I'm still not entirely sold on the idea that Elektra deserves her own book. To be honest, I don't think the character has all that much depth. However, Rucka continues to make it interesting, playing up Elektra as the antagonist of the piece but also delivering protagonists who aren't lily-white either. The lack of personality that Elektra has becomes an asset in the story that Rucka is telling, and the changeover in artists to Carlos Pagulayan has made the book a lot more readable as well.
It's interesting, because I want to root for Elektra in some respects, since she is the star of the book, but Rucka is deliberately not making that easy. Her victims have a right to be angry and to seek revenge, and the soldiers that she kills are just doing their jobs. While I respect and admire Elektra's skill as it is depicted by Pagulayan and Miki, I'm simultaneously horrified by the uses she is putting it to. Even though we've seen a little more of what drives Elektra in this story arc than we have previously, we're still very much outside her head, seeing her as a force rather than a person.
On the other hand, the antagonists of the story are pretty well-defined. The colonel comes across as almost deranged in his desire to kill Elektra, but given his reasons for hunting her, it's easy to emphathize with those feelings. I also enjoy the make-up of the coalition and the various personality conflicts that they have. I feel for these characters, and though they're doing something illegal and even immoral, it's hard not to relate to their reasons.
Pagulayan is called upon this issue largely to convey Elektra's speed and danger, even when wounded near to death. The speed of her movement, conveyed through coloring tricks as much as the artwork, is done very well in this issue, and I love that we often see the after-effects of her attacks rather than seeing the attacks themselves. It's the horror movie monster effect, where we never really see the monster full on, but we're all too aware that it's out there.
No matter how this story concludes, Rucka has provided one of the best Elektra solo stories I've ever read. I'm not sure how sustainable this kind of thing is for an ongoing series, but it's clear that Rucka has a handle on who and what Elektra is and that she's not a hero, or even an anti-hero. She's a killer, and you'd have to work pretty hard to create a situation where she isn't the villain of the piece, but that doesn't mean she can't be interesting.
