Black Widow : the finely woven thread by Nathan Edmondson

All I know about Black Widow, aka Natalia Alianovna “Natasha” Romanova, aka Natasha Romanoff, comes from the Marvel films. So I know she’s pretty damn awesome and deserves a film of her very own. But until¹ that happens comics are where she gets to play the lead. And last year Renay reviewed The finely woven thread and it seemed like a good place to start. One of the problems I have with comics and especially the super-hero comics, is that there is just so much back story and history, its hard to know where to start. But this one is vol. one, so it seemed fairly sage for newbies.

There’s still plenty of history there, but you don’t have to know it, it’s background, and I’m sure that knowing a lot more gives more depth but I never felt that I was missing out. Even if I could have been.

I liked this collection. Natasha goes from job to job, all over the world, hunting down bad guys. Sometimes for money, sometimes for S.H.I.E.L.D.. Smart alecing her way through blood and death.

But that isn’t what the story is really about. The story is about Natasha herself, and how isolated she has made herself. She has a black and bloody past. She has done things that she shouldn’t have. She’s trying to atone, trying to redeem herself, but she won’t let herself feel to much. She can’t let herself feel, because it hurts too much.

And so she keeps everyone, even the stray cat, at arms length. Even the reader is kept back from knowing too much about her and how she feels. It doesn’t quite work for me as a reader, because I like to get to know characters. Character is where a book works or doesn’t for me.

But then again, this is only the first volume, there is plenty of time for us to get to know more about Natasha and what exactly it is that makes her tick. I hope we get to see that and that the writer doesn’t keep on using the distancing device to make the reader as distant as Natasha wants to be from the world. I say wants to be , because she isn’t that apart from anything, not really. She has neighbours. She has a cat. She doesn’t realise, at the start of this story, that she has a cat, but it isn’t about to let her go.

So I’m glad I read this one, even if it wasn’t as awesome as Black Widow herself it. I’m not sure if I’ll keep reading this series, I guess that’ll be the real indication of how much I did, or didn’t like Finely woven threads

1. until you here, not if ↩