Ultimate Elektra: Devil's Due Issues 1-5 Review

 

I continue my journey through the Ultimate-verse today and it brings me to Elektra: Devil’s Due; which serves as a sequel to Ultimate Daredevil and Elektra. While the second outing into Ultimate Elektra’s history is a lot better than the first mini-series the follow up isn’t without its faults; some of which are intentional some aren’t, and some are just victims of the plot device.

Most of the cast from the first mini-series is back, obviously Elektra, her father and Matt return for this run. Foggy is back too, this time with a little more to do than simply being Matt’s college roommate and tag along, on the flip side Phoebe is back only to be reduced to a brief cameo like appearance in which she serves as a decoy for all of two seconds. Trey is no where to be seen or mentioned and neither is Melissa which I find odd considering the events surrounding those two characters were the catalyst for Elektra’s actions as well as the conflict between her and Matt.

While I complained in the first mini-series about Melissa and Trey having too much time and energy devoted to their plot I actually found myself wanting to read a little about what happened to them. Even if I didn’t agree with the plot you just can’t build something up then never bring it up again. They sort of did the same thing with Phoebe, at the end of the first series she was furious with Elektra and now all of a sudden she had apparently gotten over her anger enough to be willing to risk her life for Elektra. This wouldn’t be as big of an issue if they simply stated how much time passed between the first mini-series and the second.

Another victim of plot devices happened to be Elektra’s father. In the first series after Trey had their dry cleaner shop and the home they lived in above it destroyed by arsonists they had to go to Elektra’s Sensei because they had no where else to go. Now to move the plot along in the second series Elektra and her father are suddenly flush with family, and not just family but ‘Family.’ So we’re stuck going through the motions with her father getting money from their family and the store being used as a front for the mob, nothing new here and it wasn’t even written in a way to make this particular point exciting.

Elektra continues to throw herself onto grenades for people she cares about and tries to work off a deal in order to work off her father’s debt. Eventually she meets Benjamin Poindexter aka Bullseye who was sent by the Kingpin to murder a man who was going to testify against her cousins and the Kingpin. Naturally the man was tied to the case Matt and Foggy were working on, so this causes Elektra to interact with him, more as Daredevil than Matt though. Elektra ultimately goes to the Kingpin and is forced to face off with Bullseye. As part of her deal since she defeated Bullseye the Kingpin will produce evidence that clears Elektra’s father’s name while implicating her cousins.

The series ends with Matt and Elektra more at odds than ever. He still wants to follow the law, and actually found a way to clear her father’s name that wouldn’t have involved her coming in contact with the Kingpin and now it appears that Elektra has earned a place inside the Kingpins organization.

I’m not sure what to think about this run. The pacing was a little better, but that’s because it had an extra issue to deal with that the first series didn’t. The writing is good, but considering they’re not trying to reinvent the wheel here, just rehashing more overused plots and preexisting plots being sacrificed or simply thrown away just to move this new story arch along; the writing could be considered average. The art is okay, but a lot of the times the proportions seem a bit off, especially on the women in the issues, they seem to be pinched and bloated at the same time, but it’s not the overtly sexualized unrealistic art that’s quickly becoming the normal in comics. I don’t mind a bit of retroactive continuity but considering the first series ran from 2001-2002 and the second one ran in 2004; add to that the fact that anything in the Ultimate universe is sort of a combination of retcon and reimagining I think it’s a bit too soon to be changing the fact that Elektra and her father had no family in the first series, and suddenly is overrun with family in the second.

Devil’s Due was by far better than Daredevil and Elektra, but so far D&E has been the worst I’ve read (which is sad considering she’s my favorite character out of Elektra, Daredevil and Iron Man) the fact that Devil’s Due was better is kind of like saying it’s the best of the worst.

Rating: B -

Ultimate Daredevil & Elektra Issues 1-4 Review

My third stroll through the Ultimate Marvel Universe brought me through the origins of Elektra Natchios. Once again her origin has been ‘updated’ to become more accessible to different types of comic book readers. However unlike Iron Man’s new origin Elektra’s seems to work against her. Her mother’s death due to breast cancer caused her to become depressed so her father enrolled her in martial arts classes because she was a fan of Bruce Lee. Her father now is a simple dry cleaner who is just trying to make an honest living and have enough money to send his daughter to college.

That’s right; Elektra has been de-aged down to eighteen years old in order for them to be able to successfully play off the college freshman aspect of the story. We get a few supporting characters, which I find a bit odd. I don’t like the idea of Elektra having friends, a roommate or a support system; and in this case she has all three and that’s even before she meets Matt Murdock.

This is where the plot loses me it took away all of the best dramatic aspects of Elektra’s story and replaced them with a cross between a Lifetime TV Network’s movie of the week and a Lifetime Romantic Comedy. You have the love at first sight aspect with Elektra and Matt, even a slumber party type scene between Elektra and her two friends Phoebe and Melissa where they’re taunting her for having feelings for Matt. Thankfully the love-y dove-y aspect isn’t the main story line, but the b plot does drag out too long in my opinion.

The other plot is something that honestly I am sick of. It could be a good plot if done correctly but it just gets used way too much and it’s sort of the ‘go to’ plot in order to do female vigilante storyline. There is Trey Langstrom who is a stuck up entitled character who thinks he can do whatever he wants. He constantly harasses the females on campus until messes with Melissa, Elektra intervenes only to have Trey later attack and (it is implied) rape Melissa. Elektra is furious and takes Melissa and their friend Phoebe to her sensi in order to teach them self defense.

Trey’s family gets the charges dropped but Elektra doesn’t want to let it go. In order to teach her a lesson Trey hires two thugs to burn down her family’s dry cleaning business. Naturally Elektra’s father is inside, only he doesn’t die. She insists that it is Trey and is even more furious when he gets released from police custody yet again. Now we’re in for yet another over used plot device here, we meet Trey’s father who appears to be more abusive than Trey is. In the brief time we see him all he does is beat Trey around, yell at him, call him a failure and let him know how ashamed he is of him and essentially orders him to ‘take care’ of Elektra. Well Trey tries to attack Melissa again and this is ultimately the straw that broke the camel’s back.

The whole time unknown to Elektra Matt has been investigating the arsonists and Trey, so we do get a little bit of Matt’s early outings as Daredevil, if not his first outing. At this point I would rather have seen more of Matt than Elektra which is a shame because I am a huge Elektra fan – but this plot and her new origin does absolutely nothing for her at all.

We get a bit more action in the final issue of the four issue series which is good, but almost too little too late. Elektra set up an ambush in the park for Trey where she intended on killing him; they fight for a while, not long though considering Trey is no match for her. Just when Elektra is about to kill him the masked man that Elektra has been running into stops her, again we get more fighting – nothing really special there -. The masked man reveals himself to be Matt and that sends Elektra over the edge, she can’t stand that he lied to her and thinks he was lying about everything. The issue ends with Elektra stabbing Trey in an artery and giving Matt a choice: save Trey’s life or run away with her. Matt chooses to save Trey which leads us to Elektra vanishing but not before she leaves her father a letter, Melissa and Phoebe get one too, Matt doesn’t though, instead she leaves him flowers that were just like the ones she gave to him when they first officially met.

I wanted to like this, I really did; and I went in with high hopes after how much I liked the two Iron Man series but Elektra and Daredevil left me disappointed. It was like it was trying too hard to be more important than it actually was. I don’t get Elektra’s quest for vengeance for Melissa at all. It would have made more sense if Trey had attacked Elektra, the attack led her to become involved in the martial arts world, he gets off due to his family buying him freedom then he hires the arsonists and then Elektra goes after him. I have a hard time believing that this character who is supposed to be so ruthless and cold blooded was suddenly turned into a shy love sick teenager who all of a sudden wanted to murder someone because her friend got hurt. It was too drastic of a change in Elektra and it happened too quickly for it to work.

Rating: C -