(Above)
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Introduction
I think Elektra is one of the most intriguing and hardcore female characters of the superhero genre ever to be inked! Elektra takes a licking and keeps on ticking! If you don't own Elektra: Assassin go out and buy it. It's one of my all time favorite graphic novels in my collection. Read the introduction (taken from the graphic novel, Elektra: Assassin) below. It is a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at how Elektra: Assassin was put together.
Leanne Richer
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Elektra: Assassin
Written by Jo Duffy - series editor
The problem was that Elektra is dead.
It was the summer of 1982, and I was talking to Frank Miller trying to convince him to write or illustrate something new for Marvel comics; preferably the Epic division, where I was an editor.
Frank responded that when he had time, he was already planning a graphic novel involving Elektra, the female assassin he'd introduced into the Daredevil comic.
Now, before leaving Daredevil, Frank had killed Elektra and left her spirit metaphysically off limits, but he assured me that the graphic novel would clear all that up and extend her story beyond her death.
Then, early in 1985, Frank came to me and my boss, Archie Goodwin, and told us he wanted to write an Epic Comics series starring Elektra.
What he had in mind was an untold story about Elektra's past, one that would avoid the issues being dealt with in the graphic novel. Frank's (and everyone else's)
choice to illustrate the series was Bill Sienkiewicz, whom Frank had recently "discovered".
In fact, Bill had been a major name in the comics field for years.
However, Frank and he only just begun working together, and Frank would be the first writer to have the opportunity of playing into Bill's great strengths-the fine drafting, the loony caricatures, and the high-style infusion of sex-and-drugs-and-rock'n'roll. Frank actually wrote every issue of Elektra: Assassin at least three times. First, after going over his plot ideas with me, he'd turn in a full script which, after further discussion, he always rewrote.
Then, after Bill had finished painting the issue, and the pages were all assembled with whatever color photostats, xeroxes, doilies, staples, or sewing thread Bill felt was needed to give them the right look, Frank would do a final draft, taking full advantage of whatever new and unexpected touches Bill had incorporated into the artwork.
The story changed dramatically as Frank and Bill played off each other in ways that combined genius, lunancy and magic.
Certain scenes and characters were dropped entirely as others expanded.
These omissions and rewrites were Frank's decision, just as Bill frequently revised or redid perfectly lovely pages of art, simply because he'd discovered afterward better ways of doing them.
I never once told either one of them "No," or, "Do that another way."
If I thought I saw a problem, I explained why I thought so, and then left it to them to decide whether or not I was right.
The only questions that mattered were: "Does it make sense?","Does what you're doing work with what you've already done?", and "Is what you have in mind technically possible?" The distribution of the book came through direct-sales outlets (where small children were not likely to have access to it), as well as the high production values, enabled Frank and Bill to work with a degree of sophistication ordinarily beyond consideration; I think that both of them pushed the envelope about as far as it's currently possible to go.
Because Elektra: Assassin was a project that I believe will never be surpassed for either its demmands or its rewards, I hung up my blue pencil when we wrapped the series up, and after a decade of editing, retired... so I could be counted as a notch in the hilt of Elektra's sai.
Not bad for a character who was and still is, like Generalissimo Francisco Franco, dead.
Daredevil: The Man Without Fear Elektra Assassin Words & Pictures Museum The Sai The Women of Marvel Comics!
choice to illustrate the series was Bill Sienkiewicz, whom Frank had recently "discovered".
The only questions that mattered were: "Does it make sense?","Does what you're doing work with what you've already done?", and "Is what you have in mind technically possible?" The distribution of the book came through direct-sales outlets (where small children were not likely to have access to it), as well as the high production values, enabled Frank and Bill to work with a degree of sophistication ordinarily beyond consideration; I think that both of them pushed the envelope about as far as it's currently possible to go.