Punch Up: “To Me My ❌-Men”

Chapter Forty Nine

1972, 1986, & 1987

◇ELEKTRA◇ Assassin

February, 1972, Daredevil Vol 1 No. 87 by Colan, J. Buscema, Palmer, Rosen, Conway + S. Lee

July, 1986-Febuary, 1987, Elektra: Assassin; Eight-Issue Limited Series Vol. 1 No. 1-8 by Sienkiewicz, Novak, Saladino, Miller + Goodwin, Duffy & Chichester

December, 1986, Daredevil Vol 1 No. 241 by McFarlane, Milgrom, Scheele, Rosen, Nocenti + Macchio & Anderson

Mixtape Tracks: Old Man by Neil Young;…pending…

Chapter 49 of “to me my ❌-Men,” in which sandwiched between two contrasting Daredevil issues, we get deep in the art house comic that made Elektra essential and solidified Miller and Sienkiewicz’s place amongst 20th Century cartoonists. 1986-1987’s ◇ELEKTRA◇ Assassin becomes our 9th masterpiece; Chapter 7’sWolverine, Chapter 17’s Demon Bear, Chapter 21& 30’s Life Death, Chapter 27’s Legion, Chapter 32’s Longshot, Chapter 36’s Born Again, Chapter 41’s Weapon ❌, Chapter 46’sMutant Massacre, being our other eight+/-masterpieces, thus far.

Previously on “to me my ❌-Men,” After Matt saved a human strawberry blonde from mutant massacre. Wait?! Ororo was being hunted by Nazi hunters. Awkward. While in the past and the future Matt and Alpha Flight were involved with Killgraves.

The drama of 1964, skips a beat, as we dip our toes in The Bay c. 1972.

The John Buscema cover is some basic silver age sups, with the bonus material of to much graphic design. Which gives it some old arse heft, that works on a nostalgic level.

I haven’t gone into this, somehow, I believe. But nearly all these comics have this aroma, that is not age. They are to preserved for something of that nature. The pages when you breathe in have this home spun earthy sweetness, that only newsprint provides. I use to be taken away simply by the smell of a comic. It is why I try as much as can, to print my limited hand assembled comics on newsprint. It simply does actually seem to be a comic to me, until that smell hits me.

I am literally sticking my nose in this and inhaling. A wave of thoughts and feels overwhelm me. I am swimming.

I once lived in SF. Not quite a decade later, I once depicted the angle of a road there, in the pages of Ben’s limited series comics anthology imprint Benmanship:

Ben Cohen’s Ben’s Benmanship

A superhero comic strip turned turn of the century self published comic…on news print in it’s final iteration.

It wasn’t till later, a couple years or so ago, that I saw this Gene Colan, as I was reading and sharing comics on the FFW Discord. I tracked it down last year.

This may not be the perfect example of Colan’s brilliance during his Daredevil fun, but the issue definitely showcase moments that evoke his transference of life drawing onto the comics page. He uses this to guide the eye in a very forceful and evocative way. This runs counter to what we experience with Kirby ‘s sturdy graphic forms and Ditkos experimentive play with proportions and gesture. It can be tricky to identify Colan’s influence, as he is depicting life’s forms as they are, in many ways. I believe he absolute must have been of some influence, because the work is so compelling. When I got to this section of Daredevil, I was taken aback, by how it refused to distill down to a graphic style. Colan just drew what he saw.

Here on page one, we have a car on a hill in SF, parked in front of a residency. The driver, Matt and Nat. Typical comics narrative and dialogue lettering. ALL framed by a standard tagline at the top, and power play title at the bottom. Taking advantage of aligning with the SF streets angle:

Top: DAREDEVIL, THE MAN WITHOUT FEAR!…

Bottom: FROM STAGE LEFT ENTER:ELECTRO!

Palmer’s inks are solid and exacting. Not messing around with Colan’s pencils, is the impression you get. Rosen, flexes in alignment with the art. Again frustrating we don’t have the colorist credits. It would likely be one of a handful of couples at this point, providing a hand. They are all skilled cartoonists and do an excellent job here, providing just the right enough of off register and a precision in choice colors for the time and place.

This a very strait forward establishment, and you deffinetly feel Matt and Nat have settled in a new place. This is absolute not NYC. This is for sure San Francisco.

Nat has spent every penny of an inheritance on seemingly renting this home. Matt called her a crazy female for it…but in the framing of…he loves her and the decision. He better.

Conway, not to be dead weight here, evokes some mood:

“Soft, almost unfelt, The Bay breeze moves through the city like some silent specter. It touches, three leaves rustle, bits of sidewalk paper spin and dance—and in the morning air, San Francisco comes alive.”

This is Matt sensing the world around him. It is also myself taking a moment, back home in the Bay. Having just returned from there, having memories evoked here.

They are running from their problems. Repressing and moving on. Processing is not what they are here to do. Oh dear…The Bay is all about processing. That’s unfortunate.

They are also looking for a change of speed. In 1972, this was probably a decent down shift from NYC. They are already bickering in the margins, as repression is not the way.

The home is belonging to the estate of “some old dowager.” Comes furnished.

Nat’s chauffeur, Ivan, is more of grumpy father figure. I think he is her rescuer from childhood. But she treats him as an old codger, and he plays the part, despite looking like Tony Stark’s age. They settle in, as Nat rejects the idea that Matt and Nat are an item…Ivan is no dummy.

We are then treated to a birdseye angled French curved view of the Golden Gate, looks to me from the Marin side, with Matt traversing the top in the foreground. He and She-Hulk will hang out in the same spot four decades of so later, as they contemplate a case to defend an aged Steve Rodgers. This spot works for both the red and the green heroes.

Matt downplays the differences and tries to find commonality between Hell’s Kitchen and these Left Coast folks. He is reflective on a trial Nat had; on adventures with an Assassin; and then there is Karen.

The page switches from from blues, purples, and reds to an infusion of yellow, making green the highlight. As in Chinatown, the unmistakable Stan Lee and Steve Ditko Max Dillan AKA Electro makes his emergence from the shadows of night, in the claustrophobic enrichment most essential neighborhoods in The Bay. He is hiding out from Peter, back East, but now Matt is swinging around the West. Elektro has found an old generator that will influence his powers. He has finished his work on it. He is ready to strike first, once he electrocutes himself. It does not feel great.

Nat is about to go into the night, and we are to understand that Ivan is not a Matt enthusiast.

Matt has transitioned to Angel Island public transport, headed north down the hill to Fisherman’s Wharf, Alkatraz, Tiburon (Marin) and Angel Island (my Dad’s favorite place), in the background.

Electro lost him back on Telegraph Hill. The renderings of Electro in other comics often come off as a flaw to me…in Colan’s hand they are a feature.

I don’t love this depiction of Coit Tower, but as I did in my page above, here we have a sup engaged around it. Electro traversing the grounds is Colan flexing a bit.

He takes out a guard…sometimes I don’t understand an arch’s reasoning.

He least had recollections of beef with DD.

Back at their spot, Ivan, is approached by a hot rod driven by a Danny French. Who is a bit to forward and informal for Ivan’t taste. What does he want with his lil’ girl?

Nat and Matt meet up down the hill, and are absolutely flirting and making out, when they notice Coit Tower pulsating with light…not exactly what it looks like or is known for…for the story it sends them in the right direction, only they are delayed by the commissioner who wants their ID’s because a masked vigilante took out a guardsman. Only a beat cop, who watches local news, updated the commissioner that they are simply sups from NYC. The commissioner rejects their help, and wants them to stay put. This all is depicted in realism, mind you. It’s stiff to be sure, but kinda works on how it would actually go way…minus some of the colloquialisms.

“dig”?

At one point the police and firedepartment set up a scene that is too much for Matt. He jumps in to keep them all safe. Nat helps by detaining the commissioner who is in charge of the scene. As Matt over the course solid comics pages engages with Electro…sending Electro through windows that I don’t believe exist…but maybe they don’t cause…Matt threw Elektro through them in 1972…five years before I settled in The Bay. The cops, minus the commissioner, look on with awe and appreciation.

Page 19 makes it seem like Electro is falling to his death. Page 20 disappoints, as he uses his powers to escape. The commissioner is not pleased, but doesn’t arrest Nat and Matt. Unrealism is back in The Bay.

Cliffhanger is a friendly call with Foggy and something is up with Nat and this Danny French feller.

Frank Miller’s Elektra Natchios first appeared in October of 1980, and was last seen in November of 1983. She would appear in a dozen issues over that span of time. We, however, encountered her just once.

A bounty hunter’s voice from Matt’s past. A wealthy love, when back in school, turned damsel in distress. In Europe, Elektra, found a profession. By the time she encounters Matt, she is a proessional, but somehow ends up a damsel. In balance, again, a love interest. For Matt. She breaks into Matt’s place, only to find he has another. Someone more stabilizing, though still his time, including wealthy, Heather Glenn. She disappears again. She remerges months later, having discovered in her pursuit of The Hand, results of a bounty, that The Hand has Matt as a target. So back to NYC, she witnesses Matt’s entanglement with The Hand. And from the shadows at first, lends a hand. However, this ends up with Melvin Potter, them back to back. The two defend themselves from The Hand. Matt shows and assist, he thinks only Melvin. Not fully realizing Elektra was even there. Thinks he imagined her heart beat. Now The Hand has been assigned to pursue Elektra. Matt tracks down Eleketra. He has questions, as to why Matt is being perused by The Hand. She plays hard to get, and Matt is not fluent in her game. The Hand goes after Foggy, and Elektra is near by to gain Matt’s attention, after he saves his best friend. A question lingers in if this is in fact The Hand, as they did not dissolve. Posers? Elektra investigates and discovers she is in actuality facing The Hand’s legend that is Kirigi, rumored to be immortal. Seemingly defeated he vanishes. Next falls The Jonin. Matt passes out having been entangled with The Hand in the vicinity. He threatened to follow the law with Elektra. A hard thing to do, unconscious. She is free, of him and these men. Elektra is hired to kill a seaman, who it turns out, is seeking revenge for his family. Her employer is a Nazi. She forms a partnership first as a matter of mutual survival, but in the end she caries out the assassination her target is unable to complete. Killing her Nazi employer. Ekektra, back in NYC, checks in on Matt’s romance, but is there to find Stick. She is being tracked by Kirigi, alive and well. Who gets to her, before she gets to Stick. She watches Kirigi’s body burn, her own doing. Kingpin is now aware of Elektra, being shown film of her capabilities. He sends the streets at her. And leaves a note, to hire her. She sneaks into his office.

We glen little to nothing of this, as we entered into Elektra’s life in our Chapter 3. In what perhaps is my favorite Daredevil issue, Elektra is presented through Ben’s eyes, as he investigates a story with brings him entangled with the Kingpins chief assassin, who has been hired to kill Matt. Not presenting the entanglements of Matt and Elektra’s past, this frames it on very simple and dangerous terms. Only in the last moment, do we realize Matt knows her name, as she clearly has the upper hand. And next to believe Ben has been taken out by her hand. As a single issue, if this is all we know of Elektra, it sets up Elketra Assassin in even starker terms.

Daredevil and Elektra readers knew more, while I entered into Daredevil through Elektra Assassin, and we have lead ourselves into that story through a single issue.

Not knowing initially, at least, Elektra’s personal feelings undermine in the moment her abilities to finish the job. She does not eliminate Matt, nor another assignment, Foggy. So Kingpin sends a new head assasin; Bullseye. Who is successful in murdering Elektra. Setting a path for Matt and Benjamin’s entanglements, as well as, contribute to Matt and Franks encounters. Matt struggles with belief in Elektra’s death, despite her being absent for the good part of a year.

In which we see, in Chapter 7, Nat and Matt entangle with The Hand, as Matt’s senses get the better of him. Sending him into Stick’s hands for help. We see Kirigi resurrected, again, regular readers would know what this is, we would not, beyond a mysterious figure being resurrected.

We don’t see Nat’s role in Sticks entanglement and assisted defeat of Kirigi. We don’t see Stick as head of The Chaste, with pupls Stone and Shaft, in an epic battle with The Hand. We don’t see it is Stone who helps lead Matt, from Nat, as the bottle has lead Heather from Matt…towards the impossible. Where we see Elektra’s journey as student, and convinces Stick, The Chase, that she will infiltrate The Hand. In doing so, she sets in motion what Daredevil readers know, but we know little of. Matt and Stone, with a trailing Nat, come upon The Hand retrieving the body of Elektra from her grave. Matt goes for help…Kingpins. Striking a deal. Matt, Nat and Stone attempt to stop the resurrection, but Matt is clearly conflicted and acts as such. In the end, failing to do so morally and technically. He is not aware, as he and Nat leave, that Stone finishes the resurrection. When they return, there is no sign of the body and Stone, disrobed, has fled, as well. Matt and Kingpin confirm an unshaky deal. It is made clear, Elektra is part of The Chase, and assumed alive.

Again, we know none of this beyond, Matt knew her name, she attempted to kill Ben, is an assassin, and there is a possibility of resurrection when it comes to the mysterious Elektra. We know Nat, Matt, Logan, Stick, Kingpin, Kitty, Yukio, Yuriko, are all somehow connected to The Hand.

This seems like a much cleaner and curious entry into Elektra Assassin. I didn’t even know this much, when I picked up the comic that would impact my cartoonist path the most directly, in July of 1986.

I was just visiting with my brother, and apparently he would do the same thing with his friends, when attending Strawberry Rec Camp in the Berkeley Hills; a Cal sports camp. Signing myself out of Water Polo, walking down the hill with a friend, to a day of adventure.

On this one particular morning, we trekked strait for Telegraph and Comics n’ Comix. Arriving when the unhoused were just beginning to stir and the street merchants were unpacking tables. We sat amongst them, waiting for the shop to open. Eleven.

In the window hung Elektra Assassin No. 1. The Marvel imprint Epic logo embalmed in the corner, a grayish blue. The corner box reads August, it being July. $1.50. Steep for another floppy. Elektra crouched in the corner, sai and katana drawn. A blocky and unrefined exaggerated curving figure. A full account on the wording, incudes Canada’s extra quarter and the words Marvel and comics, opening up into:

#1 IN AN EIGHT-ISSUE LIMITED SERIES ◇ELEKTRA◇ Assassin

and in the smallest pen scratched cursive; Bill Sienkiewicz 1 9 8 6

Unique for comics in this moment, negative space is left to dominate, frame, refesh, and invite your eyes to feast. I had never seen a painted comic beyond Wendy Pini’s Elf Quest Work. Where every inch is used. Here, Bill, an acquaintance of hers, through Frank, simply presents four integrated elements. Gray wafting smoke, blending into the white. A refined, simple sai, ink drawn, gray painted, with a reflective glimmer created by framing the negative space with the lightest touch of graduated blue wash. A leggy women, minimally costumed in a graphically flat red. Providing an illusion, that houses her painterly pink skin. Stringy black hair jets down like a triangle framing her face. Dark eyed make up. Ruby red lips. She looks at me. I don’t notice, because she holds, impossibly so, intricate, automatic, smoking, the largest gun I would swear I ever saw.

Not even my type, and I was compelled by her.

The full circle is, I pick these issues up, every month. Which leads my Dad to obsess over Bill’s art for a bit, and me towards his sketchbook. Where I learn he uses a pen to sketch. Not a pencil. A habit I form, using the pen my mom, the Architect, uses for just about everything, including client meeting sketches on napkins.

I use this unforgiving process of showcasing your “mistakes;” something I will couple with Bob Rosses “happy accidents,” to make my own summer camp; I make underground comics zines and minis; I take this to Savannah, and until the School breaks me of the habit, I use it to begin my formal comics cartooning training. Eventually, in grad school, I learn how to “properly,” ink. Thanks to my classmate John Lowe, who was a professional inker, trying to expand his abilities as a cartoonist, ended up teaching an undergraduate course in inking, that all his graduate classmates took…to give him a hard time. He would be launched from the crucible we formed for him, into becoming eventually the Dean of School of Communication Arts at SCAD. He schooled us, and every one of us can ink on a professional level now. Nib and Brush. I took this ability and in turn began to develop the ability, because I had been practicing a hybrid of Mom, Marcy Jones, and cartoonist Bill Sienkiewicz, to ink with a brush specifically without pencils.

I primarily cartoon the illustrative part of comics by approaching a blank Bristol board and applying ink to it via a sable haired brush with India ink on it.

I also teach 3-5-year olds how to develop their visual lexicons, and abstract symbolism communications with that ink pen on a large roll of brown paper, that they share space and storytelling on, called The Big Comic. They enter into socialization in this space. “Happy Accidenting,” sharing thier feelings, and collaborating. Wrestling with themselves, the space, their neighbors agency, and a pen that leaves plainly their “mistakes.”

A while back now, I was invited to San Diego Comic Con, where I encountered amongst a crazy day of encounters and comics intelectualism, Bill himself. Finally able to thank him for the impact he had on my life. We had a nice casual professional chat. I then, on the convention floor, call my Dad to let the fanboy inside out…my Dad, “did you say ‘hi’ for me!?!”

Sigh.

Let’s open the comic.

The Miami Vice color schemed credits and legal page notes amongst other things, that Jo Duffy is the assistant editor on this book. Jo did editing on a Defenders, She-Hulk, Spidy, Luke Cage, Daredevil, Dr. Strange, etc…She wrote even more, primarily some Luke Cage stories, Star Wars, and will be featured in this capacity in the next chapter of “to me my ❌-Men,” on another title. She eventually even writes some Wolverine. She is a co-creator of Rom the Space Knight.

On this page we get a new clipping from our series writer and Elektra creator; Frank Miller.

“MYSTERY WOMAN SURVIVES DROWNING, KILLS TWO”

“SAN CONCEPION, SOUTH AMERICA”

Found on the beach, with rope burns on her extremities, a “deep gash” on her thigh. She murders two police on beach, with her “bare hands.” She has since disappeared, and there are apparently unrelated an uptick in assassinations locally.

We turn out eyes towards a pleasing minimalist painting of a huge sky, a small beach with tropical canopy and tiny sail on the water. The words float above, alarmingly so.

On pages turn Bill immediately begins to play with mediums, our expectations, expanding our visual lexicons.

When you are a cartoonist, or any visual artist, you are communicating, while refining your own voice through your process. The process, reveals a language that works with others sand from others sandboxes. However, you are in your own sandbox as you do this. Or one you share. Bill and Frank are sharing space here to be sure.

While you develop your voice, if you are sharing your artwork with others, you are providing access to your communications. These communication are received by an audience, intimately, on their terms, in terms of fluency. So they naturally have agency in this. Projecting their own lexicons on this work, and finding their own equity in the narration between elements and in how the elements are juxtaposed.

There is no singular “correct” way to interpret art, specifically comics. In film and animation there is less agency as an audience. You are far more passive, even with the accessibility of the VCR to editing software. AI is removing agency, by the way…not adding. That is an illusion created by an algorithm, designed to erode your agency.

Anyhoo, like books where you create the images in your minds eye, and like a static image where you create contexts around it, the comic provides space and utilizes it to create a dialogue with the audience from where they stand. And together the cartoonists and the audience create a narrative. A cartoonist speaks over time with their evolving language, refining it to suit contexts, and their point of view.

Bill tests the audience, and himself. He upends and still utilizes a number processes cartoonist have developed. Clarity is actually there, but it is used along with experimentation that presses on our minds flexibility. He uses realism to directly attach to us. He uses line as both a calming mechanism and to tare at our mind. As he does all this, nearly immediately, he is training us fluency in this visual lexicon, from where we stand.

He is creating the context to foster the artistic process. One that is cognitive development, maturing our minds into a nimble, awoke, flexibility, of hearing, the conditions that foster innovation, through integrated curriculum. Precisely what comics are. Infinite intersections deigned to build scaffolding that resist control from others and other things designed for passive compliance. Enslavement. The struggle is real. This is resistance. This is punk rock.

It is to complex a communication to expect us to agree on what is being said here. Thus, this echos the Jewishness of comics. Triggering talmudic argument that exists in what has been called “kids being kids,” “geek culture,” and is now a part of global communications.

He is using here pencils; wax and graphite, ink and paint; brush and nib. He will utilize Xerox and collage in this comic. The applications of which will wildly integrate on top of each other and within each other, pull from his ink sketchbook, photo realistic painting, graffiti, mid century modern illustration, stop motion animation, all of cartoonist traditions, heavy metal magazine, Basquiat, punk theology, and kids cran drawing, which is how we enter into the first sequential art I ever saw of his. By the end of this series, fluency in Bill’s voice will be achieved, and we will recognize his chaos by design, his artistic voice, his visual lexicon, instantly in other settings.

He, Frank, and Jim Novak cartoon a comic page with penciled women in a minimally painted ocean and sun. Pregnant. We can see the pencil and inked baby girl. Happy. Long black haired. In a belly. The words press on our mind, as the art does, beginning as such:

“This on is WORN and dull like an old coin.”

Elektra will be born on the Aegean Islands, where East and West touch fingers. August 13th. Loving mother and father. Her past, their names, she has pressed away, replaced by storybook characters her father read to her. The beach scene disturbed by “eggbeater” a chopper and “greasy men.” Mentally unstable is the vibe. As, somehow aware, from inside the belly, on the beach, she has already experienced their love and lessons, and now she is born through “uzi” gunning down her father and then her mother, on the beach. We are painted exactly and real an image of Elektra.

Stripped down. In a room of others, stripped down. A ward of costs and women, in a space of high ceilings.

“I am safe NOW Poppa.”

A life of gleaning a world from each sliver of light.

She reflects now in blues, purples, a flat painting of age five. Her father survived. Is present. She begins cutting. She is now six, and we are hearing her reflections on a series of images she is seeing. She is struggling to discern the differences between her Poppa and the fat pig of a man. It is Poppa that called her a Cheshire Cat. Alice in Wonderland makes not a lick of sense…is my sense.

In the now, the women eat. Elektra amongst them resists the repetitive thinking of the time she was twelve and her Pappa and Sensei were both so pleased with her top shelf abilities. She doesn’t want to waste certain thoughts.

Some never fade. Simple. Fit. Throwing star, arrow shaft through it, lit with flame, star clawed, winged she is above it, the arrow imbeded in “stone.” My guess this is The Chace’s “Stone," as he pulls it from his chest and flings it at a “Stick.” Sensei sent her to them. They are “the seven.” She will be the eighth.

Stick is a noble shit. He hurts her to look at and with words. In body. Enslaved, she becomes fluent in their magic. She listens, but not hear, the meanings of “The Hand,” “The Beast.” her work is belittled, as it progresses. Elektra is happy just to be near her abuser.

Naked on a cot. Amongst the naked on a cot. Bill’s painting is stark and full of darkness illuminating the light.

“I wish I could hear him talk NOW…”

“…his SOUL becomes hard as the CLIFF. My farewell SHATTERS against him. And I fall.”

She is calling this spinning globes and they become erratic as she spins them faster. Crashing into each other. Memories…”the splinter…”

Ninteen. Matt. College. Poppa’s heart “explodes.” Elektra leaves Matt, at Nineteen, after the burial of her father. She murders her Sensei with her Sai. A “black globe,” snuck in. “tricked” her.

“taunts me.”

“You are a turtle it mocks me you hide from your power and whispers—”

“—it chuckles and licks me and talks of magic—”

She chased it away and is present in the madhouse with other women…and the fat and greasy smells like rat man.

Elektra is the turtle, and she sinks her mouth and claws into the Spanish speaking rat’s neck. Her mind shifting from realism to flat paintings. Both graphic. The rat laughs.

Pulled off him.

“and the black globe opens.”

Black panel:

“and I fall.”

She slowly awakes to a voice and white cloaked people. The Jonin welcomes Elektra to The Hand. Saying her betrayal of her father lead to his death. She is twenty and his cackling echos. Her love for her Sensei lead to her murdering him. She understands it was a trick and a death. She is “tainted,” by the “blood” of every “good man” she has ever “touched.” Elektra is to learn the way of “The Beast.”

“The Jackle’s Son. The Beast.”

Is not born of man or woman. Becomes more human over time. Is a Minotaur, with Samurai armor, that in Bill’s hand looks both real, and flat, scratchy and refined. Elektra cowers in front of it. A collaged picture of her father and sharpie markings indicating this is on her mind. Mother’s milk is poured over her head.

This painted page is masterful and what we paid for.

The use of the collaged Cheshire Cat on the next page is choice, juxtaposed with a close up of just Elektra’s smile. She is bound by chains. The Hand is poised in the shadows, early visible…accomplished only with paint…she has a look in her face…the chain is taught…and then broke…a graphic designed punkish literal dog fight in two panels….this red painted pange juxtaposed with an introspective isolated blue one, depicting Elektra with her gash in the leg, and escape from a strait jacket.

In this she reflects on leaving the milk, The Hand. She laughs in The Jonin’s face when he suggests her death. She leaves the Black Globe laughing. It is loud in its response…so she drowns it. She is locked away from the other globes and the black one is huge. It endlessly talks (like me!)…so she brakes free of the jacket, tricking it. The black globe has fear now. The black globe shrinks into a small bouncing ball in her captive space. So free, she explores her stitched wonder leg and finds shining inside it…one by one pulling out shinning things. The small black globe screams.

Twenty Four, South America, smoke in a dirty hotel room, fills with a gravelly voice. An article is being read.

American Ambassador propaganda: “Defeatism is dead in San Concepcion.”

Linking the people with Carlos Heurvos’ rise. The voice in the room denounces the American and Huevos…the trafficking of guns and tanks. Calling San Concepcion a turned out trick. Downing cheep whisky.

“Farmers sons die in poison factories…daughters fear their own police…”

He turns to Elektra and her profession…Mercenary…worked in Bolivia. Ninja.

Assigns her Huervos heads.

Elektra’s price. same as the tricks. Two dollars.

Bill does this in 12 fully painted, tightly cropped, mostly lettering filled panels...that somehow maintain on examination an element of representation and use of space found in Andrew Wyeth's painting (another influence of mine).

Juxtaposed with a warmer, 11 painted panels, long shot at the bottom, freezing the action, and giving the off panel assignation space and poignancy as the arrow and spurt of blood happen next to glancing child’s head. Elektra exacting the assignment with a crossbow while photo journalist take shots of Huervos on a marry-go-round on a hot saturated humid vibrant day.

The warmth of this page feels like Savannah.

The funeral pages painting works with basic attention. Frank’s words lift it up. Elektra is there is view mourners, but is struck horribly by the stench of Ambassador Reich’s voice. It is thick, The Beast within.

On the next page, which unfolds down hill, a memory of being tied down by the Spanish Men…and revealing the Beast is a dozen more years from being human.

She brakes into the embassy. Distracted by thoughts of the Spanish Men in the Madhouse…she focuses on the Embassy and the American with a patched eye, and a cup of milk.

Pages unfold, painted, more sparse, even shattering, as Elektra on the operating table at the Madhouse, so visceral, breaks into pieces, and from the shadows of the present in the Embassy, a green monstrous hand attacks her after he Sai is flung strait at the American. The hand reaches for the milk. Her mind sees herself freeing itself from the Madhouse…in the present struck by a glass of milk…in the past an open window to a Madhouse.

“And I jump.”

In a painting that hangs on a wall somewhere. I am sure of it.

Wonder how many times in John Garrett’s life, the introduction is down the barrel of his gun? Jaw engaged on the left, to grip his smokey cig. Right eye clenched, checking the site. Bill Sienkiewicz has us cropped up close, Garrett is thick with paint. Even the sig and smoke sit upon the page. The humidity beads.

In contrast to the cover of No. 1, this presents a polarity with Elektra. Both comfortable with guns.

Credits page updates on the local news. A earthy light green compliments the nature within the juxtaposed painting, across from it.

“FIVE KILLED IN ASSYLUM REVOLT”

“VALLEY OF PEACE, South America”

The reporting is solid. Places the unwillingness to state on the record, what is obvious, at the feet of the police. Making them seem implicit, without being direct. A refusal to connect the events on the beach and in the Madhouse. We learn that opponents of Huervos suspect, his administration of using it to hold inhumanly and tortuously political prisoners. They even get the number of dead, their roles and the procedure Elektra was escaping from. A lobotomy at the Valley of Peace Institution for the Criminally Insane.

It’s jarring reading the sparseness of actual fake news in the Information Age.

"THE UGLY MAN”

The green air, wraps the vines, which wrap something white. Man made? It’s a lovely painting.

Turn of the page, treats us to 24 vertically long, but small panels in two exacting four by three panel pages. Lettering is pithy, yet takes up enough space to feel dominant. Negative space is assisted by this arrangement, the pages feel white. Dense blue greens are placed purposefully with a painterly quality within their strict boarders. A highlight is page ones panels 2, 3, 6 & 7, which provide a rectangle amongst the rectangles, serving as a block of peachy warm colors. The cool and the bright holds them.

To create this effect, often the cartoonist will tape off the Bristol board with tape designed to be removed without pulling up the pulp. I use Magic tape. A gentler adhesive to masking tape. It protects that sharp edge of white.

“There is a BLANK space—”

Reads a white text box over the first, black painted, panel.

Then the inked lettering simply holds court, free of a box, in the peach, a red sun hovers, a translucent fall leaf passing over it.

“—then the sun burns BRIGHTLY but does not burn away the water in the AIR or on my BODY—”

Stan Lee was not alone, but often described what was being seen. In his case odd, as he was often writing after being shown what he was literalizing. I suppose he was subconsciously covering up for the fact he had little to do with creating, making his words seem like a dictation, when in fact he was simply following the directions of the penciler.

Here Miller, is not doing this we believe. In part because we know more about Bill and Frank’s relationship. Genuine friendship. We also, understand their intentions are starkly different from Stan’s. They are more aligned with Steve and Jack. In fact, evolved from there. They knew enough of and from all three named architects of the world they were working in, well maybe not from Steve, to understand the nuances of their lives and how they sat on the page.

I see either a collaboration in this panel from beginning to end, or Frank writing and Bill responding to the verse. But I remain unsure, as the Bill controls so much on this page…he is making the space that Jim and Frank work within. Still they all know the anatomy of a page and the balance could simply come from professionalism.

What strikes me sometime with bold lettering; which we spent time in Mark Kneece’s class trying to figure out, and one element I have gone on with my own cartooning to be very purposeful in utilizing; is that there is infliction, there is direction, there a wink at the audience, there is also duality of meaning, etc...

When you isolate “BRIGHTLY, AIR” and “BODY,” out and think of the conditions of Elektra in this…I begin to think of it as instructive of her character in the moment. A reminder to breathe. A reminder to ourselves to, breathe.

“—the LEAVES are THICK about me and covered with INSECTS—”

Each word, can take on new meanings. An exit. The air becomes the mind, or soemthing else entirely. A descriptive terms of inhabitants of our world around us.

When a comic strikes you. Sit with it. Return to it. Think on it. Discover within it. Approach it as you do works in a gallery. Take your time. In your time. In the time that seems right. Be open to discovering a utility that has been there all along. Waiting for you.

In peach:

“COLORS” on the nose.

“SMOOTH” by appearance.

“LIE”

“ROUGH” in truth.

“CAT’S TONGUE” speaking for herself, as much as a leaf?

“BONES” is what they leave her with, but is it the environment or herself?

The contextual words and pictures removed, it can appear like word soup. But if you embolden them, you signal significance. Are we not to extract hidden meanings. You are trying to hit us over the head with them. Color us with, a smooth lie, applied rough by cat’s tongue, down to our bones.

Cooly:

“KEEP”

“HAVE”

“MOVING”

Instructive.

“REMEMBER”

“SOON”

“IMPORTANT”

“TRAINING”

Lesson continues.

In peach:

“TRAINING”

“BACK”

A studying of mind.

“CALL”

“ALL”

For help? To head warning? Connection? Share her recollections emerging?

“CONTROL”

“MIND”

Directive and occurrence.

“YEARS”

“FAR”

A sense of place in time is also an expression of the struggle.

In white; the lettering slightly italicized, the area around the eyes, a tuft of hair is revealed, but Bill houses this with blank canvas, negative space, forming a ninja’s mask and head covering. Angular, not round from some angles. This is The Jonin’s voice in Elektra’s mind?! In the thick jungles of South America.

“BENT”

All of Elektra towards The Hand. But also over time and distance.

“SLAIN”

“SOFT”

“CLEAN”

A hardening and purity emerged in Elektra, as she does this to herself. Killed herself to emerge a weapon herself, over time and distance, she has bowed to death. Hardly clean. The loss of the softness, shows weakness to me…but also resolve to survive. The struggle is real. It is to easy to think of her as clean now. The Hand’s perspective of clean is corroded, by machismo.

“AGAIN”

“US”

“KILL”

Elektra has resisted them, and they come off as possessive. The bending to them is to be them, or death…the clarity is written: AGAIN US KILL.

“CODE”

“YOURSELF”

To them the code is this death cult, and to straiten up as she was, soft, will result in suicide. However, in this, I see, a rejection of this: CODE YOURSELF. The individual’s counter to the US.

“DARK”

“HIDDEN FORCES”

“DANCE”

“PERISH”

Spiral dances in this way, as part of her own death cult. Frank, Ann, Chris, and Louise are working in concert during this generation. Meaning is there to glean. Elektra is aware of the dark, its hiden forces. Dance for perish. Yet read like this, I see a prognostication: DARK HIDDEN FORCES DANCE…and PERISH.

Cooly:

“JONIN’S”

“JONIN”

“LOVED”

Elektra adds in more here, barly, ending the panel with; “—LOVED to talk—.” Meaning: JONIN’S JONIN.

In white:

“NINJA”

“SIX ORDERS”

“TERRIBLE”

“ECSTATIC”

He continues with a title, directive, sense of the moment’s irrelevance.

“RECITE”

“BODY”

“WEAPON”

Regurgitate the intent: BODY=WEAPON.

Cooly:

“BLEEDING”

“STRENGTH”

“MOSS”

“BUGS”

“SIX ORDER”

“OBEYED”

Elektra assesses reality…and nature heals…as she continues to bend towards The Hand. Both injury and endurance in its face spreads into the ease of compliance.

In white:

“PAIN”

The Jonin keys in on denial of feelings.

Cooly:

“FIFTH”

I need a chart…Elektra seeks to be the 8th. The 7th are the Chased. The Sixth The Hand. The Fifth?

“LASHING”

“FAR FAR”

Elektra’s mind is: LASHING FAR FAR

In white:

“DARKNESS”

“SILENT”

The Jonin instructs Elektra a place and condition. I read a rebuttal: DARKNESS SILENT.

Cooly:

“THINKING”

“ROB”

“POWER”

“FOOLISH”

“STOP”

Elektra in so many words: THINKING ROB POWER FOOLISH STOP…Hulk level poetry…reminds me of the feminist hulk twitter accounts brilliance.

In white; but Elektra’s words over the Jonin:

“SHUT”

“UP”

“SMALL”

Edited down…simply means: SHUT UP. Followed with a sequential compliance of shrinking Jonin.

Same panel, different voice…diminishing:

“OLD WAYS”

“ELEMENTS”

“ALLIES”

Bygones.

A silent cooly panel of Elektra’s arm and hand, blood from body, dirt form nature.

In white, increasingly white, letters and figures shrink over three panels. Elektra’s words in the middle…no image:

“NO ONE”

“INNOCENT”

“NEVER”

“FORGOTTEN”

Erasure is a thing…and frankly should not be either way…some commonality…in last moments.

“SILLY”

“SMALL”

Elektra tells us both off.

“FIRST ORDER”

“SUCCESS”

“LIFE”

“DEPENDS”

Famous last words…wait 1st…what of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th…math is hard.

Returned to Black; white text box:

“SILENCE”

“BLEAKNESS”

I get this. GenXer’s happy place. But also: telling the BLEAKNESS to shut it’s pretty mouth.

The pattern continues as you turn the page and then the adjacent page has the panels shrink on the top tier into seven panels, the fifth being largers. Followed bellow, by an establishing longshot and three panels taking half that page sized to fit the content within.

The pattern contained a page of natural environment exposing a snake, which intended to eat Elektra, but instead, when it has the upper hand, looses it quickly, to her own teeth. The painting is minimal as needed, painterly as needed, and depicts the snake as if a detail of marker graffiti drawing in a sketchbook by a twelve year old. It is striking and visceral surrounded by refined control and realism.

The seven panel sequence is the passage of time from darkness, sun, moon, the fifth panel; the leaves, and words of days and an empty mind.

The longshot, a set, film crew, Elketra has stumbled out of the jungle from actually drama, into a fabricated scene of busty blonde damsel and lion:

Elektra’s narration: “—still I cannot help but WATCH—…—her BREASTS are HUGE—”

And they are.

A man, the CHAMPION with GUN takes out the CAT “—before the CAMERAS—”

The page turn predictable. But the graphic design of the tip of the gun’s barrel is choice.

All seeming foreshadowing…Elektra the Cat. Garret the Gun. Man and Women. That old chestnut. CHEST. NUT.

The implications of the next panels, tiny, alternating black and visibly cropped tight details lion, and explosion.The narration, men scream. Ignition…of bomb or Jeep. I am hopeful a journalist will clue us in later. Elektra’s mind is unreliable as are Frank and Bill here. We know and see, Elektra, over the remainder of this page and a third of another, in five, six panels, has the friendly lion in the Jeep and they are speeding along. The speediness a lovely addition…pallet knife, Bill? The green, with more subtle colors. Elektra’s mind shifts from the scene gone by, to water and her throat, arms calmer, the cooling of air speed, and the radio focusing her in on American Ambassador Reich. Her target. An American voice accuses him of being a pawn of “war seeking nations.” Then Spanish voices, and the lion shits in the jeep. Making Elektra laugh.

Elektra is in and out of consciousness. The milk may be why. A hunch. She finds herself fighting tomorrow unconditioned and poorly of habit (breathing wrong) black belt with a sword. She does not know is she should kill him…why she is there…in the moment, finds reason to think she is simply testing herself. She is in and out. Knows she is at 10%. Takes the mans sword, after tossing him. Images of a downed soldier. Typed papers. “WEEKS lost". “THE UGLY MAN—who is the UGLY MAN?"'

Time slows at the end of page 8. Her head in a massive mid century hair drier at the salon meets Star Wars tech…Bill is cooking. A strange place to Elektra. A strange voice. Speaking about a women and a dog.

What was The Jonin’s italicized serifed open narration, and Elektra’s open overlay or in a rectangle white boxed san-serifed at times itlaisized narration lettering, is now a light blue, corners edged to make it octagonal san-serifed lettering. The man speaks this way is accurate and wonderfully painted closely cropped, but recognizable as The Ugly Man, the man from the cover…the one we will eventually call Garrett. Unkept black hair cut for convenience, machismo mustache, thick eyebrows, a solid hooked nose, clenched cig, popped collar.

“Shit. That probably made it on the TAPE.”

Elektra realizes, and we see her more clearly placed here, that she is viewing and hearing a tape in her head. It is effecting her, frustratingly so. She can read his mind: “BEAKER.”

The Ugly Man (until it is made official) is not a fan of the machines he and Elektra are linked to telepathically. He is not a fan of the researchers enthusiasm and their assumption this will end communism. He is never free of them…he always is being tracked in his mind…even in freedom of movement. Elektra knows this now. He has an implant. His mission is to find out who assented the president. If I am tracking this right, that means Heurvos. He is no fan of any of this…and he is recording in his brain and making it available to Elektra exactly how he feels…with wonderfully salty terms.

I should mention, there seems to be another. A slovenly plump blonde, not unlike The Donald, in a space suit…or hazard garb. Casually siting amongst the tech and murderous types. He being Eugene Cattivo.

Whelp…turn the page and you get the F word…not FUCK. Time capsules. Never forget.

A blight on two pages of painted comics that come off as otherwise masterful. Frank’s words, no Bill’s. But Jim, Archie, Jo, and Daniel all let it pass. Bill didn’t walk away. Word is Jim Shooter, probably got a tickle from it.

The page shares a light atmosphere of the lab. A little misty from Garrett’s cig. Similar to the page before it. Garrot’s toupee is returned. A result of brain injury and surgery from the conflict is the assertion. Another reason he really is resistant to them mucking around in his mind, as he is implicit with them mucking around in Elektras. He doesn’t see this as the way. A work conflict. The plastic lining his skull a reminder. He is taking pills and to the drink. No longer in the machinery, in a desk chair, his mind still being recorded. Always. He reflects on the arm. Surgery that looks mechanical or like an exacting tattoo.

On the second page, of the two page spread, Arthur Perry debuts outside the labs window. Pointing to his watch, instructing Garrett by name, to get. Elketra now knows his name. As the slovenly Cattivo, holds an Uzi up towards Elektra. Instruction: not to move. She somehow is able through speech…or by hand…a “—SIMPLE technique—” send the armed to his teeth in automatic weapons Cattivo through a lab window.

While not a mirror of each other, there is a sense of inverted alignment.

Garret and Parry are not the lab. Thus the desk chair.

In the lab, the paintings continue along the same aesthetic course. Highlights of painting stand out amongst Bill’s level best. Elektra presses the button to erase the five hours of tape from her head. She is joined enough with Garret’s mind to be aware of the beating in his apartment. Perry is gleefully working over some nerd in a suit, with glee. The dawn or sunset silhouettes the blinds and the mans bloddy head.

A wonderful panel of Garret posed out of a scene from Barney Miller. In his head about his phone number being an old number for voter registration, and how folks call it, when they live in a dictatorship. Perry joins him, as Garrett shares subtle disapproval of his enthisiasm, while Perry applies that boys will be boys peer pressure of humor about suffering. So funny. He is sick in the normalization and joy for that side of the job. The nerd laughed through bloody bubbles about a “two-dollar whore from Bolivia.” A reference to Elektra, as she is doing this for that amount. Elektra is privy to this interaction. She can hear them in her head from the labs equipment and Garrett’s head. They didn’t hear the call…from the women asking about voting…”an alarm—”

Page turn, Elektra is fighting a number of Cattivo’s compatriots. She blocks a bullet. Her skills are unbelievable. It freaks them out, as she murders them.

Garret and Perry are onto their lead…a junky…who Garret treats, and Perry is inclined to punish. Over pages, unravels a clarity of the impression Elektra has been leaving through the underbelly of…well this is frustrating to me…San Concepcion is not a real place…Bolivia is landlocked and was part of Operation Condor, which ran through 1983. An American backed regional political oppression campaign, that propped up right-wing dictatorships throughout San Concepcion is a costal tiny country nestled near the southern tip of Paraguay, the eastern coast of Uruguay, or the western coat of Chili or Peru…perhaps word of Elektra permeates the continent.

“…she is Ninja. She is death itself…”

Elektra: “Yes—this was two days ago—I cam to collect my two dollars for killing Huevos—found my client dead—”

Elektra and Garrett hunt each other. She is in the lab, he is in a jeep with Perry going to Bolivia and back, in his home office. Garrett finds it all to be nonsense. Ninjas. “Fairy tales.” Garrett uses the computing power of data analysis to find “ninja” stories…despite a lack of faith. The past six months. Crossbow hit on Huevos is one of four leads. He rejects two. One…is off. Elektra has Jonin back in her mind…growing. She did not obey the First Order. Garrett gets the Madhouse bit. The gets the picture, going back to the story on the beach. On his desk, Bill has penciled a black and white chiaroscuro drawing of Elektra. Garrett is linking this Jane Doe, with Elektra. He uses the photo to figure out her true identity. Daughter of a Greek diplomate, Hugo. Her black belt at twelve. One year at Columbia…where Chuck taught (an ❌-Men link…as good as any other here). Hugo was killed as a hostage of Socialist Liberation Front. This is when Elektra disappears…he is nearly there, when the beer he is drinking has a hole in it.

Like the quilt the Dani and Chuck cuddled in, we are treated to a rug. Squares in Bill’s hands…there is something about this.

Garrett is on the ground, twenty two pages in…his guns are not much use…Elektra is in the room. But where. Stupid Ninjas. He reaches for his knife. The voice recorders clicks…his words.

Cowardly, Garrett sits in the corner of a panel.

“Something very cold crawls up my spine.”

We are back in the lab, where it feels like Elektra has created a home base, that seems to always have rats…or is on loop…a moment in time. She keeps them out…she needs more information.

There is nothing linear. Their minds are not working this way.

“Two days ago.”

Still.

Garrett grabs Bourbon.

Garrett is elusive with his thoughts, but we glean that a simple scheme is snowballing apart…Perry is on to him, Elektra’s onto Perry…Garrett for some reason still wants to warn Perry.

The rug and Garrett…the bottle…highlights of the painting. His form is a cartoonists creation and you can see Brock Sampson emerging from it. Bill did packaging for the Adventure Bros DVD’s.

“No harm in thinking…”

They can hear us Garret. That’s the rub.

Perry left a voicemail on tape. He has her…as she has him. At the harbor.

These painted pages are each a balance of painterly and minimalist design with the heart of a cartoonist within them.

Elektra opens the labs red door…as Garret finds Perry’s hung body.

A shot of the office. An essential placement. For imbedded in my mind since I was 11…what becomes of it.

Garrett has sympathy for the dead “asshole.” Bodies inside…the room is dark.

He fires into the darkness, as a personal nightmare, and regret at taking a drink, is flooded by shock and beer from the cooler filling the space…the room shakes…a firecracker…

A ship has a view of an exploding harbor office…full page…been in my mind, filed under Bill for 4/5ths of my days.

“PRELIMINARY REPORTS indicate that the MUNITIONS SHIPMENT that went up was somehow connected to United States Ambassador REICH, a close FRIEND of CARLOS HEVOS. Maybe she’s AFTER Reich…maybe there’s a REASON…”

Hospital monitor has a beat. Garrett is under care. bandaged head to toe it might seem. Cropped shots make you speculate a lot. The entire issue does. He is thinking. Medical staff leave. They removed the implant to review it. Elektra walks in, as Garrett assures us…the nerds won’t let him die. He has to be bionic. Elektra walks out. Garrett has a reason to live. He begrudgingly thanks her in his mind. Elektra poses, heavily armed on the next page…a second away from what comes next.

Nick Fury’s first appearance as a Sgt. in his self titled debut c. 1963; a WWII retrospective. For our purposes, he entered into “to me my ❌-Men,” through the pages of Daredevil in Chapter 7. He pops up in Defenders via Chapter 13; Uncanny X-Men in Chapter 14. You can sense he is about to pop in on us with this cover. One of them classic hunting party and their big game pornography.

“SHIELD RECON SQUAD LOCAL 317 ANNUAL SAFARI AND DEATH HUNT”

Elektra in the part of the big game kill.

Title and credits in a light American pallet:

“SOVIETS BLAME S.H.I.E.L.D. IN MUNITIONS EXPLOSION”

Soviet envoy to the United Nations, Vladimir Jakkoff, sites the bodies of two S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents, “American terrorists,” at the scene, as evidence. The bodies now stollen from the morgue. No comment from S.H.I.E.L.D. and a note of exclusion from cooperative operations with the Soviets dating back to 1968. Local athoriteis still refuse to link another story with Huevos assassination. This journalist is on this beat hard.

“ROUGH CUT”

Title companies as painting of a communications facility. Another one for a wall.

Page turn, two more paintings. These have word balloons from scientists (inside), and thoughts from Garrett. We see him held up in equipment linked to a massive geared machine, in one. With observing scientists. His favorite. He calls them, “Waldos.” That’s gunna stick here. The other a close up of Elektra with electrodes attached to her scull and face. wires connected to super computer panels.

Waldos have replaced Garretts spine and organs, one by one with:

“…with what looks like a bunch of CIGARETTE BUTTS stuck in a wad of CHEWING GUM.”

“They get their BIGGEST kick from rewiring my NERVOUS SYSTEM and checking my PAIN CENTERS—”

Garrett notes them “pop” in “fake” arms into “fake” shoulders. Same for the legs and hips. He thinks on Elektra the entire time. He is as close to human as he is going to get going forward.

He thinks she was amused by blowing him up and leaving him like this.

He ain’t sure how he even knows…but he knows what they are doing to her. His take is her secrets won’t be that for long.

She is laughing at the computers and the “agency.”

Funny word. Considering what is happening here. Haven’t seen agency for more pages than I can recall now.

He fixates on her laughing at what they are making him into. He plots his revenge. Pretty sure they get that they can hear each others thoughts. Not just their tortures.

Page turn to sequential paintings. A half page panel of screens and Garret surrounded by them, finally Beaker makes his debut. Operating the entire room. A short Einstein type. The only reason he doesn’t suspect Garrett of treason is the cyborgs stupidity. Garrett is just out of the lab. Beaker sees Garrett’s hell, as a gift. All this tech invested in him. Beaker is worried about the grammar in his reports too. I love this lil’ shit. That’s the dyslexic in me. Gives him a standard issue .38 and calls him out before he can lite up a cig.

A hot for San Concepcion night, finds Garrett hours and finally received from Beaker’s fits and his cig jonesing in a cracked ceiling, McDonalds meal odered room. Dressed down to sox, boxers and wife beater. He is dropping the F word again, as he is watching yesterday’s American TV, another gift from Beaker. A reminder of his value. He wanted transfer, but scoffing at Dallas and Falcon Crest is what will have to do. The news reveals a Ken Wind, speaking as a north east lib talking about his countryman Reich. Garrett can’t get over his lack of on the ground knowledge, as he has Reich name in his mouth, tumbling about like a thistle. As he announces he is running against the current administration…for president. Wind looks like a Kennedy. Talks like one too. He is a Xerox collage piece in Bill’s hands. Has two looks. Serious. Smiley. We see both on the TV. The Bourbon settles Garrett down.

Frank is flexing.

The news becomes a silent movie. Garret is in and out. As…

In Elektra’s mind…

Jonin: “Seek the DARKNESS and be SILENT.”

Garrett sips his bourbon, as he watches through Elektra’s mind, her begin to dismantle the Waldos and Agents back at work. Gowmer falls first. Garrett doesn’t recall taking classified files. Maybe. Who even knows. “Maybe I give a shit.”

Beaker calls him in at 4:30.

A bit of recall. Coffee is terrible. Huevos murder concerning to the Agency. Julio Gonzales torchured by Perry hired a women for two dollars to kill Huevos, for his own political gains. Perry’s dead, his implant stollen, with leads to the killer. Leading to the explosion. Garrett’s implant was stollen from his head, and the information was raided from it. Elektra then broke into the lab, and forced Cattivo to give her access to the computers and machines. She broke his neck…clarity there. It was Sgt. Mark Danzinger who flew through the glass, having found her in the lab. Then Dwinell, Kimbell, and Dubois go down, after a yellow alert. A dozen agents respond. Nosalle and Trisolini go down. Pitman down. Newton looses his head. Berger, Steingut, Weiner, Fox…fell to the sword too. Stern firing standard issue .38, grazes Elektra’ skull. Stassen tases her. She threw a sword into his leg. She punched her hadn't through Gower’s body. Eight dead. Six nearly. Two got scratched. Waldos got her now.

Garrett’s reports over more than three pages. Beaker has questions.

The answers are no good.

Especially the part about her being a Soviet insertion into thier operation to create “confusion and paranoia.”

Beaker: “She’s to clever. Too organized.”

Oh dear.

The room chaser is a bunch of inter office gossip and know it all. The one part that sticks out to me is the: “right. like they weren’t in bed with Huevos, too.” Linking Americans and Soviets to the dead dictator.

Garrett is being accused of holding back. And he is. Not sure why. He and I. Didn’t speak her name, or that arm shipment explosion is on Reich, who “she’s trying to…”

The page shows Elektra on the screen behind Garrett and then the S.H.I.E.L.D. log again.

“…what the HELL?…The SCREEN—just for a second—”

Sleep.

He can’t.

Wind’s ad plays on day old tapes of American TV.

His resume:

candle at Woodstock, blood at Altamont, burnt draft card at Berkeley, march on DC, banner of peace in bullets at Kent State, tears for John, Martin, Bobby (looks like Bobby), love generation’s soul (seems truer every day in the 21st century), spirit of ‘68, Dem, Lib, for Prez.

“Remember America…not Wind like a watch, but Wind—like the air…”

Garrett is thinking about what he didn’t say.

Now his mind is thinking up a simple plan to break Elektra out. She is in his head. Controlling it. He is aware he would never…

Reich invites Wind down to San Concepcion…for that on the ground experience…Garrett was thinking he should have had before opening his mouth.

This is what I mean…listen to this line:

Wind: “I’m THRILLED by this opportunity to show my RESPECT and CONCERN for the people of the third world.”

Frank is being really clear here. He is showing us who he hears things. And my parents generation, in my neighborhood, were so dismissive of this nuance. They couldn’t hear what was coming out of the other side of the mouth. The side that was screaming at those who now are fully engaged with The Donald. This is all fiction, but Frank is being honest. It seems to obvious to me here. And now. It seems like something, I have been pointing at…as my hand was being slapped away.

I don’t align with Frank. But I heard and hear him.

Garrett, who is being controlled, is also self aware, and honest to a fault. He gets into it. Wrestling with his own mind and the women who is now living in it. He is pathetic. A little pubescent boy. Talking how she is not curvy and thick.

“…too long and stringy…”

“…too damn many muscles…”

He is violent in his thoughts. Murder is his goal. He is hooked on her. The misogyny mind.

Back at the communications lab in the issues first painted page, we are hearing a report from the Waldos. They see her as a perfect specimen. Diminishing her humanity right off. The misogyny minds at work. Imperfections from battle. And then there is a compound in the brain and on the blood cell level that binds her humanity to beast…even snake. Unknown to them. To science. It is 5 hundred million years old, and functions on the most fundamental levels. Survival instinct. “It is alert, vital, and unreasoning.” We are walked through a brain lesson, as we were Garrett’s report. I assume it is The Milk of The Beast from The Hand. The Waldos conclude it is a case of Genetic Regression.

Garrett is there. Looking like “hell.” Morgan is working with Elektra. Who is strapped in a machine like WWIII in a crucifi❌. Garrett sonnets in. Focuses on day old Three’s Company and Bosom Buddies…keeping Elektra at bay. Assisted by a fifth in his blood stream. The drink, softens his feelings…fleshes her form out. “…screw the neighbors, especially the Honeymooners upstairs…” He is all up in his own head…his .38 pointed at her…he gropes her fleshiest part. The breast. “at…my mercy…” the predator…

Elektra: “yes, Garrett…I am yours…”

The page turns to a classic Bill painting of Elektra’s face. The painterly, the line work, the graphic symbolism, the space…the work left on the page…Frank balances this with the misogyny mind at work. A fantasy of “cruelty” “humiliate” “beg” “not to stop”

Garrett awakes over Moraga’s body.

His report tells something different. His arrival spurred by a call from Morgan, bodies, Morgan, Fredrickson.

Report switches color…reporter: Dr. Ernest Hassler. On Elektra, distorted father figure; father figure fixations; Reich as zombie; Jungian figure The Beast; Beast controlled Reich; Leg injury believed to be self inflicted…Elektra accredited to The Beast; fantasy of good parent replaced by bad parent sexual fantasy; oedipal dilema; Beast antichrist fantasy; suggests suppressed sexual fantasy; severity of christian childhood; rejection results in fixation on eastern religion; pop culture “idiom ‘ninja;” media violence consumed; “curious anthropomorphic hallucinations;”

“…attempt to reconcile infantile delusions of omnipotence with real world experience.”

Garrett begrudgingly credits Hassler with a sensible report. Recommendation to take her off the board is rejected from the top:

“FORGET IT. I WANT HER ALIVE. -FURY”

Garrett calls him a war hero F word.

Garret assessment is Fury is out of touch with his own people…and he catch Elektra trying to kill Reich…the only misstep on his end would be to let her get away with murdering him. With Wind coming to town…Elektra will make her move at the airport. Garrett is not bringing his .38.

Iconic painting of Garrett at the airport, an old woman sits dully behind her. It’s a scene…deserves a wall.

Elektra speaks…not something she has been doing much of. In her own head…maybe his.

“Murder is a precise art, Garrett…”

To him she addresses how little he knows and how ill prepared he is…if he is right.

His report was late. No sign of her…other than…she stole his gun. Assuming she was the old lady. His look is priceless. He keeps trying to get Beaker to transfer him, while walking through the events unfolding on the page.

The hotel is where things went sideways. Wind there as iff he had won. Garrett called out for sarcasm. He pleads he is a cog. No drinking. hah. A, local girl, with Wind…in a very Trump at Epstein party looking shot…looks like…turned into…Elektra, for Garrett to see. The scene lead Garrett into toilet where Winds head was facedown. Elektra’s voice from the air vent to Garrett. He followed and discovered Reich with sword in chest in another room. Wind having being evacuated.

Elektra in this moment finds that she has defeated the Beast, the smell of Milk now transferring from Reich to Wind.

Garrett got his transfer order…by groveling.

This is clearly in the past. Not simply by TV…but also who is president…Nixon is shaken here…cancels a trip to camp David. Wind is expected to win. The Beast has control of the future American president. Nixon and Wind are collaged xeroxes.

Garrett is stopped before boarding his plane. Narcotics found on him. Nobody is hearing him. His authority. When he sees.

Elektra has his ticket and she is waving see yeah sucker.

I maintain “to me my ❌-Men,” is a romance comic story. Even here, in the wake of hate speech, or perhaps because of it, a cover by Bill comes off to contemporary eyes as inspired by Rockwell, and as an inspiration to Adam Hughes. The genre is rooted in John Gold Water & Bob Montana’s Archie, Ruth Atkinson & Al Hartley’s Patsy & Hedy, Atkinson’s Milli the Model, Harvey Kurtzman’s Nellie the Nurse, Joe Simon & Jack Kirby’s Young Romance, Al Jaffee & Violet Barcley’s Jeanie, etc…continued through to Los Hernandez Bros’ Love & Rockets. Bill’s cover changes from a black title, with red trim and white interior of Elektra, to yellow, with blue trim and pink interior of Elektra. The negative space of No. 1 is now a heart, with cupids about, and Garrett and Elektra in a dance. One that hides behind backs guns and knives. Pink roses in the air, bullet holes in the wall and frame.

Incan burnt orange and yellow, the title page:

“SOVIETS KILLED AMBASSADOR REIGH, CHARGES PRESIDENT”

The story reads as this journalist has been working hard, with the highlight being, Nixon is the proto The Donald. So we have a pattern of behavior dating back to the 70’s. Also, we know now this story aligns closer to Matt and Nats time in SF, then the Regan Era of Born Again, Captain Britain’s return, and Magneto taking over the School for Gifted Youngsters.

S.H.I.E.L.D.’s presence hovers above D.C. in painterly sunset expression of

“YOUNG L💙OVE.”

Two page splash painting, Garrett is finally in the states, in the right department, about to meet Col. Fury for the first time. He is taken aback by the size and technical architecture of the operation. The S.H.I.E.L.D. he knows is another world.

Garrett: “Star Trek doors open with a hiss.”

Bill is hilarious…plays with perspective to make it look like Fury is a big dick gun barrel and Garret is a cue-tip.

Fury: “I don’r think I like you, Garrett. I know for a fact that I don’t like your reports—”

He wants him to resubmit it without the Ninja talk. Garrett tries. Fury; “god gave me two ears,” half listens, as…I’m calling her Maria…is in his ear…call from Sen. Willing, about Extechop findings…likely a report on Garrett’s tech…op continues as man to man…Garrett’s outline has Fury’s attention. He sticks to facts that make a lick of sense, and leaves out his complicate partnership with the women he really wants to murder…her new god damn partner.

S.H.I.E.L.D. helicopter by Bill is not possible. It leaves and impression as it flys an oversized Garrett towards the capitol.

Elektra is always in his mind…”sometimes I watch.”

Elektra is in hospital, as a nurse, about to transfer herself into the body of patient. She will be Elektra’s home for a bit. She is all about love. This unlocks Elektra’s thoughts and feels of Matt. “the risk is tripled.” Bill pencils Matt and Elektra kissing.

She doubles her effort. She is Sandy. And Sandy is her. Bill’s depiction of Sandy, 19, looks like Elaine Fairchilde the day she healed from plastic surgery…before her face collapsed.

Garrett smells Agent Minelli before he sees her. Mayonnaise gone bad. Face of a librarian. The mean one. She is there as he meets Ken Wind…the collage smile. Agent Honda is the stout to Minelli’s tall. Bill has Wind doing a marionette sequence that is classic cartooning. Sen Bob Willing is on with Wind now. Bob was hearing Fury…Wind wants him on his side of the equation. Alignments are clarifying. Wind blows up Minelli’s skirt with his feminist allyship. Wind pressures Bob. Who prefers Fury. Now Wind is bowing to Honda with some Japanese American faint praise. He got Bob. Garrett feels sick, and nobody seems bothered by what just happened. The scene continues wonderfully…entering into Kyle Baker territory…as Garrett can’t breath…now I am thinking it’s the Beast’s Milk. The window open, so he can survive…he tells Wind an assassin is coming for him. Wind, doesn’t shift. Accessibility. He was in Elektra’s head, but it has shifted to Sandy. It’s nauseatingly cheerful. So helpful and positive out in the world. Garrett is all soft mush. Wind is entertained by Garrett. Ushers him along.

Now Elektra has a Brad. Brad is a tool, looking for a 19 year old. Garret has two Agents…new partners on this. Garretts got Sandy and Brad in mind. He blew it…Wind knows to much. Garrett takes out Minelli and Honda. Sandy and Brad make out…giving Elektra in her body full view of what is unfolding in Garrett’s day. Sandy is all about Brad. Manelli opens fire on Garrett, who runs. Brad attacks Garrett. Brad takes out Minelli. Bill pencil draws Sandy and Brad. Now the cops show, as Garrett is erratically firing his .38. The voices in his head swirl syrupy. Bill pencils Sandydom and Bradcuck. Garrett has the cops cruiser. Bill draws Sandy’s face…satisfied. Elektra realises Garrett is all alone, and she knows how the magic…the ninja part works. She breaks it off with Brad. He cries. As a car chase is unfolding with gun fighting. Sandy has been captured and Garrett is inpersuit. Elektra is reclaiming her body.

Garrett has visions of Perry with a knife in his skull…talking his ear off. Brad is in the back…trying to choke Garrett out as he drives. Garrett puts one his head and leaps from the vehicle. Explosion. Sandy dying. Elektra is free…if she kills her in these Bill pencil drawings. Garrett gets closer…uses a police cycle. On the bridge a car…a bomb…he tosses it and The Beast’s hand catches it. Garrett into the drink. All them pages later, Elektra has him.

They kiss under water…sorry she does mouth to mouth. Maybe this is THE one for the wall.

So romantic.

Reading this as prequel, given who is president, and who is not, alone, makes sense. While we are reading with some familiarity, as a bit of an urban legend, a piece of Matt’s world, an attempted assassin of Ben Ulrich. Part of The Hand. Someone who is no zombie. We haven’t read much of what came before, in this telling of the story. This isn’t “MY DAREDEVIL.” This IS “to me my ❌-Men.”

Nixon is president, in good standing with the American people, who, along with Kissinger, is creating the groundwork that will turn into the rise of Pinochette in 1973, and the beginning of Operation Condor in 1975. An overreaction to Maxists, like Salvador Allende in 1970. In this context, is the fiction of Elektra Assassin. Taking place during a presidential election year, where Nixon is the president. Before he is reelected and resigns. The Vietnam conflict is happening. Meaning this is 1972.

The hunch is correct. The same year Matt and Nat move to The Bay. The same year Thor visits a Halloween party in Rutland, VT. In fact, we will have one more return to 1972, in a couple more chapters. To set up a core member of “our” ❌-Men. The missing piece.

Through the only icon to rival Spider-Man prior to Claremont’s take over of Marvel’s popularity, which this story is exploring. A coup d'état of its own. The groundwork beginning in 1975, picks up in pieces, in 1980 and 1982, gaining steam in 1983, momentum is felt in 1984, I step committed into this world in 1985, with 1987-1989 comics publishing events change the comics market in ways we are still feeling the ripples of today. The origin of reasoning behind statements like:

“We want to do two things: First, to bring some storylines to a close, those that started long before Iron Man. Second, to simultaneously set the stage for the future. It will establish a streamlined, simplified, single universe that we can keep up with. Some things will be familiar, but many, many things will be entirely new. Attracting young people and connecting with a new generation of audiences, that's exactly what the next universe will be about. And fundamentally, the X-Men will be at its core.”

-Feige c. 2026

What was negative space filled cover, a raven haired women in red armed, evidently not Garrett’s type, mine either, aside from the hair, large gun pointed right, has, halfway through this chapter, turned to an embracingly full purple cover, a blonde haired woman in white armed, evidently more Garrett’s type, mine too, aside from the hair, large gun pointed left, invites us into the second half of this chapter.

It is not her stacked curves which compel, perhaps. It could be she has a second gun, and we stair down its barrel.

This is our introduction to S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Chastity McBryde.

Secondary color schemed title page:

“MARGARET WIND HOSPITALIZED”

Wind campaign manager, Henry Swizzle, makes a statement to reporters. Wind’s wife had returned from a ten week Midwest campaign tour, to collapsing in their DC hotel room. Swizzle is evasive about her whereabouts and the viability of the complain.

Judaism is inherent to the format of the American Comic book, specifically the genre of superheroes. However, this is in the context of assimilation, as a means to survival, within a nation founded in Christ. The only agreed upon conditions being, which telling of Christianity is open to free debate and thus does not have a place in government when specifics of doctrine are to close to actual influence. Everyone else has been holding the line here, trying not to slip into the quagmire that is Jesus. Or so it was for nearly 250 years.

So in “to me my ❌-Men,” in Jewish Claremont’s narrative, the ✝ became the ❌. Frank Miller, is Catholic. Here we have a painting of a mountain scape at dawn accompanied by a title:

“CHAS✝ITY”

Deserving of a wall. Just not my wall.

Mc…McDonalds…Garrett’s slovenly garbage life…The Donald…I am projecting from the future…but also the present of the 80’s…he was about…impressing…attempting to anyway…McBryde…Mc…meaning “son of,” surname…Bryde…not the wife…but the Bride…The daughter of the son of the bride…Chas✝ity…Chase…The Chase…✝ity…oh Frank, aren’t you a cheeky clever one. The bombshell, Agent McBryde, we call her Chas✝ity out of respect…is a Nick Fury kissarse.

Bill paints her lushish, professional, competent, compliant, focused, whip smart, in the know to a point. She didn’t know about Garrett being back…but she knew who Garrett was…maybe even more than Fury. She has her assignment. Garrett. Elektra.

We have our paradoxical conflicted feelings on Chas✝ity. Joining her awkwardly with Garrett, Elektra, and Fury. “To me my ❌-Men,” casting perfection.

What was a warm painting within Fury’s office, is now a cool painting approaching the Potomic, the Washington Monument visible in the dawns still blue haze, the cockpit of these impossibly cartooned S.H.I.E.L.D. choppers green in tone. I count three. One team member kvetching about lack of sleep, requests a note given directly to Fury over the commencing video link with him. Chas✝ity is a pros pro. Mission focused.

Fury asks about familiarity with Garrett. Extech-op has been unforthcoming and data in the banks has gaps. S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn’t know its own cyborg creation. Chas✝ity however knows him from three years back, Libyan coup d'état, the rise of Muammar Gaddafi; actual history…establishing this as 1972 for sure. S.H.I.E.L.D. agents Chas✝ity and Garrett were involved…present…on the ground…a story for another time…when this mission is done. Fury is satisfied with her assessment, as evidence of familiarity:

“Garrett lacks discipline. Too many bad habits.”

12 minutes ago an explosion sent Garrett on a stollen police motorcycle and the limo he was chasing, into the river. He was seen shooting Agents Minelli and Honda. He is being labeled a double agent, working with Elektra.

The tone of the paintings continue at the turn of the page, a skyscraper reading “BENEVOLENT ASSURANCE” above it is a highlight in a panel and page that feels very Bill and fresh to me. I have not spent much time with it over the decades. The choppers approach silently. Capture Garrett alive…take no such chances with Elektra. Two bodies in the Potomac sensors indicate. Their lips are pressed together underwater; still.

Garrett awakens like this.

Elektra pulls away, softer, beautiful. It’s as if Garrett is seeing her clearly for the first time.

Six accountants…from Wind’s campaign office…six ninjas. Make eight in the waters.

Garrett’s mind accounts every breath. Elektra’s mind has been silently listening to every word. Speaking mind to mind; to get him up to speed:

“—yes, Garrett. Surrounded by agents of the HAND. Slaves of the BEAST. The BEAST—he is NEAR, Garrett. Can you HEAR him?”

The page turn presents an assault on the paintings, from cran drawing graffiti of the Beast’s words. Turning this into a punk zine for a page and half.

Focusing in two dances intertwine. Chas✝ity’s team relegated to audience in the cheep seats. One dance being Elektra taking apart accountant ninjas. Obscuring this is Garrett’s granular observations in his mind engaged of Elektra’s action, as he is only inaction, in a wrestling for space with the Beasts voice, which holds residency in Elektra’s mind and body. The Beast’s words have claws, and they gut Elektra like a fish. Her flesh bleeds from what externally looks like nothing in the water. She finally utters in her mind a thought:

“GARRETTg”

Garrett awakes from observer…getting in gear…he plays at white knight. Kicks an accountants glasses off his face. Bloddy’s the ninja’s mouth. Dissolves into the water.

Page turns as tables turn. The Beast resides in Garrett’s mind, however, when it’s words claw at his heart…it only finds plastic.

Garrett: “—that’s right, you bastard—my heart is plastic—”

An earned moment of triumph. The payoff is Bill’s painting of a soft moment in Elektra’s face. Beauty is how I would describe it.

Chas✝ity’s team enters the water. Elektra requires her sword…Garrett is distracted by their thoughts…he knows…they think he killed Minelli. Both our heroes know tasing in the water is coming next…and that will hurt…flesh and mechanical.

Garrett, for all his flaws, is a professional. He played them all. Elektra, didn’t see him coming…to her rescue. He held the sword so they would focus on him. Then he passes her the implement of her and his salvation. As he takes the tasing barbs and places them into his mechanical heart. Causing biofeedback that takes out the Agent on the insisting end.

In this moment of calm, Garrett wonders…how are we breathing. Under water.

He requests of her to not kill Chas✝ity’s team. Calls them innocent.

Elektra: “no one is innocent.”

She takes an arm with a claw extended from it, and then the head. Garrett is horrified. The painting is anything but.

The page turns, the action transitions from a now purple merky the water to the blue gray of the still early sky. Garrett has a jetpack strapped to him, with Elektra in his arms. They do a flyby, causing of of Chas✝ity’s choppers to tilt evasively. Garrett heads them strait through it’s windshield. Soaked…he sees who Fury sent.

“Chas✝ity, oh shit”

Across the top of both pages stretches sequential panels; ‘white',” blue and red on one hand, the Stars and Stripes alternating with the White House at night on the other. Bellow on both pages, large panels focus our attentions; a war machine on one hand, a dollar bill on the other. At the bottom of both pages longshots delivering the pages points.

It begins with Chas✝ity, who is not actually in the chopper Garrett and Elektra are in, to clarify that he is a fuck up, and she has reason to destroy what is now his chopper…disobeying Fury’s order of keeping him alive. Garrett hears her assessment and responds over coms as Elektra tosses agents overboard:

“Well, Chas, it’s like this…I’m under PSYCHIC DOMINATION by a NINJA ASSASSIN with MAGIC POWERS with a BODY almost as good as YOURS who need to kill KEN WIND because he’s POSSESSED by a DEMON. How’ve YOU been?”

A level of forthrightness that seems increasingly refreshing as it ages. To me anyway.

“I mean, since LIBYA…”

I feel like this crosses a line:

“…you know, I haven’t washed my hand SINCE…”

…grody to the max. TMI Garrett.

The cropped choppers…because these things are way to tall to fit or function…fire upon each other. Garrett knows the score with Chas✝ity’s limited authorization. It gives him a window of opportunity to escape, while she gets Fury’s permission to take him out.

Bottom line: “You know, Chas, I MEANT to write…”

The adjacent page naturally turns to Nixon and Pat in the second floor of the White House, as he disagreeably argues with Wind’s campaign ad, and she tries to get him to sleep. The dollar has his xeroxed collaged image in place of Washington’s…bottom line here is he has control:

“I’ve got the BOX. It’s MY box.”

He holds a box with a red button…but one could read all sorts of meaning out of this statement.

Painting and college over two pages with standard issue lettering flexing presented over pages sixteen and seventee’s fifteen panels. Panel twelve being a longhshot, that takes the tv screen of panels seven, fourteen and fifteen, forming three additional panels that have Fury’s attention from the forground, in a subservient vantage point. Unfolding Nixon drinking whisky from a bottle, in panel two, finger on the button, in three, Pat looking and living lovely large in panel five, and them looking cute in her dominant size and his fetal diminished size spooning in panel eight, a silhouetted S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Helicarrier in the eleventh, and a color pencil and ink nib drawn well rendered Fury with color ink drawn Chas✝ity & Beaker squeezed into panel thirteen, leaving one, four, six, seven, nine, and ten to possessing Wind, Nixon, and Sen Willing Xerox collage. Fourteen a pencil rendering of Fury. Fifteen a pencil rendering of Chas✝ity. The three insets in twelve, sketchbook ink line drawings of Willing, Chas✝ity’, and Beaker.

Nixon’s evening consumed by Pat’s wishes to snuggle, his drink, Wind & his dueling campaigns, his finger hovering over THE red BUTTON. Wind is pulling ahead in the polls, and Willing is supporting him in opposing funding for S.H.I.E.L.D.’s tech and espionage that produced Garrett. The scene shifts from Whitehouse bedroom through tv to hovering Helicarrier. Beaker’s report to Fury is four weeks late. The political landscape is not waiting. Beaker is recalled state side to the Helicarrier, as into Fury’s other ear and out side of the mouth side of his mouth, Chas✝ity’s request to take out Garrett is denied. Backup is on its way.

Bill keeps the iconic paintings of Elektra coming, for the wall of some sick fuck, in two pages and six panels (five on the second); Elektra hangs from the chopper, bazooka rocks the chopper as she hits chopper three. Chas✝ity to good for this, evades, as four agents are blown from the sky. Chas✝ity sets site on the bottom of Garrett’s bird. She presses a button…refined target; Elektra’s head. I prefer the second painting, for the variety of style and grounding of narrative elements. The bottom for panels will stick with me for some time.

The Bond girl vibes have been at play in subconscious since the cover of No. 1. The Bond movie scenes have been on background, but at times, the cinema is to direct to be denied. If you are looking for clarity, and that is not exactly Bill’s focus, that balances with painterly qualities, something Bill creates like another tool in his box, in sequential art for your walls…we have two candidates that would looks splended, mounted next to each other. Enough clarity to be both readable and ambiguity to get lost in the paint.

Chas✝ity’s chopper firing on Garrott’s leaves little confusion, while executing a chaotic scene of depth in color, light and darks. Sun rises. Three panels treat us to the only break from long shots here. Elektra hangs on. Her face in a frail but trying moment, “seeking Garrett—.” A painterly vibrant graphic implication of Garrett engaged, asking for Elektra to reach into the depth of her well. As the bottom of the painting takes on what feels like to much.

Blue and Yellow alternate, alluding to green, as Elektra’s words take over the narrative…Garrett is unconscious. The moment takes a beat. Chas✝ity becomes the focal point. ✝ centered. She barely heeds warning of DC civilian casualty potentials. She directs they follow Garrett’s decent. They can’t see what we can…Elektra holds on. Chas✝ity’s face is determined.

Chaotic, asymmetry, held by minimal number of clean white lined gutters, an entanglement of Garrett being aroused by the fire of Elektra’s resolve to go down in glory or rise up to victory, taking the enemy with them, as she places herself in control and intends to take Chas✝ity with them. Garrett know them both, intimately. He can foresee their paths collision. The paintings of action become a small sketchy drawing of him scratching out a heroic moment, the explodes into draftsman’s working SFX and painterly collision.

Garrett: “She leaves skin on the pavement—I leave plastic—”

Three panels with heavy application of splattered colors from a toothbrush and a fingernail, layered warmth in three panels, depicting clarity of the stark reality for Garrett legally speaking, and how his relationship at hand is simply manipulation, turns to the cools and yellow of Chas✝ity, who lands and dictates what unfolded in Garrett’s mind. Her hourglass figure and his upside-down triangle forms in literal contrast, as polarity of color is used. The final panel, Elektra’s flat painted hand strikes Chas✝ity’s ink drawn detailed list…her gun loose…sits as a gun ink drawing on a page by someone who spent his youth with a sketchbook drawing guns, dreaming of being a cartoonist. Or is that just me?

The Kyle Baker style returns in concert with classic Bill’s Elektra face close up…as Garrett picks up the gun and Elektra and Chas✝ity go hand to hand…Garrett in his mind…Elektra knows…he wrestles with her impressive beauty of movement as an assassin in the wild…and he with a weapon so save himself from her and his former lover…there is one path he sees…”Garrett…” Elektra’s word to little to late…fire.

I have read some moments, to many, that in aggregate lead to Gail Simone calling out the industry. A note that launched her and became a part of a snowball that was going to crash gates. One I certainly tried and am proud to support…or get out of the way from. Bill is amongst those on the side crashing down gates. Maybe it is his working with what the gates were erected to protect that provided the insight. Or maybe it simply was knowing Lynn, Glynis, Nocenti, and Louise. All I know is, we should feel conflicted here, as this painting of two women are on the ground. One out cold. The other being a bloody mess. And a man with a gun, shoulder on fire, stands above them. Shadows cast. A wall where folks mingle with cocktails and conversations is where this one should hang.

A longshot of the Helicarrier…an iconic pattern at the point. A full panel of Elektra strapped into another machine, Waldos about, Fury behind glass confering, Elektra drawn on a screen. A reactive panel. Chas✝ity drawn, strapped in herself on the screen in the final panel of the painted page. Elektra holds on. Days before she can be interrogated. Two brain waves in her. Alternating control. Dominance. Elketra, and Chas✝ity…in Elektra’s mind. Like Sandy.

Final painting of this beginning to the second half. A train like machine. Garrett pilots, and Elektra in a kinda side car. It takes a lot of aesthetics and places them in context for a wall, I want in my life. He had heard Chas✝ity’s voice come out of Elektra’s moth when he fired pages ago. Now Elektra has not simply swapped bodies…no she made it look as if she was in that machine on the Helicarrier…and then revealed when it was to late…that was Chas✝ity’s body…and now Elektra and Garrett are on the lamb…this time, Garrett has given into the inevitable. He is both feet in team Elektra.

I would be the first to admit, there is some clever intention behind this choice. It’s just not my thing, beyond the hiding of Wind’s collaged Xerox smile, the choice of burnt orange, and a compelling detail of Elketra’s ruby lips, rosy cheeks and onyx eyes. I am labeling it a first misstep amongst these eight covers. The second, being the last. It remains nearly impossible for a cartoonist to remain any level of consistency. Bill has always been smart, in forgiving and then finding utility in his “happy accidents.” They serve as a pressure release gage, and in repetition become an onramp of accessibility to those who fancy it. In the end this cover has an audience. I am simple. I am simply. I am not the one.

RED, TAN, White, pink title page w/ black type:

“S.H.I.E.L.D. ROBOT AGENT PROGRAM AN ‘OBSCENITY”, SAYS KEN WIND”

Wind’s quoted in the article: “…S.H.I.E.L.D. is ‘violating the basic human rights of its employees…converting them into Frankenstein monsters.” In calling out Nixon and the ExTechOp Devision’s use of prosthetic limbs and organs, he goes on, “The emotional stress on these poor men and women must be hideous…It is symptomatic…total disrespect for human dignity…supports this obscenity.”

Smartly juxtaposed with a painting of the parking lot, and massive neon sign for the place Garrett picks…his one contribution it would seem. Martini cocktails, “your Honeymoon getaway” in a heart, voluptuous bride and average groom in their undergarments, “Potomac Motor Inn",” a mid-century-modern glowing red and yeller arrowed neon that insists you park with the other station wagons for “all night dancing.” Somewhere in the multiverse there is a bachelor who has this hanging proudly. Ready to go to the mat for obscenity.

Page turn, red with pinks, purple, blue, white gradated in highlights and shadows. In light blue and black Garrett thinks in the room, on a S.H.I.E.L.D. transport green & black thinks to white & black. Some actually speech balloons accompanying.

Garrett downs complimentary pink champagne as he watches Elketra for ten hours stir centered iconic in the heart shaped water bed. Bill strategically, and in turn Elektra, shows leg, still cut, cleavage, framed face, hand placed just so. She is in his mind…she knows. Bill and Frank take liberties here. The logic…if there is any…folks won’t be looking for Elektra here…but Garrett…this is like hiding in plain sight. And we are absolutely looking.

Green & black is Perry…a head with a blade still embedded in it, with tech running out of every orifice. Chuck is the white & black, a blue sown together hairless Jimmathy batwinged lipless Niun Nunb sort. Marrion, a large crew cut fellow with a glowing green eye piece talks plainly with Beaker. The S.H.I.E.L.D. transport scene communicates, since passing the Panama Canal by air, Marion and Harold AKA Beaker have been openly sharing concerns for their employment or worse, incarceration, because they compartmentalized their program and took the espionage aspects so far as to become Dr. Frankenstein. Now Fury wants to see the work. He wants to see Perry. Perry who is unsympathetic, but has a sense of humor about not having a body…with the hope for a body being whispered in his ear by Chuck. A kinda personal hype man/manipulator to Parry’s ego and psychopathy. A grotesquely delicious scene, that plays off Garrett and Elektra…

…the psychos come off less ick than the loving couple.

Our couple share a romantic moment with us. Bill uses an inset panel, large, longshot, two squares, three staggered, a vertical, a solid rectangle, and slender tall last shot to share their their evening. A soft haze mutes the patriotic colors.

Garret’s mind narrates, the tv runs on background commentary.

“…proper booze…”

Four baths by Elektra, where she behaves as if he is not there…he tries to behave.

“…you’d think there wasn’t a MAN in the room. Hell, maybe thier ISN’T. Just and Ex-Spy MIND SLAVE. In HEAT.”

I suddenly have sympathy on a new level for him. Tortured beyond comprehension in an era that puts Machismo first….a context that I could see presses him towards that Machismo…more than others within this culture. It kinda makes sense he would choose this spot…he seems to be trying a bit too. He is trying to hold onto his humanity…and that means his flaws…there is so little left of the Man.

His mind drifts…or he tries to get it to…the films…click click…none seem to help…he thinks about Perry. He realizes that an assassin, the one in the bathtub, that is getting her towel on and sitting next to him, killed Perry with a blade in the skull, after he and Perry get assigned to investigate the assassination, and that he has a memory Perry visiting with the lade in his skull saying he was coming back to life. Garrett dismisses it. The tv mentions explosions at the international terminal. He is bothered by how the ads get louder…hard agree…”blowin’ in the wind” plays:

“It’s the theme song—of her next target…”

Turn the page and the takes over the scene, a beautiful focus on Elektra, Garrett in the back, less lit by the TV. A choice night time city scape, otherwise collaged Wind dominates…on TV, with a general, being served The Milk…two glasses…drink up…Nixon gets a moment, but this is all about Ken Wind’s orchestration of events.

Wind to the General, whose budget Wind looks to cut…the ExTechOp budget…it is not as it seems. He has to form the “socio-ethnic coalition of voting Americans without giving the impression of a recognizable political stance.”

War is difficult to sell, he says, and the general sniffing the milk, says nobody wants it…and then asks:

“—what is this?”

The general it is implied is drinking from The Beasts Milk.

Bill and Frank get back to our romance comic. Painting a scene of temptation, after surf and turf. The whisky has Garrett in a place…and Elektra seems free as ever…He is out…and she is out of the shower.

Fury must rely on Chas✝ity’s report on Garrett. The other information seems to have vanished. He is recovering. We get the long and short of Libya. Skilled, tactical ingenuity, adaptive. Indifferent to procedural, yet a capable operative and ally. Off hours, well he groped her…so she smashed his face. When she investigated and found a black hole where his information should be, and then she notified ExTechOp, she was reassigned to Venezuela. She sent a complaint through official channels that never got to Fury’s office. While on furlough over two months she used Agency’s Central Command Computers to cross-reference with seven states databases and find this history of Garrett. Multiple incarcerations, assault, larceny, resisting arrest, assaulting an officer, battery, four counts of intent of statutory rape, drunk and disorderly—six counts.

So Fury turns to Beaker’s update. He mentions an “unshakable commitment to human life.” He then uses two of his “finest,” Garrett and then turns to his work with Perry…and goes into great detail on the numerous procedures to save their human lives. Framing both men as victims and heroes. As he does the Waldos.

Fury is duped into buying this malarkey, and having two ears and two sides of a mouth…he has Chas✝ity there to delve into the story behind both men.

We have gone this far, so Frank and Bill pull from the archives of comics culture. A tradition that goes beyond the dondage fetish pinups by Joe Shuster. Here a painting of Elektra and Garrett delivering on the promise of the neon sign outside, dressed as one would, when an Elektra doms her cuck. He taken in by her strength, like Wonder Woman and her lasso.

Over the subsequent fifteen painted comics pages we have scenes play out as such, in the visual and literary lexicon Frank and Bill have made us fluent in, over the corse of months: Elektra finds Garrett to be dreaming again. Transitions into the General having fever dreams in-between Milk drinking, of nuclear holocaust. As Chas✝ity’s investigation continues, into Perry who is being worked on under Fury’s watchful eye. Chuck and Beaker present. Chuck in his ear, conspires. Perry relishes, the pressure Fury places on Beaker. Beaker’s report is all roses. The General is primed to go from dream to reality. Garrett, groggy wakes to being alone. Unbothered. Fury gets actionable intel from Chas✝ity on Perry:

Raped and multilated at twelve, in and out of the system, brutally murdered parents and sister, escaped, LA gang, sold heroin to children, snuff film…before the report is over; Fury is talking out the other side of his mouth ordering an end to procedures on Perry…and he has called the Senator to with redraw the ExTechOp proposal. He is killing the operation…but feels it maybe too late…so he grabs his now giant gun and calls for a squad to be ready for war.

Chas✝ity continues: Fell in with Lebanese terrorists, slaughtered fourteen Israeli hostages…

Beaker is getting an ear full from Marion AKA Dr. Wreck. Perry and Chuck know what’s up. Chuck gives Perry the minute he needs.

Marion goes down. Beaker is taken off the board. Perry with Chuck on his shoulders is taking out Agents and jumps. Fury knows better…pursues.

Chas✝ity who has been coming off as real hero…the pros pro she is…is just banking all the info she has in her mind for future agents. From Huevos assignation, Elektra, to the Milk, to Perry, etc…

Meanwhile, the General has a work around, because of the Milk, he doesn’t need Nixon’s box…he has a computer and his own button…he enters the code, presses the Botton, and then takes his side arm and takes his own life.

We are left with a panel Wind college Xerox propaganda….the serious kind.

Finally turning to Garrett and Elektra with an arsenal she must have acquired while out…on their heart shaped bed…and absolute classic painting for any American wall.

Garrett: “you know, honey…we never talk…”

Grant Wood’s, oil on beaver board, American Goth, c. 1930, hangs on a wall at the Art Institute of Chicago, depicting a concerned daughter side eyeing her farmer father. He possessed with look of rooted fatalism. In front of the their Carpenter Gothic, Eldon, Iowa home and red barn. Folks always picture the pitchfork in their minds eye, after seeing it.

On Bill’s masterful cover, he has replaced the daughter with Chuck, who is the one who looks blankly, as we simply can’t see an alternative. The farmer is replaced by the dumb grinned Perry. Soaked in blood. The pitchfork has fabric from Elektra’s costume like ribbon around it. The air blows the ribbon, but in the opposite direction of the flames coming off the buildings in the background. the Carpenter Gothic and red barn recognizable, otherwise. The wind must be swirling.

Perry has a ☮️ belt buckle, an hoop earring on the left, and crossed band-aid on his forehead. His iconic, “i’m a tool,” sunglasses shine on his face.

Blue grey, complimentary yellowed white, deep red, complete an warn American color schemed title page:

“AMERICA’S HALLOWEEN CHOICE: KEN WIND”

“ROCHELLE PARK, N.J.” a change from DC. Jo Duffy took over editing back when the cover went Rockwell romance. Frank was fifteen in 1972, making him 20 in 1977. Duffy was 18, and 23. They work for the publisher of the original Star Wars comics, before this moment when they are, 29 and 32. I was 11, so maybe it’s just me, but this journalist is lying. There is no way Ken Wind masks are the next thing since Star Wars and no fake toy company is pushing Ken Wind action figures out in time for Christmas. Because this is 1972, and Lucas’s Charles Lippincott didn’t meet with Stan Lee, now publisher, and Roy Thomas till 1975, when Len Wein was editor-in chief, having just succeeded Thomas. Thomas wanted and did write Star Wars, which came out before the film, in 1977. The action figures didn’t show up till, 1978. Duffy would know some of this on a granular level. She wrote Star Wars in 1984.

This article doesn’t have a date, and I am calling it some sort of sick wave of pop culture nostalgia from 1987.

“Vox populi:” voice of the people, referring to “Vox populi, Vox Dei,” “voice of the people is the voice of god.”

A detail of the S.H.I.E.L.D. transport, glows with voices within. A conflict of responsibility in whose job it is to mop up all this blood, and utter horror at the amount Perry left in his wake.

Two pages amongst progress report panels, we have two sizable paintings of Chas✝ity in establishing scenes of the lab and a docking bay. We also get a couple that add to the state of Beaker. This is Chas✝ity & Beaker’s scene. Beaker waxes with a glass half full, pointing to the success of creating a super human…never you mind their mental state. It’s a win for the agency. Chas✝ity’s report and in person speaks as if Beaker is not even there. And frankly he barely is. All that is left is his bloody head. The highlight is Chas✝ity, standing contrapposto, in an outfit that evokes rebel gear from Star Wars.

When I picked up these comics again, I was actually expecting them to harden me against Chas✝ity. I had always had an affinity towards her, but that was a boy at 11 talking. Now, matured, I am seeing her character emerge in a way that is turning me into a Chas✝ity McBryde super fan. I should become incredibly annoying on this front going forward.

Two pages, longshots, with two squares and four report panels sandwiching the first, orange dominates the pallet, as Chuck flies Perry, who is sickly obsessive over Chas✝ity, giving me pause in my own enthusiasm. Chuck follows his friends request, as Chas✝ity continues reporting, pausing herself and Fury as she engages with Chuck a Perry from her copter. Which now has delivered by Chuck, a Perry attached to it, and “his hand. It’s red hot. Fuel lines…”

“too late—”

Page turn, same palette, more squares than longhsots.

Fury’s two ears; Chas✝ity in one, and now he has Nixon in the other.

Chas✝ity makes it to ground. Direct order is to “—GET OUT OF THERE—”

Agent Perry, from the flames is talking smack at Agent Mekkelson, who emerges form the flames, talking of the horrors of conditions in death of fellow Agents.

Chas✝ity does no such thing, and opens fire on a monster of a man and machine. One who ripped a metal wall apart and turned hot enough to burn a fuel line.

Perry: “Think I don’t know it was YOU, Mekkelson? In the COMMISSARY. Find a REPORT on me, you SHIT. Grab an extra piece of KEY LIME PIE and you file a REPORT.”

The last word Mekkelson’s severed head hears. So many head and bodies severed. It’s numbing.

Fury orders Chas✝ity picked up and firebombs on Perry. Page turns to “scorched earth,’ as Perry speaks creepy, and four choppers flee with Chas✝ity holding tight to the ladder.

Date: November 6, 1972

Chas✝ity’s report is flawed. Nobody is perfect. She sees a conspiracy that involves a still unidentified Elektra as the center, controlling Garrett’s mind, who collaborated with Perry. They still reject the demon possession, of The Beast. Who they can’t name yet. They link blame to Huevos and Reich deaths to Elektra, fair…and force Wind as the next target leading into:

Tomorrow: Election Day

Fury had left Nixon on hold, while this unfolded…including the reports conclusion. A tiny Nixon, with yes men generals at the table, goes on about you can’t put the president on hold and he has the box and is not afraid to use it. Equates no guts with Wind and the influx of commie regime should he be elected.

Nixon’s hair! and that Jughead nose!

Three pages, mostly six panel square grid, with a longshot or two, an offset to highlight a solid drawing of a man screaming, having been struck, by the focus of this page. Elektra. In her element, alone against campaign working ninjas, within the Wind office, late, in the shadows. Wind’s face collaged all over the place. She notes they are ineffective against her, cute even:

“—he looked RIDICULOUS using TAI CHI—but used it well for a moment…”

The final one:

“His heart is warm and strong. I let him see it.”

Temple of Doom was on everyone’s mind. We all were thinking about extractions of hearts by hand.

The scene is held together by contrasting with the percolating coffee. Elektra drinks coffee. This is a an ❌-Men scene. Take s sip.

Wasn’t 100% sure, but am now. Chas✝ity has disrobed the Star Wars motif and is now in Frank’s favorite: dressed as a Nun. I mean, her name is Chas✝ity.

A solid presentation is underway. At the rally tomorrow, shoot the unnamed women, who is Elektra. On the screen behind Chas✝ity. Her assessment is short, but makes her out to be capable in mind and body to take agents out. Don’t under estimate Garrett. Perry is the most dangerous issue. The page turn is a presentation on the blueprints of Perry…and frankly…it all sound terrifying and like he has an answer for every attack…plus he is petty and delights in your suffering.

Good talk.

We turn to the happy couple. Garrett still sees himself as enslaved to their coupling. He is dutiful and nailed the door closed with a chair placed there, just for good measure. No questions asked. She is in that room.

In the room, the creamer from Wind’s campaing office is being tasted by Elektra. The Milk…taste it to know the Hand’s plan.

Over five paintings and two more done sequentially, her thoughts turn to hearing Chuck and Perry and The Beast. Chuck makes the introductions, as Perry goes from snark, to Milk drinker. Visually we we are privy The Beast, “through flesh I built the tool of the darkness,” AKA collaged Ken Wind xerox'ed head…the smily kind here, ICBM’s AND Elektra herself ( a drawing of her face, purples looking down, with horror, at her implicitness), to bringing of global nuclear holocaust.

“and DIE

and DIE

and DIE”

“and the world will be COLD and CLEAN There will be PEACE SILENCE darkness”

The page becomes an iconic painting of sequential art. Garrett in the other room, longest of just his eyes wide, purples tiny, hair across his forhead.

“I didn’t know.”

He has seen it all…and he is in his Moore’s ice cream man cover, guns about, Wind propaganda Xerox collages, red room, on the floor, fixated on Elektra breaking through the door…having read her mind…her grading his face…cigs strung about.

The page turns to that same look in his eyes, just slightly more there…red turns purple…Wind’s first act as president will be to launch on Soviets.

This is the existential world I was being raised in. Our current administrations clear nostalgia for the same period of time this comes from…that’s where I am coming from. I am hardened by it. I am unflappable. I am unsurprised. Thanks comics. For processing with me.

Both these pages, rule. Technically. In terms of comics.

Nixon in Pat’s lap, is a pipsqueak. He rants at the tv. His campaign speaks of taking the box from him.

“why bother…”

A solid conclusion. Nixon’s campaign is “GUTS” and his reality is drinking the propoganda of conspiracy around the left and communism. He is oblivious to The Beast and the Milk…and his appoints guts to press the button he waves around like petulant child.

“landslide.”

A blue, turns to black, red, and burnt orange. Winds rally, xeroxed smily collaged head with peace sign arm stretched up. Moor’s ice cream selling and in position. A nun and a rabbi walk into political rally…Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Enemies surround a couple appart, she settles his mind. Their minds intertwined.

Over two pages, a deep blue and purple a map, an audience, and off center collaged Xerox smily face with arms raised in victory.

Page turns to crouched realism of Elektra, crossbow ready, behind bleachers, in dark, but lit from behind by a window.

“And I wate.”

Iconic. Hangs deservingly beloved on a wall.

While lush lipped, and cleverly placed hair and head garb flowing, I simply am underwhelmed by a final cover, as the eight-issue limited series concludes.

I am at a point where I am not invested in pursuit of cartooning a page at Marvel. I am sober in the idea, this will never happen…as there is no interest or even possibility any more.

It’s been half a decade since I have flirted with the idea…and that was because of my backup pages being published by Image…and the bad taste in my mouth, the broken heart of friendship, and the gut punch that came with achieving a life goal left me with.

I am left cold to ambitions in comics. Content in my little corner of existence. I plan to be dust to wind falling into the stream from whence I came. Leaving behind works for my kid, and that being the end of it. An obscured foot note, was all I asked for…and all I’ll get.

I have plenty of time still. Perhaps. A aged cartoonist is this tall a hight.

However, at 11, I was flirting with the idea, that ballooned into regretful absurdity, where I could see myself penciling Uncanny X-Men. An ambition I carried out of High School…despite my appetite for the material had rapidly eroded, Freshman year. Today, I am actually happy, my efforts were tossed in a bin by some intern at Marvel, in 1994.

For decades I carried something beyond back up pages. A simple hope. A limited series. As a 20-something-year-old, I never dreamed beyond a year’s run. In my thirties and forties the idea remained a fantasy of a four-issue limited series. My happy place. I made my own of course. Well of sorts; and anthology of a small still young life’s work. The 80’s were gone, before I got started. And my nostalgia is what it is. The dream might as well be eight-issue limited series. Though four seems right. It’s just a dream.

Here we have cream in a crop of dreams. Bill and Frank made so many for us.

Agas…that’s to much America inside. Yuk! Title and splash…

“EX-PRESIDENT TRIED TO START WORLD WAR THREEM SAYS AIDE”

Back in DC.

Presidential Aid to Nixon, Jeff Rictus: “we had to drag him to the floor and pry the box from his fingers.”

Over a grossly enlarged Xeroxed collagen smily Wind head, Garrett thinks about it being March and Chas✝ity’s report on the events of the election:

“It’s good for a laugh…”

We are treated to a Chas✝ity report, which comes in tepidly comparatively to pre election renditions. The long and short of it is, she is dressed in a streamlined 80’s futurism that leans into shoulder pad and sleek flowy fabric aesthetics; while continuing the unreliable narrator schtick that diminishes her. Garrett and Elektra are in the lab; Parapsych devision analysis being she is a base level vegetable that did in fact have power to control minds and he is still possessed by a fantasy of a demon call “the Beast—” set on using president Wind to create nuclear holocaust. Wind, presumably, in shadow, with drink, and sex magazine about is interrupted from listening by Whittaker who has the Premier on the phone and notes a restless crowed outside.

A classic protest photo is augmented by hand drawn lettering on signage, black and white becomes colored collage of Xerox Wind smoking, Whitaker, the protesters, staff all conversing around a Wind who is controlled by The Beast…they see him for what he is…a betrayal. They are engaged in conflict with the soviets. The starring contest feels like a formality. Hours of tension probably delighting The Beast.

Chas✝ity continues report; Perry is as we thought, and his role in the assassination attempt is a mystery to the Agency (because he was not conspiring with Elektra and Garrett…the opposite if anything…). Wind wore new tech armor. Choppers had their sites at the ready. Chas✝ity lead 100 covert agents armed with cyborg detecting machines on their wrists. Chas✝ity tracked ice cream man Garrett in the audience…Elektra’s arrow went into the barrel of her gun. Throwing stars flew (HURRAH), agents went down.

The dwarves in the lab are fiddling with Elektra. Her mind, not as it should be, can still picture four months ago…taking out the agents.

“Fresh and sweet.”

Her account takes over for a moment, as she slays ninjas.

Chas✝ity continues; she got her gun operational and fired on Garrett as he fired a rocket launcher at Wind. The president elect was taken to the safety of the plan. Garrett took Chas✝ity off the board and ripped another agents arm off.

Elektra recalls the Beast clawing at her gut. She grabs a spear. And in a painting stabs at the visage of the Beast.

Garrett takes the rains of narration, as Elektra took his mind and threw a grenade with his arm. She road the explosion from the shadow of the Beast, stabbed, into the air, launching a harpoon from her crossbow, linking with a chopper, pulling Garrett firing into the air.

A painting by Bill to commemorate the moment of these two love birds in the hight of action. Four months ago.

Wind Xerox Collage Smily on the Cover of Time.

Chas✝ity, the pros pro:

“I failed to shoot Garrett in the HEAD Mr. President—”

Distracted Wind, refocusses on Chas✝ity’s transmission. The first time we see Wind painted in realism.

She was talking about the dwarfs and a pre Cyborg plan by ExTechOp to breed them. Three of them at her feet…mouthy in response to her words, which diminish them.

Dwarf: “Look who’s talking…”

Her report finally loops in that reptile and rodent cells were integrated into a dwarf (Chuck) who assisted Perry’s escape.

Garrett and Elektra’s minds in the moment recount from the moment they were in the air four months ago. The painting cary with them the aesthetic Bill was utlizing. One that comes off as steady and refreshed all at once. Even though familiar to our fluency in his work. He is simply painting and drawing comics as he does, at this point.

Chuck pursues armed with barbed words of a Beast minion and the spear used against his master…Garrett spots him.

On the ground Perry takes out, horribly, an agent around Chas✝ity.

Garrett takes the brunt of Chuck’s attack, so Elektra spears him with an arrow harpoon and then beheds him. As bellow, pressed for time, Perry leaves Chas✝ity be, reluctantly and thankfully depending on how horrible one is, and jet packs to late for his lil’ partners head.

Shots fired between two former Agents and partners…Elektra places the arrow just so in Perry’s eye.

Perry removes it.

A string of bombs fall from the chopper on top of the happy couple.

We are struck by an isolated detailed painting of Garrett and Elektra in free fall, the spear through his gut.

Bill Sienkiewicz w/ Frank Miller’s Elektra Assassin The Lost Years

The chopper down in painted flames and a rocket burst Perry up.

Chas✝ity’s report a collision of the two blown by the Lincoln memorial. Wind’s escape pod inside…extraction was the priority. A series of tech were in play to neutralize a complex Perry.

In the “now” Wind hands off a statement to be translated and sent to the Premier, as Chas✝ity recalls:

“we encountered a monster…”

Wind’s words openly questioned by staff.

Wind: “Tell him he can take it of leave it!”

Garrett recalls four months ago: “Lincoln memorial…it smelled of burning fuel—and rotten mayonnaise.”

“Mayonnaise”

As Winds escape pod sits amongst the rubble.

A yellow page of the escape pod, Garrett trouble breathing, smiling Xerox, and Perry ripping Garretts prosthetic arm off.

The scene goes grey, pencil and paint, black, white and green…gas. Chas✝ity as a nun and team approach the scene. A chaos that didn’t make a lick of sense unfolded for Chas✝ity. Agents downed around her.

Perry shines in a panel here…as he dismantles Garrett. Wind is happy.

The monster, the Beast…”the stench got worse-we kept firing” -Chas✝ity

Chas✝ity awoke later. No they have not destroyed it. Vanished.

Painting of Wind in back, as Perry has Garrett’s head with some fake skeletal remains dangling.

Painting of Elektra, rising and unsheathing a katana. It’s one of Bill’s more recognizable paintings.

Pages of yellowish green, Elektra in red paint and black ink, also Perry’s colors drawn in inverted semidry, Wind in the “now,” drinks…painted real face, as the dual results in Perry’s beheding, and a close up sketch of Garrett talking in Elektra’s to keep Perry’s head isolated.

Elektra: “Made in cauldrons—by computers.”

Foreshadowing our future.

Xerox Wind steps on Garrett’s head…

Perry’s body and head attacking Elektra separately…with laser and knife. She cuts of his burning hand. Katana slices through most of his body. He kneels on her spine. She claws his face…till she reaches the soft tissues of the brain. “soft. flesh.”

Body collapses on her.

She has Wind, but rejects Garrett’s impulse. She says no, to killing him four months ago.

And then plot twist. We learn she has been inside a dwarf. And Garrett has been inside Wind. Controlling events of the past four months.

The dwarf with an Elektra mind kills Chas✝ity

A real loss.

As Elektra switches back to her healed self…in her own body.

Leaving a smiling painting of Wind, with a gun, a Soviet entering the Oval Office…Garrett in control of the country, has Winds feet on the desk…a bottle half drunk…his finger on the box.

Thus completes the “The Lost Years.”

The adds from Epic have been eclectic niche from Elf Quest to Moebius to Groo…here amongst many is a limited series called: Havok and Wolverine. Already part of our plan here.

And now a pallet cleanser presented by Stan Lee, of Ann Nocenti and Todd McFarlane’s making.

An iconic poised Daredevil looks over NYC by Mike Zeck and Klaus Janson. His sensory rings radiate out.

Inside by McFarlane with Milgrom, Scheele, and Rosen, it’s Christmas time in NYC, c. 1986.

McFarlane, on the heals of a Lee & Kirby’s Hulk run was made famous by Lee & Ditko’s Spider-Man, here…well past his college days of 700 submission pin up pages (I tried 12…granted 8 were sequential), his Sal Amenola DC sequential test, his five Coyote samples that went to X-Men editor Nocenti, who passed them to Epic editors Archie Goodwin and Jo Duffy, who passed it on to Coyote creator Steve Englehart, who picked up the phone and offered him his first gig…Coyote No. 11. Four issues of that and a New Universe issue later…we have Nocenti and McFarlane working in continuity for his first time. The founding of Image story, we will return to more than once: McFarlane, will go from here to become the highest paid penciler in history. Leverage that income and power into coercing an exit of talent that derails Louise and Claremont’s careers at the hight of the ❌-Men’s creative and cultural influence, nearly taking all of Marvel with it, as Marvel goes public, setting the crucible for the collectors market and junk bonds to bring the comics industry crashing down and Marvel into bankruptcy. This Daredevil issue seems integral…or at least a foot note. And you know how I feel about those.

The far from on model like Zeck, McFarlane’s fine line between horror and comedy in fleshy crosshatching is already present in his work. As Ann continues to link Daredevil and the X-Men with her and Art Adams Fatboys from their Longshot, here in the hands of McFarlane…clearly Art Adams is an influence…as he is on most Image founders. Butch and Freddie get in a pickle involving The Trixter in his debut…which provides another Daredevil comic scene in a costume shop…and Freddie gets to do a skateboarding trick from one roof top to another…ultimate coming to a snow fall conclusion with Matt, who also has nightmares and Karen on his mind. The story plays as corny horror and innocent humor. McFarlane and Nocenti make for an aligned paring in small doses.

The floppy makes for a little light camping summer read trash perfection. That brings us back from the end of the world’s presuppose we were leaning over.

We hold onto the vibes of Butch and Freddie, as we start to work our way back to the ❌-Men we were just getting to know. We still have a bit of a ways yet. The journey will feel right in the end.

Next: Kirby’s Devil