HUGO NATCHIOS

Real Name: Hugo Kostas Natchios

Identity/Class: Human; Greek citizen

Occupation: Former Greek ambassador

Group Membership: None

Affiliations: Agamemnon (dog), Athos, Stavros

Enemies: Unspecified terrorists, unspecified mercenary assassins, Theo and a gang of kidnappers

Known Relatives: Christina (wife, deceased), Elektra (daughter), Orestez (son)), Demetrios Natchios (brother), Alexia (sister-in-law)

Aliases: None

Base of Operations: Currently unknown
    formerly a mansion in upstate New York;
    formerly an estate in Greece

First Appearance: Daredevil I#168 (January, 1968)

Powers/Abilities: Hugo had no superhuman powers. He was wealthy and employed several bodyguards, and he had unspecified diplomatic skills.

History:
(Elektra: Root of Evil#4 (fb)) - A young, newly appointed ambassador, Hugo was humiliated as his wife shared her affections openly and wantonly. In addition, people questioned his ability to manage the world when he couldn't even manage his own house.

(Elektra: Root of Evil#2 (fb)) - A drunken Hugo told his son Orestez that his mother was a whore and that he wasn't sure that her second child was his own. When Hugo complained that his mother shamed them both, Orestez told him "Never again..."

(Elektra: Root of Evil#4 (fb) - BTS) - The young Orestez hired men with a talent for cruelty to punish Christina. Looking back, Hugo later realized he had known what Orestez intended to do.

(Elektra: Assassin#1 (fb) / Elektra: Root of Evil#4 (fb)) <August 13> - Hugo and Christina were vacationing on  on an island near the Aegean sea. Shortly before noon a helicopter flew over, and its inhabitants fired on Hugo and Christina, shooting them both. Hugo was shot once and incapacitated, while Christina was nearly cut in half by gunfire. She survived only long enough to give birth to their daughter.

(Elektra: Root of Evil#4 (fb) - BTS) - Orestez, who had been unaware that Hugo would be with Christina, was devastated that he had nearly killed his father, too. Guilt drove him away from Hugo's house.

(Elektra: Root of Evil#4 (fb)) - At first, Hugo wanted nothing to do with Christina's adultery, but doctor's tests proved that she was his, and he accepted her, naming her Elektra.

(Elektra: Root of Evil#4 (fb) - BTS) - Though Hugo never forgave Christina for her infidelity, he did appreciate that she gave him Elektra. He had a beautiful tombstone placed over her grave; the stone was marked with images of the Furies.

(Elektra: Assassin#1 (fb)) - Elektra's memories are uncertain whether Hugo ever sexually assaulted her when she was five years old. She once thought he did, but she had counseling and medication that convinced her otherwise.

(Elektra: Assassin#1 (fb)) - When Elektra was six years old, she sat on her father's lap as he asked her if she wanted a pet. She told him she wanted a cat, and he teased her back, telling her she was a cat, a Cheshire cat.

(Elektra II#12 (fb) ) - Elektra was running through the streets with her father. They were photographed.

(Elektra: Root of Evil#3 (fb) ) - Every day, Hugo gave her something new, from a flower picked up by the roadside to a piece of amber that seems to spark as it catches the sun. He nicknamed Elektra his "Little Amber."

(Elektra: Root of Evil#3 (fb) ) - Hugo gave Elektra a pet dog, Agamemnon, which quickly became her favorite gift.

(Thunderbolts III#10 (fb) ) - While he was often a loving father he sometimes got really mad.

(Elektra: Root of Evil#3 (fb) ) - When Elektra was nine years old, Agamemnon was killed by criminals, who intended to assault and kidnap Elektra before ransoming her back to his father. She was rescued by Orestez who slaughtered the criminals and brought Elektra back to Hugo. Their father graciously thanked Orestez and welcomed him back into his household. However, the memories of his past actions were still too painful for Orestez, and he left them.
    The next morning, Hugo flew Elektra to a sensei from Japan's Iga Province, and she began her first lesson in the martial arts.

(Elektra: Root of Evil#4 (fb)) - Shortly after Elektra's tenth birthday, she played with her father, leading him into their family graveyard. When they came across her mother's grave, Elektra convinced Hugo to tell her about her mother.

(Elektra II#13 (fb) ) - Hugo pushed his teenage daughter hard to become an Olympic level gymnast, and beat her with a belt each time she screwed up during training.

(Elektra: Assassin#1 (fb)) - Elektra was close to her father as she grew up, but she was troubled by dark visions and voices which sometimes led her to self-mutilation. Elektra was sent away for therapy until she became more stable (or at least appeared to do so).

(Daredevil I#168 (fb)) - Hugo accompanied the nineteen year old Elektra during her initial tour of Columbia University.

 

 

(Daredevil: Man without Fear#3) - Matt Murdock attempted to visit Elektra at the Natchios Estate. Attempting to escape security dogs and armed guards, Murdock fell through a glass roof into the middle of Hugo's elaborate party. Hugo ordered his men to capture the intruder; Murdock escaped, though he did take a bullet in the arm in the process.
    Murdock's actions served to attract Elektra's interest, and she visited him soon after, starting their steamy romance.

 

 

 

 

 

(Daredevil I#168 (fb)) - A year after she had started at Columbia, Hugo and Elektra were both taken hostage by unspecified terrorists at Columbia's administration building. Matt Murdock donned a mask and came to their rescue, with Elektra helping to take out some of the terrorists. However, after one of the terrorists was knocked out a window, the police below mistakenly believed the terrorists had thrown a hostage out of the window. Despite Murdock's warning, the disoriented Hugo stood up in front of a window, and the police, thinking him to be one of the terrorists, shot him dead.
    Following Hugo's funeral, Elektra, unable to bear the pain of the loss and, fearing that she would be overwhelmed by her own dark voices, fled, leaving behind a heartbroken Matt Murdock.

(Daredevil minus 1 - BTS) - Elektra tracked down and confronted the man who had arranged the assault leading to her father's death.  Despite Elektra's skills, she was defeated by the man and his bodyguard, but she was saved by a sai hurled from the shadows by a member of the Hand. Impressed with the weapon, Elektra decided to make it her own.

 

 

 

 

Comments: Created by Frank Miller and Klaus Janson (the DD team-supreme).

    In contrast to past continuity, Hugo was referred to as Kostas in Elektra II#35, so I've applied the Robert Bruce Banner rule to it.

    In early issues of ELEKTRA I, the alien known as the Architect offered to allow Elektra to spend time with her father's spirit if she did him a favor.  I believe he gave her a "free sample" of such a visit in order to prove that he could do so, so maybe "Hugo's" appearance in those issues should be listed (even if it wasn't really him).
--Donald Campbell

    One of the later issues of ELEKTRA I had one of Elektra's family's old retainers <Stavros> telling Wolverine a story about what Elektra's mother was like (kind and caring?) and how she had died during a bank robbery.  While it's clear that this was written by someone who was unaware of the much different earlier story, I think that it should be mentioned in the Comments section, even just as an oddity.
--Donald Campbell.
    You're right, I consider these two flashbacks essentially incompatible with established continuity. I don't know why Stavros would tell her such stories (there could be some truth to the first one, though, but given the second story, I consider it dubious).
--Snood.
    (Elektra I#18 (fb)) - At age 15, Christina Natchios was a runner in in the resistance cell commanded by her future husband. She came to Stavros, who had instituted his own assault against the Nazis, ordering him to fight under the banner of her commandant. Stavros laughed at her until she leveled a gun at his head and he saw the cold determination in her eyes. Stavros joined Hugo's cell the very next day.
    (Elektra I#18 (fb)) - While Hugo and Athos were in Athens on government business, Stavros took Christina--in her eighth month of pregnancy--for her clinic exam. Christina sent Stavros to the market to return in an hour. As it was the time of the Partition, a man who considered himself a patriot walked into the clinic and shot the doctor, then took a hostage to help make good his escape. Christina tried to convince the killer to stop, but the patriot shot her in the chest. Knowing she had been mortally wounded, Christina used her combat training to disarm the killer and to cow him with a glare. However, she then kept the crowd from tearing him apart until the army came and took him away. Elektra was born there, on the clinic floor, amid the spent blood and cartridges at Stavros held her in his arms. Christina wanted to hear her daughter's first cry, but she heard the angels singing instead.

    In Elektra II#1 + 5, Elektra visited the policeman who had unwittingly shot her father. She trusted him with the Scorpio Key, as the intimate bond of tragedy they shared told her that she could trust him to keep it safe.

    When Miller drew Hugo he was a frail looking older man, similar to how he appeared in Elektra: Root of Evil. However, when John Romita, Jr. drew him for Miller in the Man without Fear, he was much stockier. Maybe he was taking steroids for a medical condition and had really gained weight for a period of months?

Profile by Snood.

CLARIFICATIONS:
No known connection to:

Christina Natchios

 

    The mother of Orestez and Elektra and the wife of Hugo, she apparently had numerous affairs and was less than discrete about them. When she became pregnant for a second time, Hugo and most others assumed the child to be the product of one of these affairs. While Hugo attempted to drown his sorrows in alcohol, Orestez was enraged and hired mercenaries to kill her. While she and Hugo vacationed on an island near the Aegeans, the mercenaries flew over in a helicopter, nearly cutting her in half with their bullets. Struck in the head and chest, she lived only long enough to deliver her daughter.

    In Elektra: Assassin, Christina has dark hair, but these are Elektra's most-likely second hand memories, as she was a newborn when her mother died, and given Hugo's antipathy towards Christina, it's unlikely he kept pictures of her around.

 

--Elektra: Assassin#1 (1 (fb) / Elektra: Root of Evil#4 (fb)

 

 

 

 

 

Agamemnon

 

    Elektra's dog, he was gift from Hugo, but was killed by would-be kidnappers of Elektra when she was nine years old.

 

--Elektra: Root of Evil#3

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

images:
Elektra: Root of Evil#2, p1 (Agamemnon)
    #3, p1, panel 2 (face)
        p3, panel 2 (Christina)
        p5, panel 6 (face, with infant Elektra)
Daredevil I#168, p15, panel 8 (shot by police)
Daredevil: Man without Fear#3, p11, panel 5 (stocky)

Appearances:
Daredevil I#168 (January, 1981) - Frank Miller (writer/pencils), Klaus Janson (inks), Denny O'Neil (editor)
Elektra: Assassin#1 (August, 1986) - Frank Miller (writer), Bill Sienkiewicz (artist), Archie Goodwin (editor)
Daredevil: Man without Fear#3 (December, 1993) - Frank Miller (writer), John Romita Jr. (pencils), Al Williamson (inks), Ralph Macchio (editor)
Elektra: Root of Evil#2-3 (April-May, 1995) - D.G. Chichester (writer), Scott McDaniel (pencils), Hector Collazo (inks), Ralph Macchio (editor)
Elektra: Root of Evil#4 (June, 1995) - D.G. Chichester (writer), Scott McDaniel (pencils), Hector Collazo & Nando Prud-homme (inks), Ralph Macchio (editor)
Elektra I minus 1 (July, 1997) - Peter Milligan (writer), Mike Deodato Jr. (pencils), Deodato Studios (inks), Bobbie Chase (editor)
Elektra II#12-13 (September-October, 2002) - Greg Rucka (writer), Carlo Pagulayan (pencils), Danny Miki (inks), Stuart Moore (editor)
Thunderbolts III#10 (August, 2013) - Daniel Way (writer), Phil Noto (artist), Jordan D. White (editor)

First Posted: 01/02/2005
Last updated: 06/11/2020

Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.

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