She’s a killer, a ninja, and sometimes an anti-hero. She works with and against heroes from New York to the far reaches of the world. Sometimes a mercenary for dangerous villains and other times fighting evil ninjas. Who is Elektra? Let’s find out!
Elektra Natchios was born to wealthy parents, Hugo and Kristina Natchios. Sadly, her mother died in childbirth. She had an elder brother, Orestez, who was an accomplished martial artist and was not around for most of her youth. Until Elektra was attacked in an attempted kidnapping, her brother would arrive and kill those responsible. He would suggest to their father that Elektra be trained in self-defense, at nine, Elektra had the same sensei as her brother once had.
Plagued with dark visions her whole life, Elektra would still be able to become an accomplished fighter. At nineteen, she’d attend Columbia University where she would begin a tumultuous relationship with Matt Murdock. Her father’s death would send her away, she would begin training with an order called the Chaste. She would be given a mission to infiltrate the Chaste’s sworn enemy, the Hand but would become corrupted by their dark powers. She would eventually break away from their influence and become a mercenary with a specialty in assassinations.
Returning to New York City, she would begin taking hits for local mob bosses. She would cross paths with Matt Murdock again, this time in his costumed vigilante persona, Daredevil. The two would butt heads as Matt would attempt to stop her from committing her hits. She vies for the role as the Kingpin’s head assassin, her target is Foggy Nelson. When she recognizes who Foggy is from their time at Columbia, she fails to finish the job. Kingpin would force her and Bullseye to fight for the head assassin position, she would be fatally impaled with her own sai by Bullseye.
Resurrected by the Chaste, Elektra would go on to help a feral Wolverine regain his humanity. Learning that while she was dead the Chaste and Matt had attempted to resurrect her once before but failed, it had formed Elektra’s darkest aspects into its own individual. Forced to fight her own darker half, Elektra would kill her dark side and reabsorb it into herself.
Nick Fury would hire her to aide in getting an item called the Scorpio Key away from HYDRA. During her mission she would be disavowed by Fury so as to distance himself from this mission but leaving Elektra to fend for herself. When she finally obtains the Key she does not give it to Fury, not trusting him with it, and instead finds another person to hold the item.
SHIELD would hire Elektra to help when the Hand and HYDRA would join forces to kill and resurrect heroes as their own mind controlled warriors. One of their first victims was Wolverine and Elektra would use her time recuperating him from being feral to help break him free of the control. While fighting the Hand, she would die and be brought back as one of their soldiers to lead the others. She would injure Nick Fury while taking out the SHIELD helicarrier in the process of escaping.
Wolverine would try to help Elektra return to her senses as she had for him. She explained to him telepathically (her resurrection gave her some psychic abilities) that this was all a setup and she’d planned this from the start so she could take down HYDRA from the inside. The two would take down the organization and Elektra would flee.
Resurfacing in New York, she would help Matt with stopping the Kingpin from spreading the information that Matt is Daredevil to the FBI. It would turn out that Kingpin had gotten this information from a mission he’d sent Elektra on back when she’d worked for him. Along with Matt, she would join a team with Black Widow and White Tiger to get back the evidence that exposed Matt as Daredevil. After helping out she would go into hiding for some time.
When she comes back, it seems as if she has been influenced by the Hand as she uses their old tactic of killing so they can resurrect their victim as a mind controlled slave. She chose Echo, a vigilante with photographic reflexes. The New Avengers would stop Elektra but Echo would kill her, this was shocking because the corpse left behind was that of a Skrull. Elektra was the smoking gun that the Skrull had set up to be found to begin their open invasion of Earth.
The real Elektra would be held captive by the Skrull and when she was rescued from them she was taken into custody at SHIELD. Unfortunately, Norman Osborn would take control of SHIELD and she would be further experimented on to understand why the Skrull had done the same to her. She would escape and end up in the care of the Night Nurse but had been tracked down by Osborn’s Dark Avengers. Wolverine assists her in getting away until Norman’s reign ends.
Returning to New York when Matt has taken control of the Hand and set up a deadly territory within the city under his command, Elektra joins his friends to save Matt from the Hand’s demonic influence. While Iron Fist would use his chi manipulations to help Matt gain control of his body, Elektra would use her telepathy to help Matt regain control of his mind.
She would spend a time working with a variety of teams, one such team included Heroes for Hire. A new Thunderbolts team is formed and Elektra would join to deal with potential problems before they became too big to handle for others.
There you have it! Elektra has a deadly and deathly past but you can’t keep a good assassin down. She’s been on the big screen and about to make her small screen debut on the second season of the Daredevil Netflix series. Hopefully she doesn’t have as many fatal run ins as her comics counterpart but is just as dangerous. See you next time!
Suggested Reading
Daredevil #168
Elektra
Elektra Assassin
Elektra Lives Again
Dark Reign: Elektra
Shadowland: Elektra
Dr. Bustos
drbustos@comicattack.net
