Dave Buesing's Comic Book Herald Writing!

The inclination with a best of Stilt-Man list is to compile literally every single appearance of the Most High villain in Marvel’s pantheon, and assume that they are all equally perfect, for they are equally raised to the heavens. This is a proper response, but I will concede some curation can help us lift up the Stilted One’s most glorious appearances throughout Marvel Comics history, and help us understand what it means to walk a little closer to the sun.

You might think Marvel’s Stilt-Man is basically like DC’s Condiment King or Kite Man, goofy outdated villain gimmicks that play pure comedy in stories now, but Stilt-Man honestly blows them out of the air with quality comics appearances. Yes, there’s an absurdity to the villain’s gimmick, amazingly antiquated even during his first appearance in the Silver Age, and that inherent breathtaking lunacy is simply delightful. Honestly, in many ways Stilt-Man is the perfect examples of what makes comics so joyous, the childlike escape into a world where scorned inventors can stalk the city skylines with really really long legs and commit sky crimes on helicopters. Stilt-Man is action figure rules brought to story.

So no, it’s unlikely that Stilt-Man will ever enter the realm of Marvel’s A-list supervillains (obviously he’s literally above such lists), but he will always have a special place in the publisher’s history as one of the most memorable concepts, up there with Batroc the Leaper, Big Wheel and Paste Pot Pete for the all time great.

Raised Be! ||

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