Black Widow #2 – Review

by Nathan Edmondson (Writer), Phil Noto (Artist)

The Story: A contract goes very wrong in Shanghai as Natasha needs to get out of a mess.

The Review: There is no such things as a bad character. While this is a rather controversial statement, it is something that I believe in, with every single character possessing the potential to draw in readers if a right angle can be found. Titles like X-Men Legacy and Journey Into Mystery proved to me that characters such as David Haller and Sif could be actually interesting and entertaining with their general outlook on their philosophy and their adventures and so did Black Widow.

I have to confess I never had much interest in Natasha Romanoff before, with the Avengers movie only providing me with a little spark of curiosity in face of the old Marvel character. However, by taking a chance, the first issue managed to be rather good, with a certain emphasis on her taking jobs, providing a few surprises and some qualities along the way. However, first issues aren’t everything as the team must prove that their concepts can provide entertainment for the long run. Is the second issue as good as the first one?

In a general manner, this issue is consistent in terms of quality, although there are some areas in which it is a bit stronger and others where it is weaker. The overview of how Natasha operates and the kind of life she has led until her Avengers days are rather interesting, putting a lot of potential for problems and conflicts from her past, which shows up in this issue. The way Edmondson already plays a bit around the motivation behind her actions and the results of her present and past demeanour makes for something that is indeed interesting to follow.

Black Widow #1 – Review

by Nathan Edmondson (Writer), Phil Noto (Artist)

The Story: Natasha Romanoff tells us a bit about herself and what she does when she isn’t with S.H.I.E.L.D. or with the Avengers.

The Review: I almost didn’t buy this book. I had close to no real intention of ever reading this thing at first, but then I remembered I had made the resolution to try out new things for 2014. With close to no expectation except perhaps a bit of espionage action, I went out to buy the book to at least give this title a chance.

Black Widow, as a character, is not one I’m exactly terribly fond of, as cool as she was in the Avengers movie. Perhaps it’s the fact that she does not seem as cool as other members of every team she was in or the fact that I could not remove the fact that she has been mostly used as either a double-agent or an over-sexualized character in other titles, I was never that huge a fan of her.

Still, reading this issue, I was pleasantly surprised as the take of Nathan Edmondson takes c page out of Matt Fraction’s book, with a certain angle that is not dissimilar to Hawkeye, yet goes in a different way all the same. What does Black Widow do when she isn’t with any iteration of the Avengers? With a quick done in one tale, the writer demonstrates just who the character is and what she does quite aptly, although he does some mistake in the process.

A+X #2 Review

By: Chris Bachalo, Peter David (Writer), Chris Bachalo, Mike Del Mundo (Artist), Tim Townsend (Inker), Chris Bachalo (Colorist), Clayton Cowles (Letterer)

The Review: It may come as a surprise that this series – which could so easily have been treated as a last ditch cash grab trading off any residual Avengers vs. X-Men hype – is actually proving pretty indispensable. It’s not so much that the stories contained within will have any lasting ramifications for the heroes they feature, but more that they offer some high-grade levity amidst a stack of comics otherwise geared towards the long game. Don’t get me wrong, I fell in love with FF #1 this week and was once again left utterly impressed by Thor: God of Thunder, but it’s also nice to have something stand-alone to read that asks for nothing more than the opportunity to brighten up my afternoon. I might have gone in not expecting much, but instead I’ve come up against creative teams that have other ideas. They want to ‘wow’ me for 10 minutes; to get in, drop some popping candy in my brain, and get out. And I’m always open to that.

Winter Soldier #11 – Review

By: Ed Brubaker (writer), Butch Guice (pencils), Brian Thies (inks), Bettie Breitweiser (colors), and Joe Caramagna (letters)

The Story:  Bucky and Hawkeye close in on Black Widow as they discover that she and Novokov have started building weapons.

The Review:  Man, this is one amazing looking book.  It’s easily among the very best looking of Marvel’s line-up.  Honestly, were it not for David Aja drawing Hawkeye, I might say that Winter Soldier is the best looking Marvel book, period.  Guice’s artwork is brilliant: both detailed and murky.  The guy is borne to draw an espionage comic like this, full of conspiratorial shadows and a constant sense of claustrophic paranoia.  His layouts this month are particularly outstanding:  Guice has a lot of fun in depicting the narrative and the action and how to lead the reader’s eye across the page.  He experiments with different ways of illustrating action sequences and the result is a fun, dynamic book.  I also cannot overstate just how good Bettie Breitweiser’s colors are: her unique shifts in color do a great job in playing off of Guice’s creative layouts, leading to an engaging, creative book dripping with atmosphere.

The Avengers – Movie Review

The Story: When these guys show up, it’s your signal to stock up on disaster insurance.

The Review: Don’t take this as a sweeping statement of superhero movies, but I tend to think they work best when they’re just straight-up action-adventure vehicles.  Just give people what they want: plenty of thrills and laughs, a solid plot, and you won’t need to mix in any dramatic nonsense or political statement in between.  That latter stuff would be nice—an exciting movie with some relevance is always a good thing, but sometimes all you really need is the excitement.

With that in mind, The Avengers easily takes a position as one of the best in what has been a Golden Age for superhero films.  The prologue alone has enough explosions, gunfire, car chasing, martial artistry, crumbling rubble, and suspense to fill several Daredevils, and the movie only builds in scale right to its very last second, proving that more really is sometimes more, and that you can never go too big or too splashy if you know how to do it right.