MYTHCOMICS: "THE BULLY" (DAREDEVIL #257, 1988)

When Frank Miller left the DAREDEVIL feature for the first time in 1983, subsequent creators had a hard act to follow. I've read all the subsequent stories by such talented people as Klaus Janson and Denny O'Neil, and I remember barely anything from this post-Miller period. In contrast, while I was not a huge fan of writer Ann Nocenti, whose tenure lasted from 1986 to 1991, I have to admit that her DAREDEVIL stories offer a fresh take on Miller's transformation of the feature into hard-boiled crime.

"The Bully," graced by splendid art by John Romita Jr., is not precisely a stand-alone story, though it can be read independently. As the cover makes clear, once again the starring hero contends with the ultraviolent vigilante known as the Punisher. However, the main plot of "Bully" intersects with that of an issue of PUNISHER published in the same month as DAREDEVIL #257. In the first story, executed by Mike Baron and Whilce Portacio, the Punisher searches for a culprit who has inserted cyanide into aspirin tablets made by the company for which he formerly worked. The vigilante fails to corral the perpetrator, Alfred Coppersmith, but continues to pursue the poisoner. I have not read the PUNISHER story but apparently it loosely overlaps the events of the DAREDEVIL story.

Many of Nocenti's stories tend to come off as somewhat rambling. "The Bully" is a happy exception, dealing with the problematic nature of violence without simply issuing the standard ultraliberal/ Marxist denunciation. In fact, there is no single character in the story who fits the dictionary definition of a bully. Nocenti seems to be using the process of "bullying" as a metaphor for any unjust use of force against a less powerful individual. 

Nocenti also observes that "force" may be in the eye of the beholder. No less than three times does some character in the story muse on the facelessness of enemies in modern society. 

First, the Punisher, prior to gunning down a gang of drug-dealers, thinks to himself that "the enemy is everyone, anyone, and no one."

The second instance merges the idea of the faceless enemy with that of the bully. Daredevil seeks to garner information on Coppersmith by interviewing one of the man's former work-mates. The worker tells the hero how Coppersmith was laid off by the aspirin company, where Coppersmith had worked for many years, because he simply couldn't master the complex computers introduced by the bosses. The worker opines, "How do you fight it when a computer takes over? It's like when a big new bully moved in on your block. But who do you fight? The enemy is technology! How do you fight that? Where do you strike?"

Finally, the unemployed Coppersmith is seen alone in his apartment. He looks like the standard depiction of a bully: a muscular fellow seen doing reps with weights. Yet though he looks like a bully, he's the one who feels bullied by the company that fired him, and to himself he justifies his indiscriminate poison-murders by musing, "All men, any man. My enemy is faceless."

Given that slipping poison into medicine-pills should strike most readers as a contemptible form of violence, Nocenti is remarkably successful in making Coppersmith seem mildly sympathetic in his derangement. The criminal is duly overtaken by the Punisher, but Daredevil intervenes to keep Coppersmith from being executed. Inevitably the two fighters clash, seen through Coppersmith's eyes, who is too stupefied by the fight to escape. Indeed, he continues his "bully" theme by thinking to himself, "There's no difference between the two of them. Both bullies, and all bullies think they're the one that's right. Everybody can't be right." Coppersmith doesn't quite have enough self-awareness to apply this insight to his own campaign of violence, and in fact he finally does try to escape, only to be crowned into dreamland by Daredevil. 

The resolution of the conflict between the heroes is more fully explicated in the PUNISHER cross-over story. But before Coppersmith has his lights knocked out, he has a strange insight that belies all the rhetoric about bullies and faceless enemies, as he watches Daredevil and Punisher battle:

I feel like I'm witnessing something superhuman, something special and powerful-- like this is the best of the best-- and they're fighting over ME--

Daredevil wins the argument by taking Coppersmith into custody, and the story ends as lawyer Matt Murdock meets with the addled murderer. Murdock tells Coppersmith that though he will go to prison, he deserves mercy because "society must take care of the people it crushes."

While "Bully" covers some of the same territory seen in Miller's tenure, Nocenti has a refreshingly un-derivative take on the violence of the superhero genre; neither fully approving nor disapproving. 

I'll note in closing that though the story includes a subplot involving a long-running Daredevil-foe, Typhoid Mary, even the subplot works in unison with the main theme. During the subplot, Typhoid easily manipulates her boss the Kingpin with sex, thus showing that there are ways to "bully" even without violence.