Marvel Knights: Black Widow: The Complete Collection by Devin Grayson, Greg Rucka, J.G. Jones, Scott Hampton and Igor Kordey (book review).
I picked up ‘Marvel Knights: Black Widow: The Complete Collection’ mostly to see how Natasha Romanova was doing. I haven’t looked at any of the other five books in the ‘Marvel Knights’ series but it doesn’t appear that there is any connecting link.
This book is divided into 3 mini-series. In the first, ‘The Itsy Bitsy Spider’ written by Devin Grayson and drawn by J.G. Jones , there is a drug that turns people into super-human strongmen for a few minutes before killing them and a foreign military leader has got it. Natasha is out to get it back and stop further production and encounters a second Black Widow, Yelena Belova. She is her Russian replacement who has the same mission and also wants to kill her to demonstrate her own superiority. It is experience versus novice arrogance and you need the right security clearance or buy the book to find out what happens next.
The second, ‘Breakdown’, is written by Devin Grayson and Greg Rucka and painted by Scott Hampton with Natasha posing as Belova and involuntarily made to look like her to get a mission done. You would think such a switch would be difficult to keep up with who was who but it’s all done with body language.
The final story, ‘Pale Little Spider’, written by Greg Rucka and drawn by Igor Kordey, focuses on Yelena Belova herself when she finds her tutor had been killed in compromising circumstances and stolen files about her and so much is spoiler.
In many respects, this volume should be called ‘Black Widows’ with a pair of them roaming around on Marvel Earth. In some respects, you would have thought the Red Room Project the Russians have would have been compromised with knowledge of their existence but maybe reputation is an edge in itself with its agents. Then again, everyone seems intent on creating super-soldiers on the Marvel Earth.
GF Willmetts
June 2020
(pub: Marvel, 2018. 224 page graphic novel. Price: I pulled my copy for about £13.00 (UK). ISBN: 978-1-302-91400-4)
check out website: www.marvel.com
