The Comics Journal #58
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeThe Comics Journal #58 holds a singular place in comics history as the first publication anywhere to depict Elektra — Frank Miller's ninja assassin and Daredevil's tragic love interest — a full four months before her formal debut in Daredevil #168 (January 1981). Miller's cover image of Daredevil and Elektra, inked by Joe Rubinstein, made this a genuine first appearance of one of Marvel's most enduring characters, even though it appeared not in a Marvel comic but in a critical magazine. The issue arrived at a pivotal moment when Miller was just beginning to reshape Daredevil from a struggling bimonthly into a watershed noir title, and its internal R.C. Harvey essay examining Miller's visual approach offers a rare contemporaneous critical record of that transformation in progress. Taken together, the Elektra cover debut and Harvey's early formal analysis make this issue an unusually well-documented artifact of the precise instant a major creative era was taking shape.
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The Comics Journal was launched in 1976 by Gary Groth and Michael Catron after Fantagraphics took over an existing fanzine called The Nostalgia Journal, transforming it into a magazine of news and serious comics criticism. By issue #58, Gary Groth and Kim Thompson — who had joined in 1977 — were co-editing, and the issue marked a cover price increase to $1.95. Frank Miller himself contributed the cover art, penciling the Daredevil/Elektra image that Joe Rubinstein inked, while R.C. Harvey, one of TCJ's regular critics, authored the internal article analyzing Miller's emerging visual style on Daredevil.
Trivia · 7 facts
- Elektra's first appearance anywhere in print: Frank Miller's cover, inked by Joe Rubinstein, depicts Daredevil alongside Elektra approximately four months before her formal in-story debut in Daredevil #168 (January 1981).
- R.C. Harvey contributed an article analyzing Frank Miller's visual style during his early run on Daredevil, providing one of the earliest critical assessments of what would become a landmark creative period.
- The issue's Newswatch news section reported on several significant Marvel industry developments, including Marvel forming a film studio, Bill Mantlo being removed from Howard the Duck Magazine, a Daredevil drug story being relocated into an album format, and the premiere of Spiegelman and Mouly's Raw magazine.
- A Cinema Journal column by Dale Luciano reviewed The Empire Strikes Back — accounting for the indexed Star Wars characters (Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker) appearing as subjects of critical coverage, not as comic-book story content.
- The issue featured a substantial roundtable discussion on comics writing with five prominent Marvel writers: Martin Pasko, Jim Shooter, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, and Mark Evanier.
- Characters including Sauron (Karl Lykos), Storm (Ororo Munroe), Cyclops (Scott Summers), and Shanna the She-Devil are indexed in connection with Marvel news items reported in the Newswatch section, not as subjects of original story content.
- Miller created Elektra explicitly as a female antagonist for Daredevil modeled on the Spirit's Sand Saref — a creative decision he later explained in The Comics Journal — making TCJ itself the contextual home where that creative thinking was first publicly aired.
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