2 out of 5

I hate doing this, because I love Scott Morse with all my butt and soul, but I’ve revisited his Elektra countless times, thinking that maybe each time I haven’t approach it with quite the looseness of mental lobes required for Morse appreciation, but each time I still end up doubting that things are going to end well in issue 3, then having this confirmed in issue 4.

So let’s set the story aside for a moment – because Morse’s plotting is always a little poppy and, sure, silly on some level – and let’s focus on the marriage of art and the story’s themes, which is where Scott almost always, always excels.  Aaalmost.  Womp.  The general presentation is flat-out gorgeous – Marvel let Scott bleed out to the edges of the page, and as we build up to a final fight in issue 4, the paneling doesn’t waste a shred of space to capture the flips and dodges of Elektra with the bold strokes of someone comfortable in this craft – you can float right through the pages without a breath, which IS a constant quality in Scott’s books, and then when you realize you’ve hit the back-cover, everything is vibrant enough to merit starting back again and seeing if you can force yourself to slow down.  So while it’s nice to see Scott flex his skills around some action, that ‘marriage’ I mention starts to slip away.  As usual for his colored work, there’s a definite mood and hints of metaphor layered into the colors of each page.  Issue 1 is fantastic at this, but as the story starts to be the driving force (which sounds stupid, because the story should be, I guess, but Morse’s most fun tales, to me, are driven by emotion and not by plot), the blending of art and color and character seeps away, becoming a miasma of somewhat empty prettiness by the the tale’s conclusion.

The story purports to be about Elektra’s conquering of an attempted Hand resurgence (cause I guess at the time of the book they’d gone away), and those familiar with the author won’t be surprised that this is somehow tied into dreams, and cats, and jazz music.  The first issue sticks to these Morse totems as it introduces his spin on a more human Elektra, and then… well.  I just never buy the basketball-star-as-congressman-as-hand-leader, even in Morse world, and the balance between the poppy style and Marvel Universe logic and cartoon logic gets bent all out of whack, and not in a desirable way.

If we could’ve boiled this down to a ghostly revenge tale, I think Scott’s style would’ve worked.  It’s a welcome experiment in that I credit Marvel for allowing their property to be stretched in the fashion that it was here, but, alas, the book overall just isn’t a good match for the author’s strengths, and it becomes apparent too soon.  As a final nit, the 4 issues went under the more mature “Marvel Knights” banner, and it makes no sense at all.  You could claim that this is because the non-comic-booky handling of things requires a more mature mindset to appreciate or something, but I rather think that Marvel had probably already decided to move Elektra to MK, then someone got Scott to contribute, and… well.  This should have no impact on the book, but the “mature readers” print on the cover is misleading, and I think subconsciously influences the read.