Rucka offers up an excellent introduction to the world of Daredevil, but it's through the eyes of Elektra. His characters are thoroughly grounded, and this opening issue sets the super-heroics aside. This is a love story -- for the moment, anyway -- and a story about friendship, and it's all wonderfully illustrated by an artist whose recent efforts pale in comparison to these efforts.
Elektra Natchios is a freshman at Columbia University, and her warm personality soon draws two close friends -- her roommate Phoebe and Mel -- to her. The latter hooks up with Elektra and Phoebe thanks to Elektra's quick thinking and decisive handling of a campus bully. But he doesn't take too well to being shown up by a woman. Meanwhile, a redheaded young man catches Elektra's eye, and she grills Phoebe for as much information as possible about the attractive, young blind student.
This comic book proves it... the digital inking by Liquid! Graphics on X-Treme X-Men is not serving Larroca's pencils well at all. That X-title features art that is a hazy, inconsistent mess, but here, Miki's tight inks bring Larroca's work to life. The characters' youth and energy leaps off of the page, as does Elektra's warmth and zeal for life. The colors suit the grounded tone of the opening issue. Tones are muted, not garishly bright, reinforcing the optimistic sense of the everyday in the story and art.
My one qualm with this first issue is the plot. The one-dimensional male chavaunist pig makes for a clunky antagonist, and it takes away from the emotional impact of his actions. In his initial appearance, he's playing keep-away with a woman's notebook. An attractive woman at that. The bad guy comes off a minor Happy Days-type foe, and then catapults to a far more sinister status. It just doesn't ring true for me.
Fortunately, the rest of the characters do. Rucka manages to sell me on Elektra's love-at-first-sight emotional roller coaster, but even more important is how she interacts with Phoebe. Their first meeting is a key moment for this series. It gets the reader on Elektra's side, allows us to view her as something more than the cold killing machine she is in mainstream Marvel continuity. Furthermore, turning her into the daughter of a Queens businessman as opposed to a member of a jet-setting diplomat's family brings her further down to earth.
