Every installment of Abandoned Love we will be examining comic book stories, plots and ideas that were abandoned by a later writer while still acknowledging that the abandoned story DID still happen. Click here for an archive of all the previous editions of Abandoned Love. Feel free to e-mail me at bcronin@comicbookresources.com if you have any suggestions for future editions of this feature.

This time around, based on a suggestion from reader Smokescreen, we look at the bizarre way that Lady Deathstrike's vendetta against Wolverine began...

Okay, so Yuriko Oyama, the woman who would later become Lady Deathstrike, debuted in 1983's Daredevil #197 (by Denny O'Neil, William Johnson and Mike Mignola). Daredevil is trying to track down Bullseye, who has headed to Japan for an experimental procedure to cure him after being crippled following a fall from a great height back in Daredevil #181 by using metal to replace some of his bones (it's kind of vague). On the way, Daredevil encounters a prisoner named Yuriko...



Note that they don't say ADAMANTIUM here. Adamantium is never mentioned in this three-parter or when Daredevil fights the healed Bullseye in Daredevil #200. So Yuriko explains the origins of the man doing the procedure, Lord Dark Wind, to Daredevil...







Shockingly enough (said no one), Yuriko turns out to be Dark Wind's daughter. She hates him for having her brothers brand her (and then driving her brothers to their deaths in attempts to kill the Japanese prime minister) and also because her boyfriend, Kira (I am pretty sure that's supposed to be Kiro, no?), is devoted to serving her father.

In Daredevil #199, we learn Dark Wind's plan. He healed Bullseye so that Bullseye would assassinate a trade minister for Dark Wind, as Dark Wind hates "modern" Japan and now that his sons are dead, he doesn't have anyone else he trusts for such a mission...





Everything comes to a head at the end when Dark Wind is about to kill Daredevil (after Kira/o was sent by Dark Wind to take the healed Bullseye to kill the minister. Bullseye betrays them, though, and leaves Kira/o for dead).





So that seems nicely resolved, right? Yuriko was a pretty nice lady. That is, until Bill Mantlo got his hands on her. Read on to see how we got the introduction of Lady Deathstrike!

In 1986's Alpha Flight #33, Yuriko is now calling herself Lady Deathstrike and leads her father's former soldiers in an attack on Wolverine. In the following issue (by Bill Mantlo, Sal Buscema and Gerry Talaoc), we learn her motivations...







Yes, now her father's experiment was specifically about adamantium.

Check out now as Mantlo rewrites the DD storyline...





As you can see, first off Mantlo quickly abandons the relatively happy ending of the Daredevil story by having Kira/o kill himself, but moreover, he invents a new motivation for Dark Wind, the creation of an adamantium army, which did not exist in the original story. And as for Yuriko not knowing her father, SHE'S the one who tells Daredevil her father's origins! So obviously she DID know them!

But anyhow, as she notes, her plans would involve, of course, the guy who her father actually did the experiment on, right? The guy who BETRAYED her father? The guy who left her boyfriend for dead? BULLSEYE is the guy she wants, right? And, as she explains, that was her intent...



But, on the way to finding Bullseye, she runs into Wolverine...



And that's it. They fight and Wolverine and Vindicator (especially Vindicator) kick her ass, with Vindicator destroying Lady Deathstrike's sword, which she inherited from her father.



So once she's defeated, you'd think that she would regroup and go after her original target Bullseye, no? Or maybe be mad at Vindicator for destroying her father's sword?

Nope, she turns herself into a cyborg so as to better defeat her new only enemy, Wolverine, who she only came across on the way to finding Bullseye...





Chris Claremont and Barry Windsor-Smith's Uncanny X-Men #205 (from a few months later in 1986) is justifiably a classic issue, but it only really works if you buy into Deathstrike's motivations, which boy, they sure do look silly now. But by the end of the issue, you can at least understand why she's hung up on Wolverine (and, of course, Barry Windsor-Smith designed such an amazing character that obviously other creators are going to want to keep using her)...







So that's it. Bullseye is never brought up again.

But here's the kicker, the thing that really highlights just HOW abandoned the original story has now become! In Civil War #4 (by Mark Millar, Steve McNiven and Dexter Vines), Lady Deathstrike is now WORKING with Bullseye on the Thunderbolts!





And their shared past never comes up, so it is pretty much just totally abandoned now.

Thanks to Smokescreen for the great idea!

If YOU have an idea for an interesting abandoned storyline, drop me a line at bcronin@comicbookresources.com