Massachusetts and one hell of a nice guy, thank you for helping me bridge my past as a young collector to my present as an old one. I purchased one of my most prized books from him and display it proudly in this volume. Ted knows which one. But I reserve my deepest gratitude for my favorite honorary mem- bers of the Mighty Marvel Marching Society: Kyle (Bruce) Phillips, who hooked me up with Marvel’s Silver Age via his older brother’s collection and did so against the essential backdrop of pool playing, football card trading, movie devouring, hilarity, and goodwill; and my brother, Tim Young, my partner in crime as we “published” comic book after comic book in the seventies and early eighties, with breaks for making action figures fight, listening to the same twelve rock songs every night when KAAY-AM in Little Rock cranked up its power, and going ape over LPs by ELO and Foreigner. Every time we record one of Tim’s Deconstructing Comics or To the Batpoles! podcasts together, I feel oddly like I’m still knocking around our family’s home in southern Iowa, hunting old ham nets to use for Spider-Man’s webbing or ran- dom pieces of plastic sheeting to “preserve” our precious X-Men and Spider-Man comics, or racing home from the Comic Shoppe / Pinball Place on our bikes to dump the newest issues of our favorites out onto the carpet and dig in. To paraphrase Ben Urich, this one’s for you, Tim.