Profile: Elektra

Elektra Nachios
First appearance: Daredevil #168 Vol. 1, 1979

Current status: wandering the globe, not knowing what to really do with herself, certainly not the writers.

Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: murdered in bloody fashion by Bullseye in Daredevil #181 Vol. 1, 1983, one of the most vile acts of his career, but was resurrected in four years later (or was it in DD #190?). Since then, she has reformed, but has found little purpose, artistically anyway.

What’s wrong with how this was done? Elektra is a rather complicated matter. It’s not that there was actually anything wrong with her being offed by Bulleye in the first place, unless you were to count that it was meant to influence Matt Murdock’s own development rather than hers. But while resurrection in comics, certainly for females, is something that’s actually welcome, in her case it’s fairly questionable, since the writers who took up tasks of working on her since then have not been able to figure out much else to do with her. In the late 1990s, there was a brief series produced in which she got assistance from Dr. Strange on some cases she’d been working on, but that didn’t amount to much. Then, a few years later, when the Marvel Knights line was still around, she got another series, but not only did that not last long either, they didn’t even try to come up with a solid direction for it either. It went through as many as 4-5 writers and no one seemed to be able to make any lasting impression on it, or didn't try to.

Was there anything good to come out of this? That all depends on anyone’s POV. Decidedly, I’m not going to really object to her being resurrected, but, if they can’t offer a steady direction for the femme fatale either, then they shouldn’t be trying to launch an ongoing series for Elektra. I figure in fairness that it was probably Joe Quesada’s fault in part, since he seemed only interested in cashing in on her “bad girl” appeal. So, that could be what caused the problems of recent.