Elektra: Assassin by Frank Miller and Bil Sienkiewicz is an almost forgotten masterpiece. It is a manic, adrenaline rush of a comic book that starts off fast and just keeps speeding up. Miller’s writing is perfectly complemented by Sienkiewicz’s artistry (I can’t really say drawings or paintings because it is so much more than that). And the story of Elektra, Garrett (a SHIELD agent) and Ken Wind (a charismatic Presidential candidate) is gripping and exciting.

Frank Miller brought Elektra into the world and he took her out. In his first Daredevil comic that Miller wrote and drew, he introduced the world to Elektra. She was a college girlfriend of Matt Murdock who turned into a ninja assassin after her father was killed. Near the end of his run, Miller had Elektra killed by Bullseye. But Miller still had more stories to tell of her. Marvel had been trying to get Miller to work on an Epic comic (Epic was Marvel’s creater owned imprint) and he had the idea of telling a past Elektra story.

Miller had worked with Sienkiewicz on Daredevil: Love and War, a Kingpin story with Daredevil, and the combination was breathtaking. So Miller started on the story. According to the editor (from the introduction), Miller would write and then Sienkiewicz would do some art. Miller would be inspired by Sienkiewicz’s art and would make changes to the story which Sienkiewicz would then make changes to the art. It was as if they were trying to work with and out do each other. The result is an eight-issue mini-series that brings in a number of new characters, brings out some existing ones and expands upon Elektra’s mythology to create this amazing story.

The basic gist of the story deals with a drunk SHIELD agent, Garrett,  who gets mixed up with Elektra and a demonically possessed Presidential candidate. He and his partner, Perry, get changed into cyborgnetically enhanced agents by a rogue team within SHIELD. Nick Fury sends in Chastity McBride who is a by-the-book agent, who lives up to her name, to bring them down and find out what’s going on with Garrett’s strange and changing reports of a ninja. The book is pure adrenaline and keeps moving at a frenetic pace.

In 1985 and 1986, Frank Miller had an amazing run of comics: Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Daredevil: Born Again, Batman: Year One, Daredevil: Love and Warand Elektra: Assassin. Every one of those books should be read by a comics fan. But Elektra: Assassin is a much different type of story and has mostly been forgotten. Highly recommended.