Lady Deathstrike

Lady Deathstrike
File:LadyDeathstrike.png Lady Deathstrike
Publication information
Publisher	Marvel Comics
First appearance	As Yuriko Oyama Daredevil #197 As a villain in Alpha Flight #33 As Lady Deathstrike in Uncanny X-Men #205
Created by	Dennis O'Neil and Larry Hama, Bill Mantlo and Sal Buscema, Chris Claremont and Barry Windsor-Smith
In-story information
Alter ego	Yuriko Oyama
Team affiliations	Reavers
Abilities	superhuman strength, agility, and reflexes derived from cybernetically enhanced body. Adamantium skeleton and claws, artificial healing factor.

Lady Deathstrike (Yuriko Oyama) is a Marvel Comics supervillain, a foe of the X-Men, especially Wolverine. She first appeared in Daredevil #197.

Her father Lord Dark Wind created the adamantium-bonding process that was forcibly utilized on Wolverine. A self-styled warrior, Lady Deathstrike hired the villain Spiral’s "body shoppe" to bond adamantium to her own skeleton in addition to other cybergenetic enhancements. She has since worked as a mercenary and assassin and feels a need to prove herself by killing Wolverine.

Yuriko Oyama was created by writer Dennis O'Neil and artist Larry Hama. However, writers Bill Mantlo and Chris Claremont added defining characteristics such as her connection to Wolverine. Artist Barry Windsor-Smith designed her cyborg appearance.

Played by Kelly Hu, a mutant version of Lady Deathstrike, without any of her back story, appeared as a brainwashed henchwoman of William Stryker in the 2003 film X2: X-Men United.

Character history

Yuriko Oyama's father was Lord Dark Wind (Kenji Oyama), a Japanese crime lord and criminal scientist who created the process by which adamantium can be bonded to bone. Kenji was a former Japanese kamikaze pilot during World War II. His face was horribly scarred in a failed suicide attack on an American battleship. Feeling shamed by his failure decades earlier, he scarred the faces of Yuriko and her two brothers in a ritual design. Her two brothers would later die while in the service of their father.

Yuriko teamed up with Daredevil to free her lover, Kiro, from her father's servitude, and to gain vengeance for her scarring and the death of her two brothers; when Yuriko slew her father (just as he was about to kill Daredevil), the devoted Kiro chose suicide to honor his master.

Distraught, Yuriko belatedly embraced her father's ideals and sought to track down whoever dishonored him. Her trail led to Wolverine, whose skeleton had been bonded with adamantium. Deathstrike sought to kill him to right the wrong of the theft and thus restore her family's honor, but she was defeated by Vindicator of Alpha Flight. Yuriko then went to the Mojoverse and Spiral's "body shoppe" where she received extensive cybernetic enhancements including adamantium bones and talons.

Lady Deathstrike was once a member of the team of criminal cyborgs called the Reavers, led by Donald Pierce, who once managed to successfully defeat the X-Men. The Reavers have since been annihilated by the Sentinels, and Yuriko has been operating independently.

At times she has resigned her quest to kill Logan and has even worked with the X-Men cooperatively toward a common goal as she did in X-Men Annual 2000. (In this case the goal was to defeat Stryfe.) In an encounter with Logan shortly after Magneto removed the adamantium from his skeleton, Lady Deathstrike nearly defeated him, but ended the fight upon seeing his bone claws. As Logan no longer possessed the adamantium stolen from her father, she felt there was no honor to be gained by killing him. However she still remains a mercenary and assassin. Despite all this, Yuriko is set apart from many of the X-Men's foes in that she adheres to an honor code, despite being emotionally disturbed.

Deathstrike resurfaced in 2003 as an ally of William Stryker in the "God Loves, Man Kills II" story arc in X-Treme X-Men (most likely as a weak tie-in to Kelly Hu's character and alliegence in the X2 movie). She displayed a new ability to access the Internet via her cybernetics but this led to her being co-opted and controlled by Mount Haven's computer systems.

Deathstrike is possibly responsible for the near-death of Sunfire, whose legs she severed in battle. Dying, he had Rogue absorb his powers so she could battle Deathstrike. The X-Men later went to see where Sunfire's body had been left, only to see it had disappeared. He later resurfaced as one of the new Horsemen of Apocalypse.

File:ULTXM60 COV.jpg

Cover to Ultimate X-Men #60. Art by Stuart Immonen.

Ultimate Lady Deathstrike

Lady Deathstrike has also appeared in Ultimate X-Men. There, her connection lies mainly with Storm, instead of Wolverine. As Yuriko (or 'Yuri'), she taught Storm how to hotwire vehicles and be a car thief. The two later had a falling out, and Yuri ended up being run over by a truck. Yuri survived, but ended up confined to a wheelchair. There, Dr. Cornelius of Weapon X offered to have her shattered body rebuilt with adamantium and an accelerated healing factor, which would allow her to have her revenge against Storm, though if she wanted to kill Storm she would have to kill Storm's friend Wolverine as well. Yuri agreed, and went under the modifications. She later went after Storm and Wolverine, but was defeated, and later imprisoned by S.H.I.E.L.D..

While imprisoned at the Triskelion she encountered the X-Men Dazzler and Angel (who were out searching for their friends, elsewhere in the base). After Dazzler taunted Yuri, saying how Storm had mentioned her to them, the power went out; allowing Yuri to escape her cell and stab Dazzler through the stomach. Before she could do anything else the mutant Longshot (another prisoner at the Triskelion) snapped her neck. Whether or not this attack killed her is unknown. She has previously survived being struck by lightning and smashed by a falling tree.

Dazzler survived Yuri's attack, but was left in a coma.

Powers and abilities

Lady Deathstrike is a cyborg with superhuman strength, speed and agility. Deathstrike's skeleton has been infused with Adamantium, rendering her skeletal structure practically unbreakable. Initially, it was a mystery as to how Deathstrike survived this process, as it is generally believed that without a healing factor, the process would be fatal to a human. Later, in the pages of The Uncanny X-Men, it was shown that Lady Deathstrike, along with former Hellfire Club guards Cole, Macon, Reese (the three of which had been nearly killed by Wolverine) were transformed into cyborgs by Spiral in her "Body Shoppe." It was during this process that Deathstrike gained her Adamantium augmentation. Spiral used magic to infuse the metal into Deathstrike's body; it is unlikely that Deathstrike could have survived the process on her own. Deathstrike's fingers have been replaced by 12 inch Adamantium claws. Aside from being as indestructible as her skeleton, these talons are capable of slicing through virtually any substance, other than Adamantium itself. She is capable of extending these claws to twice their usual length. Although her normal form is obviously that of a cyborg, she uses disguises when necessary. She is an expertly trained assassin and is highly skilled in a variety of oriental martial arts. Lady Deathstrike is especially skilled with swords, and while she prefers stealth and subtlety in her killings, she is emotionally disturbed and this interferes with her effectiveness.

In Wolverine #114, Deathstrike revealed that she possessed an accelerated "healing factor". This cybernetic healing factor enables her to quickly repair damage done to her biological and cybernetic components. At one point, Lady Deathstrike engaged Wolverine in a fight in which she was heavily damaged. Wolverine noticed that his claws hadn't inflicted the sort of damage he had originally thought. Deathstrike revealed to him that his claws had caused the damage, but her latest visit with Donald Pierce resulted in an upgrade that provided her with a kind of "cybernetic healing factor" that functioned in ways similar to Wolverine's, although not as efficient. Evidently, this power enables her to regenerate damage done to both her biological and cybernetic parts. This upgrade occurred recently and she didn't possess this "cybernetic healing factor" as part of her original transformation.

Recently, it was revealed that Deathstrike retains little of her physical humanity. As Rogue was unable to absorb her memories through touch as she could a normal human, she concluded that Yuriko is currently more machine than human.

The theories of Lady Deathstrike possibly being a mutant can be attributed to the second X-Men motion picture, X2: X-Men United. Lady Deathstrike however, within the mainstream Marvel Universe, is in fact just a cyborg.

Appearances in other media

File:Ladydeatstrikex2.jpg

Kelly Hu as Lady Deathstrike.

File:Deathstrikelegends.PNG

Lady Deathstrike in X-Men Legends II.

• Lady Deathstrike has a part in the X-Men animated series that ran from 1992-1997. She had a romantic past with Wolverine, likely merging her character with Wolverine's fiancée, Mariko Yashida. She first appeared in the Season 3 episode "Out of the Past", and was voiced by Tasha Simms.

• Lady Deathstrike aka Yuriko Oyama was portrayed by the actress Kelly Hu in the X-Men 2 motion picture released in 2003. In her film incarnation, she is not portrayed as a cyborg, but as a mutant with abilities similar to those of Wolverine and she is William Stryker's assistant. She was also involved in the same government program (Weapon X) as Wolverine, giving her adamantium claws that come out of her fingers. Although she is portrayed as a villain in the film, her actual orientation is unclear because she is under the effects of mind control. (Also unclear is her origin as there is next to nothing known about this incarnation of the character.) Nevertheless Wolverine supposedly kills her in a fight by a fluid adamantium injection; as she possessed a healing factor of her own, his claws could not do the job, and with her own claws coming from her nails, Lady Deathstrike had four extra weapons that she could use against him. The fight takes place in the laboratory where Wolverine underwent his own transformation. In the official novelization of the film, a reference is made to her survival in the facility in which she appeared to die in X2, immobilized from the effects of the adamantium injection but alive.

• In X-Men: The Official Game it is revealed that Deathstrike had survived the overdose, and proceeds to battle Wolverine two times in the game. It is also revealed that Deathstrike was an agent of HYDRA and a student of Silver Samurai. She was sent to spy on Stryker, but instead was brainwashed into becoming his bodyguard. Deathstrike's final battle with Wolverine once again leaves the impression of Deathstrike's death, as she is crushed under rubble, but as we seen before, she is not so easily disposed off.

• She also appears as a "boss" in the video game X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse and has an appearance in the Activision fighting game X-Men: The Next Dimension.

External links

• MDP: Lady Deathstrike - Marvel Database Project
• The Women of Marvel Comics Deathstrike Page