WW PHILLY '08: Ed Brubaker On Lady Bullseye

Under Ed Brubaker’s pen, Daredevil has met up with a substantial number of threats, more often than not, with root in his past.

In September, Matt Murdock’s past comes back to haunt him again, at least in the name of a new character debuting in that month’s issue: Lady Bullseye.

We chatted briefly with Brubaker to learn a little more about who she is and what she’s about.

Newsarama: Ed, so far on your run, you've managed to stay away from the Bullseye side of things, in no small part due to him being used elsewhere of course...but what brought this on? What was the seed of what grew into Lady Bullseye?

Ed Brubaker: It's kind of complicated, and grew a bit out of something [Matt] Fraction and I were kicking around a year or so back, that didn't end up happening. But the germ of that story kept picking at me, and feeling like a perfect Daredevil story, so I started mapping it out and talking to [Editor] Warren Simons about it and in our talks, I threw out the idea of a female Bullseye-like character being part of it.

I started explaining how I saw her history and development and why she would call herself Lady Bullseye (not just because she's a fan of Lady Snowblood) and Warren just kept loving all of it. Then we bounced it off Joe Q. and he dug it, too. A lot of people don't know this, but Joe is always a sounding board for Daredevil stories, and always willing to listen to ideas and give his twists on them, and every time he's right on the money.

And then we got Marko [Djurdjevic] working on costume designs, with the note to combine the traditional Bullseye look with a Japanese look somehow, and Marko just nailed it.

So, while that's all really vague, because I don't want to ruin the upcoming story, that's the basics of how Lady Bullseye came to be.

NRAMA: Is she any relation to the original, now comatose Bullseye?

EB: There's a link, but it's not exactly what you'd expect. But yeah, she knows him, and his current condition and being part of the Thunderbolts has a lot to do with why she's taken his name.

NRAMA: Clearly it'll be part of the story, but any broad-stroke hints as to her beef, if there is one, against Matt?

EB: It's bigger than that. It's not about Matt, for her. She's really self-obsessed. Like I said, she's really just one flamboyant character in a bigger story that's going to go a lot of strange places.

NRAMA: Does she really call herself Lady Bullseye, or is that just shorthand given to her by others, given her design and talents?

EB: Yes. Really. If it was good enough for Lady Snowblood, it's good enough for her. When you learn her history, the name will make total sense.

NRAMA: Finally, what can she do? Are we talking about the same abilities as Bullseye?

EB: She's a totally badass trained ninja and assassin, a lot like Bullseye, with some different training, but unlike him she has a secret identity and a real life, as well, where she's not a psycho killer.