For no reason, here are three strange things about that first Elektra cover

Frank Miller just made big news by announcing he'll be doing a third Dark Knight series, this one imaginatively titled "DK3." For some reason, that led to me paging through the fascinatingly obessessive 1980s edition of the American Comic Book Chronicles, which focuses (again, obsessively) on the decade that made me a comic book fan. Naturally, Miller himself gets plenty of column space, what with the 1980s seeing the release of not just the original Dark Knight series, but also his "Batman: Year One" issues, Elektra Assassin (still wildly underrated in my opinion) and his return to the comic that made him a star, the "Daredevil: Born Again" arc.

But before all that, of course, Miller made his bones drawing -- and soon writing -- Marvel's Daredevil. His first issue as a writer artist was #168, which was released near the end of 1980, and it turned out to be a no-kidding genuinely landmark issue, both for launching Miller as a writer/artist and for introducing one of the most influential characters in modern comics, Daredevil's ninja girlfriend Elektra.

I've been collecting long enough to have bought that issue off the newsstand (and not in a comic book store), and somewhere along the line (at a Mid Ohio Con, I think?) I actually got it signed by Miller himself. But in all that time, in the three-and-a-half decades since it appeared, the cover of that comic book has always struck me as being a little strange, for three reasons. And here they are...



1. First of all, for being such a groundbreaking issue, isn't it amazing that arguably the most important word on the cover -- the name of the character they're introducing -- is somehow misspelled? And it's not small type, either. Nice going, bullpen!

2. Speaking of that name, when I was a 13-year-old kid spying this cover for the first time, I had no idea who the hell Electra was, Greek myth-wise. I just new her name sounded like a female variation on "Electro," the old Spider-Man villain, and saw all those lightning bolts surrounding her, so I figured she had some sort of electrical powers. Trust me, we didn't know from ninjas way back then

3. And this is a minor thing, but though I realize that's just some generic Marvel criminal Daredevil is apparently beating with his billy club (Nice!), with those shadows over his eyes and that green coat (coveralls? scarf? tights?), it sure looks like this issue's double-guest villain is Doc Ock. Or is it just me?