by Randy Lander

ELEKTRA #2 Recommended (8/10) Marvel Comics/Marvel Knights imprint Writer: Brian Michael Bendis Artist: Chuck Austen Colors: Nathan Eyring Letters: Comicraft Editors: Stuart Moore & Nanci Dakesian Price: $2.99 US/$4.50 CAN While the title of the book is Elektra, she's really not the lead character... the driving force, maybe, but not the lead character. That's as it should be, and Bendis is doing a terrific job of making Elektra a shadowy and enigmatic figure whose motivations and personality are not really knowable to the readers or the other characters. He's aided in making things shadowy this issue by some artwork that is colored so darkly (or maybe it just printed that way) that you can barely read the pages or figure out what's going on, which is an unfortunate bit of "aid" to the atmosphere. However, leaving aside some overly dark coloring and an opening sequence that is perhaps more confusing than it needs to be, this is shaping up to be a fun story of espionage in the Marvel Universe. It's still incredible to look at this artwork and think that it was done using computer modeling rather than hand-painted, as it has an incredible look, but I did find myself having some problems with the artwork this issue. Specifically, the sequence in SHIELD's "ready room" is way too dark, presenting little more than blobs of brown and yellow, and while the gist of the sequence is clear from the strong dialogue and the few images that survive the color process, it's a chore to wade through those pages. I'm not sure if it's the artwork, the writing or more likely both, but I also found the opening sequence more than a little unclear. I appreciate that we're supposed to get a "Jedi mind trick" vibe off of what happened, but that seems an unnecessary extension of Elektra's abilities as well as simply a way to get a cheap cliffhanger into the first issue, and all it did was have me starting the book a little wary of what was going on. Fortunately, things picked up considerably after that. The brighter art sequences, such as the one featuring a jeep driving through the desert, are still drop-dead gorgeous, and for the most part the rest of the book features the same expressive faces and solid storytelling that I've come to expect from the first issue. The story is almost more of a traditional SHIELD story than one featuring Elektra, and while her part in this is fairly important, so far I'm more interested in what's going on with the SHIELD contingent, HYDRA's agent and the Saddam Hussein analogue who has gotten his hands on a weapon that will be familiar to all fans of SHIELD. There's some terrific stuff here, with questionable loyalties, implications of not-so-nice methods to get the job done and a feeling that we're in a darker world than most Marvel super-heroes inhabit. Elektra the assassin is right at home working with this dirtier, more realistic version of SHIELD. While Bendis is a great storyteller in general, what he's known for are the dialogue exchanges, and there are a few really good ones in here. The whispered conversation between Fury and Elektra, with neither willing to back down from their seized moral superiority, is one example. The frustrated yelling of the HYDRA agent on the last two pages is another. And it's always nice to see the bad guys getting as much of a personality as the good guys, which Bendis does by giving two of the HYDRA agents a great banter between one another. Email Randy Lander comments about this review.