Like I need a new comic title to fangirl...

[elspethdixon]

Ah, wikipedia, friend to lazy comics fans everywhere.

I always thought of Daredevil as a DC-type hero transplanted into the Marvel Universe. Now I know why--apparently, Frank Miller worked on the title back in the 70s. He's responsible for Elektra. (Okay, he also did a lot of good things for Daredevil, including ditching the 60s goofiness, bringing the Kingpin in, and introducing the noir style the title's had ever since, but… God, I loathe his recent writing for DC so much that it kills me to admit to liking anything he's responsible for).

Also: God, Matt, you're a ho. You've slept with almost as many women as Bruce Wayne, and they've all died or gone evil or both. Or dumped you. Or been Tony Stark's exes. Or some lethal combination of all of the above. I vote that you give up and start dating either your business partner or Luke Cage. Given the choice between Elektra and Power Man, I know who I'd pick. (I hate Elektra. Hate, hate, hate. She and Domino should run away to the Middle East or someplace and be skanky assassin whores who are bad for people together. Their respective main guys would be much better off without them. Luke Cage, on the other hand, is pretty cool when he's not being written stupidly).

seanchai, to the best of my newly-enhanced-by-wikipedia knowledge, Elektra has never come back from the dead as an evil clone. However--and clearly, this is yet another instance of us being psychic--she has worked for the Kingpin as an assassin. He ordered her to assassinate Foggy Nelson (he was all, "Dude, you're Matt's ex-girlfriend, what the hell?" and she couldn't do it). Bullseye then stabbed her in a stupid macho argument about which of them would get to be the Kingpin's top assassin. She went to Matt's house and died in his arms, so as to ensure that her death caused him the maximum amount of emotional trauma. Then random ninja people brought her back from the dead, via a combination of Exotic Ninja Magic ™ and Marvel!Science that caused her to spilt into two people: Glowy Magic Mary Sue Elektra Good Elektra and Nega-Elektra Erynys. She killed Erynys and absorbed her evil half back into herself. Also, she and Matt have both shown up in Ultimates verse: he's a law student at Columbia with essentially the same powers and backstory, and she's a fellow Columbia student with martial arts training and issues. Her father dies, there is angst, and she goes all vendetta on his killers.

Also, in the Marvel Mangaverse miniseries, she's all evil and totally cuts Matt in half with her stupid trident daggers.

Theirloveissotrue.

I therefore posit that Evil!Crazy!Clone!Elektra be named Erynys. And that we check out the Ultimate Daredevil/Elektra miniseries and use it as backstory.

Comments

[blukitten.livejournal.com]

Elektra worked for the Kingpin? Wow wiki does have alot of useless marvel facts.

I am jealous, I aspire to one day be as geeky as you.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

A good memory for trivia is vital--not only can I regail you with scads of useless comic book information, I can tell you Stonewall Jackson's shoe size and the number of machine guns on a Supermarine Mark II Spitfire.

The Marvel facts have nothing on the DC comics section. Superman's storyline is like the Necronomicron--the longer and harder you look at it, the more likely you are to go insane (every fifteen years or so, DC gets tired of the way they've been writing things and reboots their universe, changing everybody's back stories around so that nobody's backstory makes sense anymore. At this point, Lex Luthor has, like, three different origin stories, and there are two versions of Black Canary).

[seanchai.livejournal.com]

Christ, I think I remember the whole 'split-in-half' thing. I think it was the story line that inspired my ever-lasting hatred of Elektra. And why am I not surprised that she was written b Frank Miller - he's ruined many a potentially interesting female character for DC, why not Marvel?

And Erynys is totally the perfect name for Evil!Crazy!Clone!Elektra.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

The thing that really gets me about Elektra is that I should like her. I normally enjoy morally ambiguous anti-heroines and hero/villain pairings (Batman/Catwoman, Buffy/Spike and Buffy/Faith, Clark/Lex, etc.). In theory, Elektra's just the kind of character I love, and her relationship with Daredevil is the sort of stuff I eat up like the melodrama-whore I am in other fandoms... but in practice, she's so frequently written in a way I find annoying that I can't bring myself to like her.

Also, Jennifer Gardner played her in the movie.

[seanchai.livejournal.com]

See, that's exactly my problem with her - she should be a fantastic character. She should be all interesting and morally ambigous and tough, and her relationship with Darevdevil ought to be ten kinds of fun... but she's just not. And their relationship just makes me sad, because if she was written better, it could be all kinds of fun - and nearly as iconic as some of the other Marvel-verse relationships.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

Elektra: Like the bastard lovechild of Psylocke and Catwoman, only boring.

Marvel has so many interesting female characters--Mystique, Rogue, Storm, Carolina, Sue Richards when she's written well, Mary Jane, again when she's written well... Elektra ought to be one of them. But woe, she is not.

Maybe if she didn't wear that red headscarf that makes her look like a pirate? Anyway, if we do write this fic, it's our chance to make her interesting--by bringing her back from the dead as a crazy, sociopathic clone. (But an interesting and kind of sympathic clone, not a boring one like Magnete-Joe).

[seanchai.livejournal.com]

That would actually be one of the main draws of writing the fic - seeing what could be done to make Elektra interesting and sympathetic, even as a crazy and kind of sociopathic clone. If nothing else, there'd have to be flashbacks to when they were all young, and happy, and she wasn't a clone.

Because damn, but has Marvel ever got a missed opportunity in Elektra.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

One of the appeals of that alternate X-3 plotbunny I'm never going to write (the one with Gambit and Sinister and Madeline Pryor) was the Madeline angst when she discovered that she wasn't real, had no memories of her past not because of amnesia, but because she had no past and was just an imitation of a woman she'd never met.

Erynys, of course, has most of Elektra's memories (possibly with just enough telling gaps, especially from her childhood and from anything surrounding the Kingpin's role in her father's death, to leave her more dependant on the Kingpin and to worry her), and honestly thinks she is Elektra, so when she discovers about 2/3rds of the way through the story that she's a clone, it will be that much more devastating.

Especially when she remembers having fun with Matt in grad school and fighting with Daredevil and realizes that those memories aren't real, that it was someone else who went out to diner with Matt and Foggy to celebrate opening up their law practice, someone else who cried on Matt's shoulder when her father died, someone else who taught Daredevil how to catch a shuriken in mid-air, etc. That the man she loves--or thinks she loves--is really in love with a dead woman, not with her.

So Erynys has to make him love her, make him hers, because then, she'll be real.

[seanchai.livejournal.com]

Exactly! And then, even though she's kind of evil, she'd also be all sympathetic, and you'd feel bad for both of them.

Plus, in our version, she'd totally have a coherent and non-stupid backstory. You know, one that doesn't read like it was written by a thirteen year old girl just discovering the joys of Mary Sues.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah, she has that whole random retcon thing going with her backstory in 616-canon, doesn't she?

I'll see if I can dig something up on her Ultimate-verse backstory. It ought to at least be internally consistant, given that she was only featured in a few issues and a miniseries.

Also, further research on scans_daily has turned up a comic from 1997 where Daredevil teams up with Deadpool (and Foggy and Weasel go drinking together). Best exchange:
"Are we there yet?"
"Why do you keep asking me that?"
"Because I'm waiting for you to say 'not yet, my little smurf.' Don't you ever watch the cartoon network?"
"Why, God? Why was it the eyes and not the ears?"

[seanchai.livejournal.com]

With Ultimates-verse, she's got three separate backstories, none of which work with any of the others.

And my God, that's brilliant. Ah, Deadpool, making all Marvel-verse a better place for the past ten years.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

With Ultimates-verse, she's got three separate backstories, none of which work with any of the others

Since that was written over the course of about six years rather than thirty and involveda much smaller number of writers, and Ultimates is suposed to be an attempt at rebooting things with less confusing backstory stuff, you'd think they could do better than the regular comic continuity.

But no, Elektra's sekrit super-power of always being wrtten badly intervenes again.

[tavella.livejournal.com]

I vote that you give up and start dating either your business partner or Luke Cage. Given the choice between Elektra and Power Man, I know who I'd pick. (I hate Elektra. Hate, hate, hate. She and Domino should run away to the Middle East or someplace and be skanky assassin whores who are bad for people together. Their respective main guys would be much better off without them. Luke Cage, on the other hand, is pretty cool when he's not being written stupidly).

If you haven't read the last few pages of New Avengers #27, you should do so. Luke Cage delivers a message to Elektra from Matt. It's most entertaining.