The Hand

(pop culture)

Although the way of the ninja dawned more than 800 years ago in feudal Japan, comics scribe Frank Miller created an elite group of ninja warriors, the Hand, during his Daredevil run during the 1980s. Miller introduced the Hand in Daredevil vol. 1 #168 (1981) as a highly trained band of ninja fighters, specializing in espionage and assassination. Unlike other ninja cells, which ply their skills as mercenaries and are content merely to survive, the Hand is driven by a desire for supremacy and domination. Refusing to be governed by any one leader, the Hand ninja roam the world with two goals: the elimination of their enemies or the acquisition of power. From early in their history, the Hand ninja depended on dark magic—imparted by their demonic master, the Beast (no relation to the furry member of the X-Men)—to supplement their honed skills. One spell turns a ninja Hand's body to dust shortly after his death, in order to prevent another being from looking upon his countenance. The Hand has loose parallels with DC Comics' League of Assassins, an elite band of ninja warriors that came to the screen as the League of Shadows in Batman Begins (2005). Despite such highly coveted skills and merciless ambitions, the Hand has its adversary in a clan of warriors, the Chaste, once led my martialarts master Stick, who trained both Matt Murdock (Daredevil) and Elektra Natchios (the Greek assassin Elektra). With Stick dead, the Hand has consistently attempted to eliminate the Chaste in an effort to weaken Daredevil's allies. As such, Hand members have often found themselves in heated battle with Daredevil and/or Elektra and Black Widow—both in Daredevil's hometown of New York City and on their home turf. The Hand has also attempted to eliminate the remnants of Stick's ninja order to prevent any one of its members from locating the newborn child that is to be Stick reincarnated, and will no doubt continue to rise up against the Man without Fear. The Hand appeared in the live-action film Elektra (2005). Moreover, the Foot, an organization of evil ninjas in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (first the comics, then on TV and in film), was created as a parody of the Hand of Miller's Daredevil.

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References in classic literature

Neither the hand nor a single muscle of the count's face stirred.

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At the same time that the Mary who had killed Borckman leapt the rail, Lerumie bent for the tomahawk she had dropped, and Jerry, aware of red war, slashed the hand that reached for the tomahawk.

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The blow that shore the hand from off this arm was aimed at thy head, O King; I stayed it with my naked arm.

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The governor lowered the staff, and as he did so the old man who had the stick handed it to the other old man to hold for him while he swore, as if he found it in his way; and then laid his hand on the cross of the staff, saying that it was true the ten crowns that were demanded of him had been lent him; but that he had with his own hand given them back into the hand of the other, and that he, not recollecting it, was always asking for them.

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He who ever bestoweth is in danger of losing his shame; to him who ever dispenseth, the hand and heart become callous by very dispensing.

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Then fell Alcathous son of noble Aesyetes; he was son-in-law to Anchises, having married his eldest daughter Hippodameia, who was the darling of her father and mother, and excelled all her generation in beauty, accomplishments, and understanding, wherefore the bravest man in all Troy had taken her to wife--him did Neptune lay low by the hand of Idomeneus, blinding his bright eyes and binding his strong limbs in fetters so that he could neither go back nor to one side, but stood stock still like pillar or lofty tree when Idomeneus struck him with a spear in the middle of his chest.

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She laid the hand face down again on the table, and slowly the lingering eyes withdrew from her, having learned nothing.

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But just then the wrist I held leaped from my hand, and the hand clasped like a steel trap about my wrist.

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Falling on his knees before the bed, he held his wife's hand before his lips and kissed it, and the hand, with a weak movement of the fingers, responded to his kiss.

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"But it tires the hand unnecessarily," whispered Raoul.

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He showed no surprise at seeing another figure, but the unsteady fingers of one of his hands strayed to his lips as he looked at it (his lips and his nails were of the same pale lead- colour), and then the hand dropped to his work, and he once more bent over the shoe.

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In Winesburg the hands had attracted attention merely because of their activity.

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