This file created by Jess Nevins, jjnevins@ix.netcom.com. Amalgam Annotations: Assassins #1 (corrections/additions to my errors/omissions are welcome) What we have here is the teaming-up of Dare and Catsai - i.e, "Dare," aka "Slade Murdock" (a combination of Marvel's Matt Murdock - Daredevil - the blind hero who has a sort of radar - and DC's Slade Wilson, the Terminator - who utilizes 90% of his brainpower & so has superspeed, etc, and is now supposed to be immortal, or some such thing) - and "Catsai," aka "Elektra Kyle" (as DG Chichester explained once upon a time, and then again more recently in correcting my mistakes, Catsai is a combination of Marvel's Elektra - the female ninja who was Daredevil's lover/enemy for a while, but then got killed, but then got brought back - and DC's Catwoman/Selina Kyle, who used to be Batman's love interest and enemy, but got made into the heroine of her own back sometime back in the late 1980s) p 1 To paraphrase the narration, the "corpse-in-the-making" is "Deadeye" - a merging of DC's Deadshot - a Batman enemy and an assassin who never (almost) misses - and Marvel's Bullseye - a Daredevil enemy who has an uncanny ability with weapons and also never misses. Catsai's comment that "I don't know why...but this just feels right" - the "this" being impaling Deadeye through the back with her sai - is clever; back in Marvel Continuity Bullseye killed Elektra in much the same way. (as a parenthetical aside, any combination of Deadshot and Bullseye would _not_ be killed off so easily...) p 2 There's a throwaway reference here to what Deadeye did to the one-eyed Dare - I assume a sideways reference to Bullseye and Elektra's "real" continuity battles. The villain-of-the-issue makes his entrance here: "Enigma Fisk - colloquially known as the Big Question." This is a merging of DC's The Riddler - aka Edward Nigma - the Batman enemy who is always leaving conundrums for Bats to solve - and Marvel's Kingpin, the enormous crimeboss who was Daredevil's archenemy for oh, so long. p 4 "Lethal" here is a combination of Marvel's Kraven the Hunter - an enemy to Spiderman (among others) who was a big game hunter who decided to hunt heroes - and DC's Cheetah - a sort of woman/cheetah who has been dogging Wonder Woman's steps in the Golden, Silver, and Modern/Bronze/Iron Age. p 5 I take it that Catwoman's cats play much the same role in her book as Catsai's cats do here. p 7 "Jimmy Urich" - well, pretty clearly he's a merger of Jimmy Olsen, the best pal of Superman and cub reporter on the Daily Planet, and of Marvel's Ben Urich, who is an investigative reporter for J. Jonah Jameson's Bugle and is friends with Daredevil. Jimmy's got red hair and freckles, and wears the bowties. Ben Urich - you'll see the Urich influence later on. As an aside, the drawing of the puppetmaster Dr. StrangeFate looks pretty creepy - like something Ditko would have drawn in the 1960s for Dr. Strange to go up against. p 8 "Arkham Tower" - in the DC Universe Arkham Asylum is the asylum where all the criminally insane supervillains - usually Batman badguys - are confined. But in DC continuity Arkham Asylum is a creepy Victorian mansion - here a "gleaming new city center" has been built "atop the remains of New Gotham's infamous asylum." Which says to me that a) something happened to Arkham Asylum, obviously, and b) there's no New York or Gotham - just New Gotham. p 9 Here they are attributing Dare's origin - or at least an experiment involving her - to the Big Question. As far as I know that's not a part of the origins of Daredevil, the Terminator, Silver Sable, Elektra or the Catwoman. John Jakala points out that in Marvel Continuity the character Black Cat got her bad luck powers when the Kingpin experimented on her; that seems to be an accurate guess for this part of the character's origin. p 10 "Wired," aka Nathan Chase - the "Nathan," the glowing eye, the big red X on his uniform, and the "built out of flesh and machine, strung together with cybernetic *cable*" (emphasis mine) says to me that half of Wired is derived from Marvel's Cable character. The DC half of Wired is Chase Lawler, the new (post Zero Hour) Manhunter. John Jakala, along with someone whose name I accidentally deleted, astutely pointed out that Wired's costume and man-hunting motif is quite similar to the Simonson-redesigned Paul Kirk Manhunter, a Golden Age DC Continuity character who was a crime-fighting hunter of men. p 18 I assume that the "growing up on the streets of Cairo...only friends were her cats" is part of the New Catwoman's origin; Jim MoC points out that the growing up on the streets of Cairo (sans the Cats, of course) is Storm's (of Marvel's Xmen, and seen in _Amazon_) origin. Which is true, although I don't see anything else of Storm here. p 19 The story about Catsai's father being a UN ambassador and then being murdered, which in turn drove her into the arms of a ninja cult - that's straight out of Elektra's "real" Marvel Continuity origin. Catsai's line about "The Dare was my--she was my good friend" certainly leaves the implication that Dare & Catsai were, or are, lovers. Which leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Not that that would in and of itself be a bad thing - but it's not in character for any of their analogues, and it's an old, old stereotype that the strong, take-no-crap woman is a lesbian. (Although, as Ken Arromdee points out, Dare and Catsai being in love _is_ in character for their analogues, Daredevil and Elektra) UPDATE: DG Chichester responded to one version of this annotation saying that, in effect, my interpretation of that line was simply my interpretation and not his intention. And that is that, I think. p 21 Now, _this_ is the Ben Urich influence - hair a mess, cigarettes everywhere, looking rumpled and dirty.. Note that the publisher of the Gotham Bugle is "J. Jonah White" - a combination of Marvel's irascible editor, J. Jonah Jameson, and DC's editor Perry White. Over in _Spider-Boy_, however, he is referred to as J. Jonah Jameson. jess Thanks for additional notes/corrections/additions/thoughts to Ken Arromdee, "Ben," DG Chichester (woo-hoo!), Mark Coale, John Jakala, Randy Lander, Jim MoC, and Matt Richardson. This file created by Jess Nevins, jjnevins@ix.netcom.com.