LADY DEATHSTRIKE

It would not be an understatement to call Yuriko Oyama a tragic figure. She has devoted her entire life to an unachievable end: slaying Wolverine, the man she blames for stealing her father’s research and destroying his life and legacy. So devoted is she to this task that Yuriko let it consume her life, allowing herself to be transformed into the monstrous Lady Deathstrike, a magically infused cyborg so twisted that she only bears a passing resemblance to a human being.

Paradoxically, Lady Deathstrike’s vendetta against Wolverine is all that gives her life meaning, and on many of the several occasions in which she has had the opportunity to slay him, she has found herself unable to actually follow through with the task, as she feared what her life would become without this mission. Were she to finally kill Wolverine, Yuriko would have to face the horror her life had become. Worse, because she is a cyborg, with interchangeable bodies and consciousness stored as an ageless core program, Deathstrike cannot even look forward to the sweet release of death. Like Sisyphus, she is forever doomed to act out this unending scenario. She is a demented computer program without an end—a woman trapped in a waking nightmare whose personal torment is only matched by that she dishes out on her foes, the X-Men—specifically Wolverine.