The Hand (comics)

• 1. Introduction

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  The Hand is a ninja order from Marvel Comics, and it first appeared in Daredevil issue 174, dated September 1981. The writer and artist Frank Miller created it. Decades later, a hero named Daredevil refused an offer to lead the group, and he got a chilling reply: "the Hand doesn't take no for an answer." That line suits an organization that arranges assassinations and mercenary jobs. It is based mainly in Japan, yet it operates around the world. Its members practise occult magic, and they can kill a person and bring that person back as a servant. This documentary asks where such an order came from and which demon stands behind it. It asks who has fought it, and why the heroes themselves keep being drawn into its ranks. It also asks how a group invented for comic pages ended up on television screens, in video games and in a famous parody.

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• 2. Five Fingers

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  In 1588, a man named Kagenobu Yoshioka became sensei of the Ishiyama Sword School in the Japanese village of Kyushua. He was frustrated with a government he considered corrupt and tainted by foreign influence. So he turned the school into a training ground for samurai whose goal was to return power to the Japanese people. That, according to later stories by D.G. Chichester and C.B. Cebulski, is how the Hand began. The name came from a simple image. A hand has five fingers, and the inner circle consisted of leaders of organizations, each working from one of Japan's five islands. The story itself explains the idea this way: each finger can exist alone, but when all five unite for a single purpose, the hand becomes an object of unwavering power. Yoshioka did not hold on to his creation. He was murdered in a mutiny, and the Snakeroot ninja clan seized control of the order. The Snakeroot corrupted it by imposing the worship of a demon named Krahllak, a gift that brought dark magic. Under this new leadership, the Hand worked as mercenaries and also chased power for itself. It sought dominance over everyone, hiring itself out to allies of convenience while it worked to eliminate its enemies. Krahllak, also called the Beast of the Hand, would prove to be the source of the order's most unsettling talent.

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• 3. Death Is Not the End

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  Elektra was the first to learn that death meant little to the Hand. In her original storyline, the group fought her and then resurrected her from the dead. That ability is the order's signature. Hand members can murder someone and revive that person as a servant, and a few have broken free of the programming. The magic is generally believed to come from Krahllak, a demon that rarely acts directly but pushes its followers toward nihilism and annihilation. Another of its spells turns a dead ninja's body to dust and keeps others from gazing straight at the demon. The pattern runs through the Hand's best-known stories. In a tale written by Chris Claremont, the order transformed Psylocke, an X-Men member, into a ninja warrior. She is also called Betsy Braddock, and she was body-swapped with a former Hand assassin named Kwannon. In the storyline "Enemy of the State," written by Mark Millar and published in 2004-2005, the Hand brainwashed Wolverine into becoming their assassin. Elektra was killed and resurrected yet again in that story, and this time she rejected the conditioning. The Hand even made Erynys, a virtual clone of Elektra, as a reanimated corpse bonded to the darkest side of her personality. Mariko Yashida was revived to serve as the Scarlet Samurai, and Old Man Logan only learned who was under the mask after facing her. After the funeral of Bruce Banner, the Hand stole his body and revived him as a Hulk in samurai armor. Krahllak controlled him, until the Uncanny Avengers cut the demon's hold and Hulk died once more. The order also keeps a Superhuman Army of heroes and villains killed and resurrected to serve as Hydra's assassins. Within the faction called the True Believers, a figure named Master Zei was put in charge of the resurrections.

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• 4. The Chaste

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  Stick is a blind martial arts master, and he trained Matt Murdock before Murdock became the costumed crime-fighter Daredevil. Stick once led the Chaste, a band of warriors who are the Hand's most dangerous adversary. Master Izo is named as the founder of the Chaste. Elektra Natchios, another of Stick's pupils, entangled herself with the Hand. She infiltrated the order to prove herself to her teacher, but the ninja tricked her into killing one of her former sensei. She served the Hand for a time, until its methods corrupted her soul and she fled Japan for America. The Hand then tried to wipe out Stick and the Chaste altogether. Stick survived an assassination attempt by four Hand operatives and called three other members of his order, Shaft, Stone and Claw, to New York City. With their help he defeated Kirigi, the Hand's deadliest ninja at the time. The Hand regrouped and attacked again, this time facing a band that now included Daredevil and his lover, Black Widow. The ninja nearly overpowered them. Stick and Shaft then used an ancient technique that drained the life force from every ninja present. The excess energy was too much, and both men exploded. The Hand counted the loss of its great enemy as a victory, even though the heroes escaped. Years later, the order struck at the leaderless Chaste to stop them from finding a newborn child who carried Stick's reincarnated soul. The attackers left only a handful of warriors alive. The survivors traveled to New York to ask Daredevil for help, and he reluctantly returned with them to Japan. Fighting beside him, the Chaste barely escaped with their master's spirit. That journey left the Hand with a new interest in Daredevil himself.

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• 5. The Empty Throne

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  Once Elektra was killed while leading the Hand, a shocking truth came out: that Elektra had been a Skrull all along. The order was left without a warlord. One faction, led by Lord Hiroshi and his lieutenant Lady Bullseye, set out to make Daredevil their new master, and he refused. They then arranged for the Kingpin to come back to New York City, planning to offer him the post instead. The Kingpin's first act in the negotiations was to kill Hiroshi with his bare hands. Daredevil interrupted the proceedings and accepted the offer, on one condition. The Hand must never again do business with the Kingpin or with Lady Bullseye. The three remaining ninja-lords agreed. During this time the order gained Black Tarantula and White Tiger as members. In the 2010 "Shadowland" storyline, Daredevil used the Hand as a force of justice. Then Krahllak possessed him. Heroes gathered to stop him, and they tried to interrupt a ceremony to resurrect Bullseye. Not even a direct attack from Wolverine killed Daredevil. Iron Fist finally cured Daredevil's soul with a chi punch. In the chaos that followed the war, the Kingpin and Typhoid Mary took command of the Hand. Leadership passed again in a 2022 storyline, where Frank Castle, the Punisher, became the new head of the order. In response, Matt Murdock and Elektra set out to build the Fist, an organization meant to counter the Hand. One of the Punisher's own lieutenants, Lady Gorgon, lost her high rank after failing to kill him, and Master Yoshiokya later killed her.

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• 6. Branches and Factions

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  Right after World War II, a select few of the Hand's more politically minded members founded the original Hydra. It began as a cabal of Japanese ultranationalists who plotted to overthrow the liberal democratic government, assassinate the prime minister and install a neo-militarist regime that would rearm Japan. Baron Strucker soon seized control of Hydra from its Japanese founders and steered it toward the goal of world domination. Even so, the Hand and Hydra have collaborated in many criminal conspiracies over the years. Inside the Hand itself, the roster divides into factions. The Nail consists entirely of women. Colleen Wing left it with Cherry Blossom, a 17-year-old ninja, after Cherry Blossom defeated Black Lotus in a duel. Another member, Yuki, is modeled on the Yuki-onna, with white face paint and a blue and white kimono. A third, Makro, was augmented by an unknown corporation with extra weaponized limbs. The Underhand is a group of undead ninjas. The True Believers revere Madam Qwa as their sensei, and her member Karsano, a Korean assassin, was the first to use the codename Dragonfly. The Snakeroot Clan, a splinter faction, was led by Daito, who later committed ritual suicide. Tegaki, a former lover of Elektra, succeeded him. The wider order is divided into regional branches. Takashi is daimyo of Japan, Makoto holds Eurasia, and Yutaka holds Africa. Bakuto, the daimyo of South America, was killed by White Tiger.

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• 7. Many Writers

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  Frank Miller returned to the Hand in 1982 for a Wolverine miniseries that he coauthored with Chris Claremont. That was the start of a long relationship between the order and the X-Men. The group reappeared in the 1989 crossover event Acts of Vengeance. In 1993, D.G. Chichester used them again in the Daredevil storyline "Fall from Grace." The limited series Elektra: The Hand, published in 2004, set out the organization's history. Its credited author, Akira Yoshida, was a pseudonym of C.B. Cebulski. The offer that made Daredevil the order's leader came during Ed Brubaker's run on the series, which concluded in 2009. Andy Diggle wrote the 2010 "Shadowland" arc that followed it. Jason Aaron wrote the 2022 storyline that put the Punisher in charge. The Hand's first screen appearance came a few years after those pages, in a film released in 2005.

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• 8. Beyond the Page

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  The 2005 film Elektra gave the Hand a new leader, an original character named Master Roshi, played by Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa. His group included Kirigi, Typhoid Mary, Tattoo and Stone, plus another original character, Kinkou. The organization was reworked in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where its five founders were Alexandra Reid, played by Sigourney Weaver, Murakami, played by Yutaka Takeuchi, and Madame Gao, played by Wai Ching Ho. The others were Bakuto, played by Ramon Rodriguez, and Sowande, played by Babs Olusanmokun. In the first season of Daredevil in 2016, Reid allied with Wilson Fisk, using Madame Gao and Nobu Yoshioka, played by Peter Shinkoda, as intermediaries. In the second season, Yoshioka was served by a redheaded woman named Tyler, played by Maya Rosewood. The show suggested that the Hand's ninjas could slow their heart rates, which made them hard for Daredevil to detect. In Iron Fist in 2017, Gao's faction used Rand Enterprises as a front to smuggle heroin into New York City. She also brokered a deal to resurrect Harold Meachum after his death. Bakuto led a separate faction that ran a camp recruiting orphaned and runaway children. In The Defenders, Reid had months left before her organs failed. The Hand had used the last of its "substance" to revive Elektra, so Reid sped up the plan to extract fossilized dragons from under Manhattan, which set off an earthquake. The Hand also fought through video games, including the PSP version of X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Marvel Avengers Alliance. Its hideout became a stage in Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds and Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and it inspired one of Strider Hiryu's alternate costumes. Other comics versions exist too. In Punisher Max, the Hand euthanized a crippled Elektra when she could never walk again. On Earth-65 in the Spider-Gwen comics, Matt Murdock leads the order. The Foot Clan began as a parody of the Hand in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, itself a parody of Miller's Daredevil work. The Hand is now announced for the MCU film Spider-Man: Brand New Day, set for 2026.

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