Marvel recently hit us with not one but two Black widow minis, initially I thought this foolhardy, surely they should save this stuff for the release of Iron man 2which will feature Black Widow, however I now think I know the reasoning. There will probably be more black widow minis in the pipeline (or in fact a ongoing i believe) so it will be handy to have a couple of 4 part stories in Trade form for IM2's release.
Anyway, the two stories were pretty different, and arguably varied in quality. I'll start with the better one first.
Black Widow: Deadly Origin
Paul Cornell writes this adventure where Natalia investigates the death of her old mentor and combats the mysterious Icepick protocols which seem to be killing off all the men in her life.
This met with mixed reviews but i really liked it. For the most part its primary job was to clean up Black Widow's sometimes contradictory continuity. They do this with a rather nice retcon, first Natalia has taken a similar serum to the Infinity formulae that has allowed SHIELD agents Nick Fury and Dum-Dum Duggan to live on long past their WWII origins without looking like men in their 80s. This has also set her past right back into WWII and expands upon her initial meetings with the Winter Soldier. Due to her long life, plus many deep cover missions and brainwashing she is now as confused about her pasta s the average reader of her entry in the official handbook of the marvel universe. The comic itself tells of Black Widow's past using flashbacks and the neat technique of using different artists for the flashbacks to differentiate them form the main story. Overall I thought it was pretty good, entertaining and useful for setting up her character for a more involved future in the MU. Cornell writes her as a super-agent, using stealth and skill to best opponents in a far superior power class. A nice touch was also building on her reputation, when facing an Imperial Dynamo (Probably a match for Iron Man) the dynamo already knows he is beaten before the fight starts and tells widow how honoured he is to be beaten by the legendary black widow. Similarly Cornell writes her with a sense of humour, always good as other authors occasionally play up the "Hard Bitten agent" grimness too much.
Yes it was a cleaning up excercise, but a very readable one.
Second we have Black Widow and the Marvel girls, this was a series of standalone stories where Black Widow teams up with another woman of the Marvel Universe. I could seethe idea, accessible adventures which allow you to see widow's place within the MU. My problem was that the accessibility made it pretty insubstantial stuff, not always a bad thing but it just lead to forgettable stories in my opinion. Its lack of continuity focus was also a niggling point to me, but presumably not so much an issue to the new readers it seems to be aimed at. That may be its point, basically a sales pitch to new readers, Hey you liked black widow in Iron Man 2? How about these other females, any of them interest you? Inthe end that didn't do to much for me.
I started picking up both of these, although I must admit the Marvel girls one fell by the wayside. Not deliberately though. I just seemed to miss a couple of issues and suddenly it was finished. What I read seemed like lightweight fun though.
ReplyDeleteDeadly Origin was quite interesting as a way to try and sort out Natasha's age. The idea that she's lived as long as Fury etc was certainly an interesting one (and helps explain her distinctly cold war origins). Like you, I liked how Cornell played up her cunning and tactics over straight combat skills.
The amount of coverage Natasha's received in Marvel over the last year really has reached Wolverine proportions. I'm fairly certain there's no way she realistically could've done all the things she has.
I did like her turning up in Thunderbolts though. That was great. Definitely one of my favourite Dark Reign story arcs.
Yeah, 'Tasha's been pretty busy of late, could we start a set of awards for hardest working people in the MU, Top of the list have to be Wolverine (X-Men, X-Force, New Avengers, Avengers plus a couple of solos and guest appearances)then probably SPidey (He gets around too) then at the Moment Black Widow, Luke Cage is building up to overworking himself as well.
ReplyDeleteHold on, didn't Wolverine appear in Deadly origin? perhaps he runs a class in how to aoppear in loads of titles and earn $$$$ "Logan, one question, are you cheating by having your son appear in 3 titles as well?"