Words & Pictures Exhibit - Elektra: Assassin

Since 1992 Words & Pictures Museum has been presenting comic books and comic book artwork in exhibits designed to help create a greater understanding of and appreciation for their contribution to popular culture.

Comic book art is also known as sequential art. We encourage you to follow the pages sequentially and to explore each page of the book as both the original artwork and as a printed page. This exhibit is divided into galleries of work, each containing a series of images with accompanying text. You'll find information about the creators, both writer and artist, their techniques and influences, and information about how contemporary comics are created.

For our premiere virtual exhibit we've chosen to present Elektra: Assassin. Elektra was introduced to comics by Frank Miller while working on the popular Marvel superhero comic book Daredevil. Daredevil tells the story of a lawyer, Matt Murdock, blinded by an experimental fluid that falls as he pushes a man out of the way of the truck. Murdock finds his other senses becoming increasingly sharper including developing radar sense and he begins to fight crime as Daredevil. While Daredevil often offers many of the action packed scenes and extraordinary strengths seen in traditional superhero fare, with Frank Miller at the helm the book introduced the most deadly of female characters, the assassin Elektra.

While Greek mythology provides the origins of Elektra, her story has been used as a basis for works in many forums. Included amongst these are plays by Sophocles and Euripides, an opera by Richard Strauss and in 1985 artist Bill Sienkiewicz teamed up with writer Frank Miller to create Elektra: Assassin for EPIC comics.