Highway 62

Elektra had gone from an interesting villain to Daredevil love interest to corpse (who by that time was more widely known and fan-favored than she had ever been while alive). The miniseries was supposed to tell pieces of her story long before her appearance in Daredevil (though it’s pretty clear by the end of things that Elektra: Assassin is its own thing and doesn’t contribute anything to * shudder * continuity.) This was widely perceived as her swansong (back before Frank Miller himself revisited the character in Elektra Lives Again and her subsequent resurrection in the Marvel Universe.)

Needless to say, people had a lot of expectations of the book.

Speaking of which, you can get a feel for the artwork here: http://www.wordsandpictures.org/elektra/maingallery.html . If you haven’t read the book, it’s not going to give too much away (since you’re going to be more than a bit lost without the lettering.)

The first issue was not going to live up to them. Mostly because messrs Miller and Sienkiewicz pulled the rug out from under their readers. If you’ve read the series, you know what I mean. The first chapter (and really even the second and third) is an amazing piece of work, but it’s far from an easy read. A nonlinear plot/story and stubborn refusal to adhere to a single, uniform art style combined to make perhaps the most unreadable first issue in memory. It is not only new-reader unfriendly, it’s downright hostile.

Mr. Miller effortlessly flickers between a handful of plotlines that all seem to be happening at once and out of temporal order. Mr. Sienkiewicz appears to randomly jump from style to style, but it’s clear that there’s a method to his madness (and once you figure that out, the art style helps decode a lot of the craziness.) While Elektra suffers and rebels in the bowels of a South American asylum, her brain frenziedly whips through the distant past, recent past and insane blur of the present. Of course, the authors don’t do any real hand-holding along the way. You’re pretty much left to your own devices with regards to keeping up.

The first issue of Elektra was startling and impenetrable, the first time I read it. So much so that I ended up not getting the second or third ones when they came out. Not until I read them all in one sitting did it really sink in. Much like Watchmen, the presentation in serial chapters didn’t help things for me. I wanted to get a hold of the bigger picture, and couldn’t do that without a good chunk of the story digested.

Even if the story had been utterly pedestrian and linear and cliché, Elektra would have stood out on the stands as something unique for the simple matter that it was one of the first all-painted books put out. Coming from a lifetime of pulpy paper and garish flat color, Elektra’s art was alien and beautiful and downright scary, exposing readers to an entirely new and unforeseen aesthetic. Of course, we’re more than a tad jaded today, having seen a parade of painted books. But back in 1986, this was revolutionary work.

I’ll try to relate a little of the plot here. Skip this paragraph if you don’t want it spelled out for you. Elektra, who is on the run from The Hand (the ninja order controlled by the shadowy and malevolent Beast, no, not Hank McCoy) enlists (unwillingly) the aid of a rogue SHIELD agent (Garrett) in her one-woman-war to slay The Beast, who has been working his way up the political food chain, brainwashing and recruiting until he finally ensnares Ken Wind (heir apparent to the White House) in an effort to purge the planet by instigating nuclear war between the USA and the USSR (remember them?). Along the way Elektra and Garrett take on SHIELD, preppie assassins, an inexhaustible army of ninja, and Garrett’s ex-partner Perry, who’s been turned into an unstoppable cyborg (all paid for by good ‘ol US tax dollars.) There’s so much more, but really, that’s enough to get by on.

As Elektra went on, you could see Mr. Sienkiewicz getting wilder and wilder, not only with his variety of technique, but with his layouts, his sense of caricature/characterization and his prop design. In a scene where Garrett is debriefed by Nick Fury, Fury is literally sitting in a handgun the size of a house, in a piece of relatively unsubtle satire. SHIELD’s tech hasn’t looked this outlandish since the days of Jack Kirby. Assault weapons the size of Volkswagens sprout from people’s hands, tanks the size of elephants roll through the streets and helicopters that were clearly designed by beings not well in the head patrol the skies. The technology at work here is unbelievable, grotesque and overwhelming.

And as much as the technology is turned to caricature, Mr. Sienkiewicz’s characters go through the same contortions. Anatomy and perspective are carefully ignored as the artist does whatever he feels necessary to express the characters fully. This isn’t realistic, not by a long shot, but it’s amazing stuff. There are, however, characters who aren’t subject to such gross distortions. Instead, they’re defined by how they don’t change at all. Ken Wind and The President aren’t drawn, rather they’re shown as multi-generation xeroxes, soulless and ultimately without character. They’re reduced to shadows, echoes of copies of a forgotten original. It’s satire, sure, but amongst the other insanity going on, it manages not to call attention to itself and that’s why it works so well.

Satire is at the heart of Elektra. She’s the ultimate ninja death babe. Nothing can touch her, nothing can stop her. She does impossible things in an impossible world. Unbelievably devious and gorgeous, she’s untouchable. She also makes a mockery of herself. Unfortunately, a lot of guys didn’t get the joke. Instead, she was taken at face value and ended up spawning a host of imitators and an army of bad girl killers. But I’m not here to hang the blame for that on the original. It seems pretty clear to me that the creators involved in Elektra knew exactly what they were doing. Much like Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns, the most superficial elements of Elektra were swiped and turned into a whole lot of uninteresting, but very-well-rendered drivel.

Oh yes. Satire. Let’s not forget that Ken Wind, who will become The Most Evil Person On The Planet once elected, is a liberal democrat and child of the sixties. Perry, the homicidal cyborg proudly wears a peace-symbol belt buckle after he becomes the avatar of The Beast. Though it should be pointed out that The President is equally over-the-top and ridiculous, only from a different side of the aisle.

What Elektra really reminds me of are the novels of Thomas Pynchon, not so much in overt content, or even in presentation, but just the overwhelming craziness of it all. Elektra makes for great black comedy, unafraid of anything really (including a meaningful BDSM scene that pretty much encapsulates the whole book on one page). Like a lot of great comics, it’s amazing that this book got published at all.

Sadly, Elektra is overshadowed by Mr. Miller’s work on Dark Knight Returns. I thoroughly enjoy both, but in my heart of hearts, Elektra is my favorite. It’s far more daring, technically sophisticated, and adult work than Dark Knight. Mr. Sienkiewicz’s artwork blazed a new path for others to take up, and opened reader’s eyes (making them more receptive to artists to come, like Dave McKean and Ash Wood). But for whatever reason, Elektra: Assassin is more or less forgotten, though it certainly deserves to stand along with the great comics that came out of the 1980s. I could engage in conjecture about Marvel wanting to preserve the purest essence of the character (which is ironic in the extreme, because Elektra is really only a cipher at best and a soulless killer at worst) or how they don’t want to confuse people with things that didn’t happen in continuity.

But at least the book’s still in print. That’s what really matters.