Elektra: Assassin #1

[history79]

Kuljit Mithra: The Elektra Assassin comics feature many differing styles and it gave you more room to experiment than the DD graphic novel could. Did the both of you use the same technique, script-wise, or did you try some other approach? What were the different types of art styles you used?

Bill Sienkiewicz: Elektra Assassin employed a somewhat wider array of techniques because it tended to be a wilder ride. The DD graphic novel was actually much more restrained because, once the look for each character was established, it was fairly straightforward in its execution. Elektra was all over the place: "realistically" drawn characters interacting with caricatures interacting with cartoons interacting with photocopies interacting with "children's drawings". There were quite a few styles employed, but the determining factor for the choice of style was what the scene demanded. In essence, the scene dictated the style of artwork used, not vice versa.

Kuljit Mithra: When the series came out, some comics stores wouldn't sell me an issue of Elektra because I was under 18. Was there any concern at Epic about the comics getting into the 'wrong hands'? Were you or Miller concerned?

Bill Sienkiewicz: Not one bit. We weren't doing it for young kids. Matter of fact, when it came out the Dallas/Fort Worth newspaper did an article on Elektra stating "We've got to protect our kids from this". We used that quote in the ads for the trade paperback.


Heavy Trigger Warning for Child Abuse and Rape

Trigger Warning for Suicide/Self Harm




11.25 pages of 34

Comments

[randyripoff]

I need to reread this series. It's not Miller's best, but at the time it was groundbreaking in many ways. Plus the art pushes it over the top.

[lilacsigil]

I loved (and still love) the art on this. The writing is Miller on his way over the top, but the art takes it somewhere else entirely.

[icon_uk]

The art on this was pretty much literally mindblowing when I first read it.

I knew Sienkiewicz's work from New Mutants of course, but this was a quantum leap even further into the remarkably weird.

I'd never seen anything remotely like it, and to this day I'm not sure I've seen anything which struck me more.

[lilacsigil]

Yes, I was the same! I bought it because I loved Sienkiewicz's amazing work on New Mutants and it was just stunning.

[lego_joker]

Just curious - have you read Delirium's chapter in Sandman: Endless Nights?

[jlroberson]

The best writing Frank Miller ever did was when he was in collaboration with someone else actually doing the drawing. Like this. You're seeing not so much a Miller script that Bill was illustrating as the reaction when those talents are fused, and there really is nothing like this comic. STRAY TOASTERS maybe but that's far more personal: this is just narrative comics in their most accelerated possible form. The refusal to settle on a style is what jumped out at me so much when I first read it at 18, when it was coming out. Even if you had already read RAW or something, which I had, there was nothing to prepare you for something like this coming out from Marvel.

They really allowed their artists to experiment in the 80s in a way they haven't in a long time. The growth of Sienkiewicz is startling when you look at it, and realize, they were having him do stuff only slightly less crazy than this on NEW MUTANTS. Or the DUNE adaptation(the only adaptation of David Lynch for comics, and I think better than the film it's based on).