Ninjas. Hot ones. Need I say more?
The year was 2004. I was voting for John Kerry (*sigh*) at a polling place located in a rather stately library, and I was stuck at the end of a very long queue of other restless Americans. Just as I got in, the cover of a book caught my eye and I picked it up, intending to idly flip through it and set it back down. 208 pages later, and still in line, I did. Hello, this shit was enthralling.
The book was Greg Rucka and Yoshitaka Amano’s Elektra and Wolverine: The Redeemer. Comic book fans, be warned that it’s really more of a novella lavishly graced with exquisite full-color art than a traditional graphic novel. And while I’ll tell you straight up that it was the fluid, vibrant panels on the cover that drew me to the book, the art needed bones on which to drape its banners, and the spare little story is neat (in both senses of the word) and satisfying.
Now, I had read a lot of my brother’s comics in high school (Batman, Green Arrow, X-Men) and I had found it off-putting that in most cases, the artists who do the covers are not involved in any way with the art inside the book. From time to time, I still am unhappily surprised when I am promised something on the cover, and open the book only to discover I have been sold a bill of goods (Sandman Presents: Dead Boy Detectives, I’m looking at you. In fact, I found the art in this book so weirdly repellent that I had to stop reading it.). This is most assuredly not the case with Redeemer. The glossy pages are full of sketched lines that seem to breathe on the page, the palette muted as if cast in the gray angles of a snowy dawn – until Elektra strikes, and blood founts on the pages and streams from her lurid, flowing scarves.
Although the wretched Elektra film they made (I liked the tattoo-guy effects, though) touches slightly on the book, Redeemer is, strangely, a story about women. No matter the advantage, be it advanced education, martial arts training or metahuman strength, there are still roles to play and lies to tell in order for women to live in a man’s world. Elektra, ninja assassin, traditionally costumed in a scrap of red leather complete with thigh-high boots, is introduced this way, posing as a Russian cleaning woman:
Perhaps a little tall, perhaps a little too broad across the shoulders, but her face was to die for, and her black hair seemed to catch light, and then to destroy it. Then the guards discovered that Katya Semonova’s English was broken at best, and that she smelled of vodka and horrible body odor, and they had never bothered her again.
Her latest assassination goes wrong when the target’s daughter Avery happens in at the wrong moment. Rather than kill the girl, Elektra instead flees the scene. After some time to reflect, Elektra returns to steal the girl, now in the protective custody of her mother, a scientist with a link to Wolverine’s past, and Wolverine himself. There are interesting tensions everywhere: between Wolverine and Dr. Connor, between Elektra and Avery, Avery and her mother, and of course between Elektra and Wolverine. There is also a lovely tension in the design of the book itself – the hand-off between written word and the illustrations literally made me gasp in several sequences.
Wolverine is the ultimate foil for a gang of ladies. He’s not a man’s man; Wolverine one-ups that: he’s a guy’s guy. Short, hairy, and irritable, he just wants to be left to himself and his casual, shirtless days of chopping wood in the pine barrens of Canada. Of course, if he’s left alone, he can’t rescue a girl who’s been kidnapped by a ninja!
To sum up: this is an eminently readable and visually fantastic book, no matter what you may generally keep on your shelves. If you haven’t read it, you can probably find a copy at your fine local library. I mean, I didn’t even have to check it out. But you so totally should!
You have a limited amount of time, so why spend it reading about things that suck or are only kind of okay? Favorite thing EVER is not a review site. We're unrepentant fans, and this is the stuff we love. Hope you like gushing, because we're about to embarrass ourselves.
Your copy of Redeemer has literally been on my bookshelf for over a year, and I’ve flipped through it a couple of times, thinking it looked interesting. But reading this makes me want to stay home from work today so I can DEVOUR IT RIGHT NOW.
See, that’s why I love you. (And this website. And the world.)
Yee hee hee! You are in my evil clutches! Of LOVE! Seriously though, it’s pretty good and I think you’ll like it!
Ooh, can I borrow it next??
But of course- you can pick it up on Friday!
Ooh. Must read immediately!
It’s a fast little book – action packed!