Elektra #7 – Review

If any of you shared my fatigue in seeing Elektra’s conga line of bloody victories last issue, I’m sure you’ll be just as exhausted as I am when we get what is essentially a second round of the same here. Sadly, I’m not exaggerating. Blackman literally takes most of the opponents Elektra’s defeated before, sets them against her again, and she defeats them nearly as quickly as she did the first time around, which, for most of them, was just last issue.

In a fit of desperation, Blackman tries to liven up the battles by giving all the so-called assassins upgrades, not just Lady Bullseye. Doesn’t make much of a difference, though. Elektra’s forced to take a little more damage, use a little more ingenuity than usual, but Bloody Lips by himself posed more of a danger, honestly. Even Lady B, whose upgrade is the ability to turn intangible at will, winds up in the same state we’ve grown accustomed to seeing her after a run-in with Elektra—bleeding out on the floor—in five pages. Pathetic is the only word that comes to mind.

But that sure beats the single-paged defeats of Whiplash, Jack O’Lantern, and Tiger Shark, not to mention the fact it’s not even clear what their upgrades are; we didn’t get to see their basic abilities before.

All this for Elektra to confirm her enmity with the Assassin’s Guild, as if the endless stream of guild members coming after her didn’t make that clear already. Elektra didn’t need to kill an unnamed guild rep to do it.

Pointlessness characterizes the latter half of this first arc. I don’t know what Blackman was thinking of when he decided to kill off Matchmaker, Elektra’s sole supporting player. Perhaps he overestimates how much we actually like the flapper girl; perhaps he felt it doesn’t matter anyway, since she’s clearly coming back. “See y’all in my next phase,” are Matchmaker’s parting words. Besides Kento, no one else can offer a proper eulogy. Crow is openly dismissive (“She only did it for the money, Kento.”) and Elektra offers the most shrugging defense (“Maybe. But she risked her life for you all the same.”).

And speaking of Crow and Kento, it’s a laugh Elektra refers to them as “friends” at the end of the issue. Meeting and unmasking Crow has made him no less an enigma, and the only thing we know about Kento is he loves his dad and is kind of useless in a fight. It’s admirable, in a way, that it’s a woman who’s the only one that can get things done around here, but the cost to the other characters is a bit much.

Sanchez turns in a less impressive issue than he did last time. His linework is looser, shakier, which makes the end product that much more distracting for the eye. Elektra is looking decidedly homely, but beyond the minor defects in her looks, you take issue with how lethargic she seems throughout the issue. She’s understandably bored by how weak her opponents are, but that does nothing to get us excited about the battles. Just look at her practically rolling her eyes when she allows Lady B to get a direct stab on her.

– Minhquan Nguyen