Thoughts

If the last issue felt like it was designed to win over the teenage boy crowd, this issue turns all that up to eleven.

Ninjas are added to the mix. Alongside a hot, sexy street fighter that really, really wants to get it on with our surly troubled hero.

Miller is playing to all his strengths art-wise, the fights and city scapes are vibrant and brilliantly engaging. And Claremont has pretty much perfected his Wolverine-narrative voice by this point. Paternalistically guiding the reader through the story with gruff explanations as to what is going on and dad-factoids about the world of the story.

Fun Panel

Miller is enjoying himself when it comes to Japanese imagery throughout this miniseries.

There’s a huge swathe of Western cliches about Japan running through the heart of all this. The look, the codes of honour, the geishas, kabuki etc. It’s tapping into all the elements that were being exported into the West via populist pulp vhs films, topped up with a genuine enthusiasm for it all.

This enthusiasm just about rescues it, I think. In the big book of Foreign Stereotypes that this title has travelled in, this is a much more interesting place that Nightcrawler’s Germany or Banshee’s Oirland.

Any Googling

The Hand show up in this issue, which raised the question of where this army of ninjas come from. Was this there first appearance?

Apparently not. Miller had already created the Hand for his run in Daredevil, appearing a bit earlier in issue 174. Hired by the Kingpin (who else?) to eliminate Daredevil.