Daredevil Villains #56: Elektra
DAREDEVIL #168 (January 1981)
“Elektra”
Writer, penciller: Frank Miller
Inker, embellisher: Klaus Janson
Colourist: “Dr Martin”.
Letterer: Joe Rosen
Editor: Denny O’Neil
This feature began with me wondering why there were so few major Daredevil villains, despite the book having been around since the early sixties. Back in the first post, I wrote: “There’s the Kingpin, the Hand, Bullseye, um, Typhoid… um… does Elektra count…?”
Over fifty posts in, we’ve only met one character from that list: Bullseye. Typhoid won’t show up until 1988. But the other three are about to join the book in rapid succession, because we’ve now reached Frank Miller’s run – initially as writer / artist, with Klaus Janson as his finisher and inker, though Janson takes over on art entirely towards the end.
It’s a statement of the obvious, but Miller’s run genuinely is a quantum leap in quality. It’s not that the plots are that much deeper than before, so much as that the storytelling really kicks up a gear. Miller turned Daredevil into a book that people were talking about, and the sales increase got it back onto a monthly schedule again. And this run is the template for Daredevil going forward.
Charts – 1 August 2025
Just one week for Justin Bieber, then.
1. HUNTR/X, EJAE, Audrey Nuna, Rei Ami & The KPop Demon Hunters Cast – “Golden”
Climbing to number 1 in its fifth week on the top 40, and with two other soundtrack songs not so far behind – “Your Idol” is at 10 and “Soda Pop” at 11, though both of those are Saja Boys tracks. As I’ve explained before, the convoluted chart credit is actually listing the same people three times: the fictional band, the real singers (on this track, mostly EJAE), and a generic cast credit because that’s how the overall album is credited.
“Golden” really is very good – it works as a regular pop song, but fits the plot requirement of being unreasonably difficult to sing. This thing requires a two and a half octave range, and the top end is really high.
The X-Axis – 30 July 2025
Well, this is quiet. There’s no Infinite Comic this week, though they do take skip weeks sometimes. I notice they just axed Astonishing Spider-Man, which does make me wonder whether somebody’s starting to have doubts about how many subscriptions these things are selling, but we’ll see. Remarkably, that leaves us with a grand total of one X-book.
SPIDER-MAN & WOLVERINE #3. By Marc Guggenheim, Kaare Andrews, Brian Reber & Travis Lanham. Yeah, even if it’s the only book out, I can’t get worked up enough about Spider-Man & Wolverine to give it its own post. Well, except by default. This kind of is its own post. But you know what I mean.
The plot of this series is ostensibly something about a directory full of confidential information about SHIELD double agents, with Kraven and Omega Red also hunting it, and the title characters learning that Wolverine might have killed his parents back in the days when he was working for Romulus. For present purposes we’re doing the memory gaps thing again, so Wolverine can’t say for sure whether it’s true or not. That’s all perfectly serviceable as far as it goes.
Charts – 25 July 2025
A number 1 we actually weren’t expecting!
1. Justin Bieber – “Daisies”
This entered at number 4 last week, and had only made it to number 2 by the midweeks. It winds up with around a 10% lead over MK.
Justin Bieber’s first hit was back in 2010, and this is his eighth number one. Three of them came from his 2015 album “Purpose”: “What do you Mean”, “Sorry” and “Love Yourself”. The others are guest vocals on other people’s tracks: “Cold Water” by Major Lazer in 2016, “I’m the One” by DJ Khaled in 2017 (to be fair, he’s the top billed actual artist on that track), the English-language remix of “Despacito” by Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee in 2017, and “I Don’t Care” by Ed Sheeran in 2019. So it’s been six years since his last number 1, and a decade since he had one purely under his own power.
The X-Axis – w/c 21 July 2025
ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #30. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. Somewhere in here, there ought to be an interesting story about the embittered humans whose supply of anti-dementia drugs was cut off with the fall of Krakoa, but this really isn’t it. The plot requires the islanders to blame mutants for their own downfall, which could work, but feels like it would need a lot more scaffolding than it gets here. Instead, we end up jumping from that mildly promising starting point to a rather by-the-numbers affair in which people who hate mutants hunt mutants, and it just doesn’t feel as if this is heading anywhere much.
Psylocke #9 annotations
PSYLOCKE vol 2 #9
“A Bird in Hand”
Writer: Alyssa Wong
Artist: Vincenzo Carratú
Colour artist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editor: Darren Shan
PAGES 1-5. Mitsuki welcomes Kwannon in and tells her story.
The seal on Mitsuki’s costume is the same symbol that was burned into Kwannon’s wrist by the ghost figure in issue #7. We saw it on the door of Hayashi’s house in the previous issue (though it isn’t visible in the establishing shot at the start of the story), and we were also told that Matsu’o Tsurayaba had it as a tattoo.
Essentially, Mitsuki claims that Hayashi beat her and left her for dead, but she was saved by the yokai that she had previously befriended using her powers.
The umbrella. It’s a kasa-obake, which is a stock form of yokai. Basically an umbrella come to life.
Storm #10 annotations
STORM vol 5 #10
“Thunder War Begins”
Writer: Murewa Ayodele
Artist: Lucas Werneck
Colour artist: Alex Guimarães
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort
PAGES 1-2. Flash forward: Bishop releases an energy blast.
Bishop. This is the first time we’ve seen him in this book – his last non-cameo appearance was in the Timeslide one-shot at the end of last year. As we’ll see later in the issue, Bishop has been entrusted with looking after the mutant child from issue #1, who is offhandedly given the name “Jaden” on the recap page. The previous issue indicated that Storm had either had her knowledge of the child’s whereabouts magically suppressed in order to keep them safe, or at least had magically prevented herself from being able to disclose it.
We’ll see later that Jaden has had a nightmare and lost control of their powers; Bishop has to absorb the resulting energy; and this is him discharging it, which is likely to make Jaden traceable, hence Bishop’s regrets. The flashforward takes place around page 13 of the story.
Wolverine #11 annotations
WOLVERINE vol 8 #11
“Only a Mother”
Writer: Saladin Ahmed
Artist: Martín Cóccolo
Colour artist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso
PAGES 1-2. Wolverine and Sabretooth start to fight.
So, okay, let’s stick with this format…
“He’s found us!” Elizabeth’s comment doesn’t make much sense logically – they’re in the room where she was kept chained up. If Sabretooth was her captor, what would he need to find? But the whole point of this story is that the sense memories cause Wolverine to gloss over the logical problems, as we’ll see.
PAGES 3-5. Wolverine and Sabretooth fight.
“Disappointed I ain’t dead?” Wolverine killed Sabretooth in Wolverine vol 7 #50, just last year.
“This ain’t the first time you proved too stupid to die, Victor.” Sabretooth has indeed come back from apparent death on plenty of previous occasions. He was beheaded in Wolverine #50; mind you, he was also beheaded in Wolverine vol 3 #55, and that turned out to be a clone. Oh, and he was beheaded for real in War of the Realms: Uncanny X-Men #3, but that was just before Krakoa, when everyone was conveniently dropping dead. Since it was presumably resurrection that brought him back that time, he ought to be dead for real this time, but… come on, it’s Sabretooth.
Phoenix #13 annotations
PHOENIX #13
Writer: Stephanie Phillips
Artist: Roi Mercado
Colour artist: Java Tartaglia
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Editor: Annalise Bissa
You know, I’m thinking maybe I’ll go back to the scene-by-scene format, especially now that the post-Krakoan books have been around long enough to build up a bit of continuity. As with the last time I did this, I’m going to use the story page numbers, since Kindle still can’t count.
Page 1. Flashback: Jean raises Nathan Summers.
This is an original (and largely generic) scene which takes place somewhere during the 1994 miniseries Adventures of Cyclops & Phoenix. It’s attempting to set up Jean and Cable’s relationship without getting too far into the weeds of 90s continuity. For anyone not familiar, however:
Nathan is the child of Cyclops and Madelyne Pryor, who was a clone of Jean. In X-Factor #68, Nathan is sent into the far future so that the Askani can save him from a techno-organic virus; after some back and forth, it turns out that he returns to the present day as Cable to try and avert that future timeline. In Adventures of Cyclops & Phoenix, Scott and Jean are brought forward in time to that future and wind up spending several years raising Nathan as his adoptive parents, though Cable only discovers this later on.
Uncanny X-Men #18 annotations
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #18
“Corn Dogs and Carnage”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: Luciano Vecchio
Colour artist: Rachelle Rosenberg
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
THE X-MEN
Calico. Either she’s having nightmares about Mutina following the previous issue, or Mutina is genuinely stalking her. These encounters prompt her to sleepwalk, something she’s been doing “almost every night of late.” The very strong implication is that Mutina really is teleporting into Calico’s room to threaten her at night – when Gambit and Jubilee try to take her back to her room, they find the bed slashed, along with the painting on the wall. It was fine when she got up to start her sleepwalking a few pages earlier.
According to Gambit, she’s a hopeless cook (“she don’t know how to cook toast”), presumably because her rich family always had people to provide her with food. Despite this, she tries to make pancakes while sleepwalking, and seems at least to be vaguely aware of the correct ingredients. While sleepwalking, she recites some of Mutina’s threats, but also says “Everyone cooks, everyone cleans”, which are two of the Haven house rules from issue #3.
