Given how little I care about this character, I'm surprised at how ticked I am by the changes Marvel has made to the title. But after mucking around with the artwork in Greg Rucka's attempt to reinvent the character, they've suddenly given the book a new jumping-on point with talented artists Sean Chen and Tom Palmer and spectacular new covers by Bill Sienkiewicz. And the first issue of this new direction is exactly what I feared, as Robert Rodi turns in a good story of Elektra as spooky, legendary assassin which utterly abandons all the interesting character development Greg Rucka did with her. This is as good an example as you can get of giving fandom at large what it probably wants, and it's not a badly-done story, but it's so far removed from what I want from the character all I can feel is disappointed.
Greg Rucka took the lead character and started her on a path to redemption, but that path didn't include enough blood, so Rodi has put the character back onto the enigmatic assassin track that she started on. It's certainly a valid take on the character, given that it's the one her creator, Frank Miller, used, as well as the one that Brian Bendis emphasized in his run. However, it also means the story has to be largely about her victims, because Elektra is little more than a soulless killing machine, which makes it hard to make her a sympathetic character.
Rodi spends the issue with a rich and corrupt man who has hired an immense security force to protect him from a deadly assassin. He spins the tale of this assassin coming after him to the leader of his newest security detail, setting up the reader and the characters for a big finale in which the assassin lives up to her fearsome reputation. Essentially, it's a 22-page take on the Steve Buscemi speech from Desperado along with the payoff in the bar later on, and it's not bad. Rodi does a good job of showing how even a veteran of this kind of thing could be terrified, and though he pushes Elektra's skills a little too far into the realm of the supernatural, he delivers on her threat at the end.
Unfortunately, I can't bring myself to care. We're given no real reason to think this guy either has it coming or doesn't have it coming, and really who cares if Elektra kills him or everyone at the place? It's not making any difference to her psyche in this interpretation, and it's not changing anything that we can relate to. It's an utterly generic tale, with nobody to really relate to, and though it's possible that he this issue is setup, and he'll be using this enigmatic deadly assassin character to explore something else, it reads like a self-contained story and doesn't have the same potential as the revamped Elektra that Rucka spent so much time on.
While the book compares poorly with the previous run in most regards, however, it has definitely seen an improvement in terms of artwork. Chen is at least as good as Elektra irregular Carlos Pagulayan, with some terrific work on the secured setting where the story takes place and plenty of solid work on the characters and their reactions to the events going on around them. I also have to give credit to Ian Hannin for some nice rain and storm effects, which are very important to the mood.
