Daniel Acuña

Dealing with the immediate emotional fallout of the crossover event "Fear Itself", but also with the longer term consequences of the many major catastrophes in recent Marvel continuity (most notably House of M, Civil War, Secret Invasion and Dark Reign), one would think this book was messy and hard to follow, but I found it to be anything but. Instead, it's an improvement on the first two volumes (which _were_ hard to follow, especially the first one), with clear emotional stakes, and show more interesting thematic throughline of whether super heroes acting without regulations and supervision is really a good thing, and the return of Norman Osborn in good form. show less

This was the first comic I've read about any of the Avengers—in fact, it might be the first Marvel comic that I've read—and I came to it with only the knowledge I'd gained from watching the Marvel movie 'verse and skimming some Wikipedia articles. While I think that some more background knowledge might have made parts of this hit a little harder for me, Black Widow: The Name of the Rose is still a very enjoyable read. Liu's writing at times is a little melodramatic (particularly when it show more comes to the internal monologues), but I really liked the version of Natasha whom she created here. Natasha is competent, self-aware, and focused—she is not afraid to acknowledge her attachment to other people but equally is not going to let that attachment stop her from doing what has to be done. My favourite couple of pages, however, were those in which Liu gloriously subverts the Women in Refrigerators Syndrome, in an actual refrigerator! So satisfying. show less

I've now read all of Ta-Nehisi Coates's run on Black Panther; before this volume, I was reading them in single issues via comiXology, so I haven't been posting those reviews on LibraryThing (where I only review "books"). You can see the earlier reviews on my blog.*

If you've read all of those reviews, you will not be surprised to hear that Coates's run fizzles out instead of coming to any kind of interesting climax. Part one of the Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda storyline was gripping if show more confusing, part two raised lots of interesting ideas, part three returned to the meandering slow style that is Coates's typical approach... and then part four throws away any interesting ideas in favor of endless superhero punchups. I think the idea of Wakanda as an empire in itself is one that could have really had T'Challa questioning his own people, but we just get a big battle here. Wakanda is a byword for freedom across the galaxy now! But how can it be that easy? Can a formerly oppressive regime just become a force for good? Interesting questions that a writer could ask, but this story just dodges them all in favor of a totally unearned Big Win.

In the end, I think Coates bit off more than he could chew time and time again. These are superhero comics, fundamentally they must be about punching bad guys in the face, but the very best superhero comics manage to do more than that. Coates was interested in Big Ideas, which I appreciate, but his run consistently failed to marry those Big Ideas to the conventions of the superhero genre, meaning almost every arc had Big Ideas that were discussed a bit but went nowhere, and boring, tacked on action. (Particularly tedious here is the largely dialogue-less, all-action issue here.)

* In addition to the ones linked to in this review's body, I also reviewed A Nation under Our Feet, Avengers of the New World, Part One, and Klaw Stands Supreme. show less

A dull and convoluted mess that gives us a confusing story about Natasha Romanova clones and a nearly immortal Black Widow who starts out as a pregnant Russian soldier during World War II. Typical for the spy genre, at some point the Widow is accused of being a traitor and becomes a fugitive, traversing the world to clear her name, only to discover that the man behind it all is some loser c-level villain that most readers will never have heard of.

I'm not entirely sure what I read and will show more not waste any energy trying to sort it out, especially since this 10-year-old story has probably been retconned or made superfluous in some manner. I mean, jeez, the Captain America in this book was Bucky Barnes, and we know that didn't last long. show less