Black Widow 11, Bucky Barnes: The Winter Soldier 1

Black Widow 11

Black Widow knows her attorney's gone missing and she is not thrilled about it. With the suspicious intel of Tori Raven and the help of X-23 (who, I suspect, has teamed up with Natasha thanks to events that we maybe were already supposed to know about from the aftermath of DEATH OF WOLVERINE, though I don't know that that's true and I certainly don't want to do research on such a thing), she storms the casino where Isaiah is being held and makes it up to the top floor, where she finds that Isaiah has been taken away by his captors and a bomb has been left in their place. Natasha and Laura manage to evade the bomb and catch up with the helicopter leaving the casino. Natasha keeps X-23 from killing one of the men, hoping for answers, and keeps Isaiah from keeping Rashid, the man Natasha once saved long ago. However, Rashid forces her to let him go from the helicopter, plunging into a pool below and surviving, but not before muttering that "they hadn't told him about this part," leading Natasha to suspect something about CHAOS, assuming it is them behind this, has to do with some sort of precognitive ability. This seems confirmed when we see, after Natasha, Laura, and Isaiah have successfully left the casino area, Tori take a call from the people at CHAOS and imply once more that they have access to future information.

On top of the gorgeous art of this book which, hopefully, you have checked out by now, one of the great things about this book is the tone and atmosphere of the story. I've already talked at length (perhaps ironically) about the terse dialogue and narration of the book, which makes the book move really quickly and keeps Natasha's character pretty well-defined while still ensuring to keep things decidedly close to the vest, even with the ever-present and unseen audience. However, in the broader sense, Edmondson is doing a fantastic job keeping CHAOS out there and somewhere on the outskirts. It's the same sort of thing you see in a lot of spy or crime series. One notable example is the tandem of Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, the first two Daniel Craig James Bond movies. The end of Casino Royale introduces this new apparently anti-MI6 terrorist group called Quantum and then Quantum of Solace, which picks up just minutes after the end of Casino Royale, goes on to illustrate them as this ubiquitous group that hides in plain sight, showing Bond that he can't trust anyone and forcing him to rely only on himself and anyone he can tangibly prove isn't working with the organization. In just 11 short issues (and far fewer concerning CHAOS), Edmondson has nicely planted the seeds to view this group in that sort of light, some sort of ubiquitous but unseen enemy that is constantly closing in on Natasha. It's a perfect adversary for her and it's presented brilliantly by both Edmondson and Noto. It's classic spy stuff and it's so far striking the perfect balance that makes them a massive threat but not something that requires Avengers attention on it (always a worry in a shared universe: why didn't so-and-so just call the Avengers? They can't ALWAYS be off-world!). Really great book just doing what it does, continuing to be really great.

Total Score: 5/5


Bucky Barnes: The Winter Soldier 1

Bucky Barnes has taken on Nick Fury's role as "man on the Wall," the guy who protects the planet from interstellar threats before they can even make it to Earth. This first issue finds him all over the galaxy with his chosen sidekick-who-isn't-a-sidekick Daisy Johnson. They start on a planet, kill a dude, take a weird little pet off the planet, investigate a drug trade through Atlantis, and team up with Namor only to find that the drug dealer's middle man was Loki and then the drug dealer is killed by someone else who seems impossible to identify in the murkiness of the final page.

I hate to say "I told you so" but I especially hate to say "I told you so" to myself, who was really starting to eagerly anticipate this book. I have had my problems with Kot in the past (I think SECRET AVENGERS is all over the place and certainly has become a book that isn't for me, a thing I hate dealing with because I still force myself to read every book like some dummy. I also think Kot really wants you to know that he's smart and thoughtful and progressive, something I would honestly have believed if he just wrote books I like because I think writers who can make good books ARE smart and thoughtful and progressive and don't always need to have an agenda LOOK, we're on a tangent again) and they're all coming right to a head here as he loads each page with dialogue and exposition and throws it all at us over Marco Rudy's really specific art style. One of the problems with that is that Rudy's art style involves using space on the page in a way that's very rarely, if ever, done. There are a lot of circular panels in the middle of a page that kind of branch out to create the rest of the page's layout and, when used effectively, create a really neat and unique sort of page. Here, though, it's really hard to follow the art because the words are so very present and it's a struggle just to find your way around the story, meaning you can't really make room for the art. Hopefully this is something that will settle out as the book continues (which is certainly a possibility as the two become more comfortable working with one another) because I still want to believe this book has potential. I just need to stop rolling my eyes at it.

Total Score: 2/5