So Mike Del Mundo’s ‘Elektra’ #1 Looks Pretty Damn… Pretty! [Art]

Listeners of the ComicsAlliance Podcast will know that the other staffers and I have been particularly impressed with the variety of visuals currently offered by Marvel Comics. In the best way possible, it's become practically impossible to describe "Marvel house style," with the publisher staffing books with artists as talented and diverse as David Aja, Adrian Alphona, Michael Allred, Esad Ribic, Chris Samnee, Declan Shalvey, Phil Noto, Mitch Gerads and many more besides. Many of these fly far afield of what you might consider traditional superhero art, and that's a fact that's made so many "All-New" books so fun to read.

Given this recent history it was not surprising to learn that Mike Del Mundo was to draw a new Elektra series written by Haden Blackman, whose résumé includes Batwoman with JH Williams III, making this new series about the beautiful and deadly assassin one of the most appropriately staffed of Marvel's current line.

Del Mundo in particular has been killing it lately, winning the ComicsAlliance Readers' Choice Award for Best Cover Artist of 2013, and also being listed among our own editorial list of the best cover artists of last year (not to mention numerous appearances in our Best Art Ever feature) for his evocative, clever, whimsical and even beautiful illustrations. What is a little surprising is just how lavish Del Mundo's Elektra actual pages are. Colored by Del Mundo with Marco D’Alfonso (another Best Art regular) in a painterly, dreamlike fashion, the pages recall the classic Elektra images of Bill Sienkiewicz.

In a Q&A with Marvel.com's Paul Montgomery, writer Blackman indicated he's been studying martial arts films and comic books, and that he and Del Mundo have discussed the relationship between fighting and dance choreography. The fruits of those pursuits are obvious in Del Mundo's unlettered preview pages below.

As for the story, Black described the new Elektra series' premise thusly:

Initially, it's very simple: She wants to get away from New York, which she associates with Daredevil, Bullseye, the Hand, the Kingpin—all of these elements of a past that she wants or needs to escape. On a deeper level, Elektra is wrestling with questions of identity and purpose. As the series opens, she is realizing that, all of her life, she has been defined by what others have wanted her to be. But, when she's free of that for the first time, when she strips away who she is to everyone else, she isn't sure what's left—except an assassin. All that combines into a new mission: finding a legendary assassin with a price on his head before anyone else can.

Featuring covers by Del Mundo, Paolo Rivera, Skottie Young and definitive Elektra artist Bill Sienkiewicz, the all-new Elektra #1 goes on sale April 23 from Marvel.