DAREDEVIL #190

"RESURRECTION”
Writer/Storyteller: Frank Miller | Penciler/Inker/Colorist: Klaus Janson
Letters: Joe Rosen | Editor: Denny O’Neil | Supervisor : Jim Shooter

The Plot: Daredevil, Black Widow, and Stone fight the Hand at a cemetery, but are unable to stop the ninjas from stealing Elektra’s corpse. Meanwhile, the Kingpin fends off an assassin sent by one of his underlings, Injun Joe. Daredevil visits the Kingpin for help in finding the Hand, and Kingpin asks DD to take out Injun Joe instead. Daredevil does so and is rewarded with the Hand’s location.

Daredevil, Black Widow, and Stone confront the Hand in an abandoned church as they attempt to resurrect Elektra. DD senses a heartbeat and attempts to use mystical arts to resurrect her, as he saw Stone do to Black Widow, but he fails. The Kingpin’s men burst into the burning church and finish off the Hand. Daredevil and Black Widow go outside, leaving Stone to finish Elektra. But before he can do the deed, he senses DD managed to purify her with his attempt to bring her back to life.

Daredevil and Black Widow enter the church once more to find Stone and Elektra’s body gone, with only Stone’s gi left behind. Later, Elektra scales a cliff in the snow, reborn thanks to Daredevil and Stone.

Sub-Plots & Continuity Notes: The issue opens with a prologue focused on Elektra, in which we learn that she studied martial arts in Japan, then set out to join an ancient order of warriors led by Stick. She trained under Stick for a year but was sent away because she wasn't “clean”.

Elektra returned to her master in Japan and planned to join the Hand to learn their ways from the inside in order to finish them off. The Hand recruited her and had her unknowingly kill her own sensei as an initiation.

We get a wrap on Turk and Grotto as far as Frank Miller is concerned, as the duo have thrown in with Injun Joe against the Kingpin and are quickly dispatched by Daredevil.

The Kingpin explains “the true nature” of his relationship with Daredevil, setting up a nice status quo for the two as Miller departs the series:

My Thoughts: And now Miller brings Elektra’s tale to an end. I have no idea if he had this all planned out when he introduced her, but her saga does make for a very nice bookend to his run — she debuted in his first issue as writer in the capacity of a bounty hunter/assassin, and now she’s reborn, “pure”, in his final issue on the series.

I believe Miller made some sort of handshake deal with Marvel (or rather, with Jim Shooter) at this time that he would be the only person to handle Elektra following her resurrection, and for many years, at least during Shooter's tenure as editor-in-chief, Marvel stuck to that promise. But eventually the editorial hands changed and it was decided that Elektra was (I assume) too promising of a character to sit on the shelf, so she returned to Daredevil’s world in the mid-nineties and soon after, headlined her own ongoing series.

That said, she was resurrected by her creator, so I have no real problem with other writers on DAREDEVIL using her in subsequent years. As a parallel, much as I like to think only Jim Starlin should ever be allowed to write Thanos, it was Starlin — Thanos’s creator — who killed him off and then later brought him back to life. So with that resurrection in the books, the character, being corporate property, is technically fair game for any writer at Marvel.

But I digress. Miller has now wrapped up all his loose ends on DAREDEVIL, and brought the long saga of Elektra to its conclusion. What’s left for him to do before he leaves? We’ll find out next week.