Elektra: Assassin (1986)

Bill Sienkiewicz painted this eight-issue Epic Comics series, written by Frank Miller, between 1986 and 1987, and it looks like nothing else Marvel was publishing. Sienkiewicz switches style from page to page: loose watercolor, collage, scratchy pen caricature, near-photographic portraits, sometimes all in one spread. The point is the fractured state of mind of the people on the page, and the art carries that more than the captions do. It is violent, cynical and deliberately disorienting, and the Cold War satire has dated in places. Readers who like their comics to feel like an expressionist gallery wall should still find it thrilling. No prior knowledge of Daredevil is needed.