One of the most interesting and historic hidden identities in the Marvel Universe, Matt Murdock spends his days practicing the law, a blind lawyer defending the weak and following the rules, but when night falls he wears the red and becomes the fear of Hell’s Kitchen, a fearsome vigilante, Daredevil himself! Daredevil was originally created by Stan Lee (Daredevil #01, April 1964) and further explored by great writers and artists like Jack Kirby, John Romita Sr., Wally Wood, Brian Michael Bendis and othe
rs, but it was Frank Miller the one who offered the series the recognition and popularity it deserved. Today’s blog is dedicated to one of the issues that changed this legendary character forever, specifically the 181st issue of the first volume of Daredevil titled “Last Hand”, or as we’d call it “The Death of Elektra”!
Killing a character in an ongoing story is always hard, imagine what it was like in a case like this where Elektra was an extremely important and interesting figure in the scenario, she was Matt’s first love, she knew the secret of his identity, she fought him in every occasion balancing between her evil choices as a hired assassin and the affection to her nemesis, some might say she was more intriguing than Daredevil himself. After sparing Foggy Nelson’s life (Murdock’s best friend) Elektra gets in a combat with Bullseye, a hired killer as herself but paranoid and completely evil, a man able to turn every object into a lethal weapon. She seems to be winning and draws first blood when Bullseye cuts her throat with a throwing poker card saying his best known line:
“You’re pretty good… but me… I’m magic”
After which he stabbes her with her own sai. Elektra crawls all the way to Matt’s house to die in his arms while Bullseye watches them hidden in the nearby crowd.
The death of Elektra was a landmark, a significant point in comics history, it was maybe the first time a popular and important character got killed in order to help the story evolve. After that Daredevil is presented more angry and scary, his fights with Bullseye always involve his desire for revenge; Elektra haunts his dreams and affects his life. Of course later the writers were unable to stick to their first decision and made some quite louse storylines about her return (her appearances in volume 2 were much better though) but we have to remember this was even before the death of Robin, back in 1982, before even that ghastly Daredevil movie we had to endure recently.
Jump in and see the real thing in the Daredevil comic books, even you poor scared friend who watched Ben Affleck jumping roofs and kicking around. It’s a different experience, I swear in my hyper sensitive senses!
