Lady Deathstrike? The QWERTY Keyboard (Or The Universe) Made Me Do It!

Lady Deathstrike skewering
Wolverine's face.
Art by Rafael Albuquerque

Today's post is not about Deathstroke and I blame the E. Remington and Sons company (yes, that Remington) for this. This post has nothing to do with Deathstroke the Terminator due in large part to the QWERTY keyboard and its innovator, Christopher Latham Sholes, who placed the "i" key right next to the "o" key just prior to Remington purchasing his company. With some minor adjustments, Remington utilized Sholes' design on their widely successful Remington No. 2 typewriter, setting the standard for the key positions on the modern keyboard.  As a result of this, there has been a veritable multitude of times that I have wanted to type the word "Deathstroke," only to inspect my work before publication and see that I had typed "Deathstrike" instead. The mature, rational response would be to recognize that my typing skills are sub-par and then strive to improve them, but blaming Sholes and Remington is remarkably time-efficient and infinitely more satisfying. So, just in case my constant typing of "Deathstrike" the universe is attempting to guide me toward a creating a profile on Marvel Comics' Lady Deathstrike (though mathematics suggests this is not the case), this is a profile on Marvel Comics' Lady Deathstrike.

My old nemeses, the positions of the "i" and "o"
keys on a QWERTY keyboard
Image Source: Wikipedia

Debuting in Daredevil (1964) #197, Yuriko Oyama was the daughter of Kenji Oyama, the Japanese crime lord known as Lord Dark Wind, who also controlled the Oyama Heavy Industries company. He was instrumental in creating the process that allowed the super-metal, Adamantium, to bone matter, which he hoped would be used to create an army of super-soldiers for Japan. 

Lady Deathstrike
Art by Rahzzah

During World War II, Lord Dark Wind was terribly scarred following a botched kamikaze attack. Decades later, still carrying the shame of failing his country, Lord Dark Wind had the faces of Yuriko and her two brothers scarred in kind. Years later, after her brothers had died serving her father, Yuriko resisted Lord Dark Wind by working with Daredevil to free Kiro, her lover, from suffering her brothers' own fates. Lord Dark Wind had targeted the assassin, Bullseye, to recover the Adamantium from his bones. Knowing this, Yuriko and Daredevil traveled to Lord Dark Wind's private island to confront him. During the battle, Yuriko killed her father, seemingly freeing Kiro from his servitude. But instead, Kiro killed himself out of loyalty to his fallen master. This shocking turn of events so shook Yuriko, that she ended up devoted herself to assuming her father's quest for Adamantium dominance. 

Yuriko reinvented herself as a samurai taking the name, Lady Deathstrike and sought to track down Bullseye using a device that could detect Adamantium, but the device instead led her to Wolverine. After suffering a humiliating defeat at the hands of Wolverine and Alpha Flight's Vindicator, Yuriko made her way to the so-called Mojoverse, to seek the services of Spiral. Spiral transformed Yuriko in her "Body Shoppe" into a cyborg complete with Adamantium bones, limbs, and extended, razor-sharp claws on all of her fingers. Though she took over Oyama Heavy Industries upon her father's death, she also operated as a professional assassin. 

Still wanting to avenge her defeat at the hands of Wolverine, Lady Deathstrike turned to the Hellfire Club's White King, Donald Pierce, who formed a group made up of other cyborg soldiers called the Reavers. With the Reavers, Lady Deathstrike would take her revenge on Wolverine, going to far as to literally crucify the savage X-Man, leaving him to die. Lady Deathstrike has had an uneven record of fighting against Wolverine and the X-Men and in some cases fighting alongside them. She has also clashed with Captain America and was responsible for slicing off the legs of the former X-Man Sunfire. During the Marvel Superhero's Civil War, Lady Deathstrike even served in the United State government's legion of convicted criminals: The Thunderbolts. Her last clash with Wolverine, during the Death of Wolverine storyline, might have even been successful were it not for the interference of Kitty Pryde. 

There you have it. I hope that the universe is satisfied with this look at Lady Deathstrike. Though to be honest, the universe needs to make up its mind about some things because I typed "Deathstroke" instead of "Deathstrike" about six times while putting together this post. In any event, before I get back to Deathstroke business tomorrow, posted below are both sides of Lady Deathstrike's entry in the loose-leaf Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Master Edition (1990) #17. As always, for best viewing results, open the images below into their own tabs to enlarge.

SHADES OF SLADE: Amalgam Comics' Dare The Terminator

Slade Murdock: Dare the Terminator

As the DC and Marvel Universes merged during 1996 inter-company crossover, forming the Amalgam Comics universe, a number of characters from each fictional universe also merged into completely new people. A funny thing happened though when DC's Slade Wilson (AKA Deathstroke the Terminator) and Marvel's Matt Murdock (AKA Daredevil) merged as the two he's somehow became a she. Enter Slade Murdock: Dare the Terminator. As a courtesy for the remainder of this post, I will combine the original character names with a plus sign in an effort to clearly describe the Amalgam character and their constituent identities with the DC character listed first.

As depicted in the DC Comics-published Assassins (1996) #1, Dare the Terminator (Deathstroke + Daredevil) was former big time New Gotham City power attorney, Slade Murdock, who walked away from practicing law when she no longer had faith that the law could truly provide justice. Having been trained by her father to fight, Slade became a successful mercenary despite the fact that she was both blind and had lost an eye to a bullet from the assassin Deadeye (Deadshot + Bullseye). Slade earned the name Dare because of her reputation for accepting dares posed to her regardless of how outrageous they were. Knowing this about Slade, New Gotham City mayor Enigma Fisk, AKA the criminal mastermind the Big Question (the Riddler + the Kingpin), had her abducted so that he could have prosthetic devil horns permanently affixed to her head to make her look like a literal "daredevil."

Wanting her eliminated, the mercenary Tombstone the Ravager (the Ravager + Tombstone), hired the assassin Catsai (Catwoman + Elektra) to take out Dare. After an initial confrontation between the two, Dare and Catsai joined forces to kill Tombstone instead. The two assassins then formed what would become a close friendship with one another. Evntually the pair took a contract from a mystery client to kill Mayor Fisk. En route to the Big Question's tower office, Dare and Catsai manage to fatally dispatch both Deadeye and Lethal (the Cheetah + Kraven the Hunter) as well as lay out Wired (Manhunter + Cable) after a wicked brawl. In the final showdown, even though Dare lost her remaining eye, her horns, and apparently her life to the Big Question, Catsai did manage to land the death stroke (See what I did there?) on him, to put him down for good. Luckily for Dare, Dr. Strangefate (Dr. Fate + Dr. Strange) would later bring her back to life. Little else is known about Dare other than she had two daughters; Jericha (just mentioned and not actually appearing in any book) and Terra-X (Terra + Terrax the Tamer).