Table Of ContentF 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.
