"Black Widow: Chaos"

 

            The following is a review of the graphic novel “Black Widow: Chaos” as presented in Marvel Modern Era Epic Collection format.

            Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow is a superspy. She was trained in the Russian program the Red Room, which prepared young girls to be ruthless and dangerous operatives. She defected to the United States and assisted the government organization S.H.I.E.L.D., as well as serving as a member of the superhero team the Avengers. She has a lot of red in her ledger.

            After suffering from great guilt, she established the Web, a fund to benefit the families and friends of people she felt she wronged from her days traveling the wrong path. She hired a lawyer named Isaiah Ross to manage the transfer of the funds. To earn the money, Natasha went on missions, involving finding information, apprehending dangerous people, and occasionally taking out some bad guys. These missions brought her onto S.H.I.E.L.D.’s radar. Director Maria Hill, who had many trust issues, called in Natasha on a case. S.H.I.E.L.D. received a communication about “Chaos,” what they believed to be an organization, entity, or individual, and Hill felt Natasha was the person best suited for the job.

            The search for Chaos first led Natasha to a religious fanatical criminal named Molot. After their first encounter, which ended in Natasha’s defeat, Natasha needed information, so she turned to Tori Raven, an espionage expert. This information helped lead to Molot’s defeat but did not lead Natasha any closer to Chaos.

            Raven then gave Natasha info that led her to the Montenegrin Coast, where she found a moored freighter. Aboard the freighter was a man named Damon Dran. Natasha and S.H.I.E.L.D. were able to apprehend Dran, but Chaos ensured Dran could not provide S.H.I.E.L.D. with the information they were seeking.

            On a mission to rob a train in Prague, Natasha ran into Bucky Barnes/the Winter Soldier, Captain America’s sidekick turned Russian agent, who was on a mission to prevent the robbery. The two got into conflict, but ultimately realized they were on the same side.

            Natasha then went on a mission to a mobile tanker near Costa Rica, which being used as a satellite communications relay by the mercenary called Crossbones. As it turned out, she wasn’t the only one interested. Frank Castle/the Punisher had infiltrated Crossbones’ operation. But Crossbones wasn’t stupid and was covering his tracks and had set explosives throughout the tanker. The two managed to escape, but Natasha still had no new intel on Chaos. Then Natasha got a phone call from a man named Rashid, a man she had rescued years back, and who now had kidnapped Isaiah. To rescue Isaiah, Natasha teamed up with Laura Kinney/X-23, the clone of the mutant X-Man Wolverine, and went to a casino in Macau. The rescue was successful, but Rashid did not provide the info Natasha was after.

            Natasha’s life then became difficult after her dirty laundry was aired on national television while she was on a S.H.I.E.L.D. operation in Somalia. While at the same time, Isaiah was hospitalized.

            Tori Raven provided Natasha with information on Chaos. She had been working for them, and revealed Chaos was a financial organization. She provided Natasha with a list of their top accountants and told Natasha she had serious doubts Natasha could succeed without help. Natasha gave the list to Isaiah, instructing him to give it to Maria Hill. She then went on a hunt after the names on the list. This hunt reunited her with the Winter Soldier, and Natasha found Prophet, who showed her what could be her future, and Prophet revealed exactly what Chaos was. After finding what she was looking for, Natasha cut all ties, with her home, S.H.I.E.L.D., and Isaiah, and went off to find herself.

            Now, let’s talk about this book. When I purchased it, I wasn’t expecting it to be the greatest, and I was not surprised to find that I felt my assessment was correct and my expectations were met. I just felt like the story was so convoluted. I’ve never been a huge fan of spy novels or espionage movies. I’m not a fan of “James Bond” or “Mission Impossible” or anything else in that genre, so this book really was not going to be my cup of tea. I’m sorry to the writer Nathan Edmondson, I know you worked hard on this series, and I appreciate all the hard work and effort you put into this, but I just knew this wouldn’t appeal to me. You, my readers, may be wondering why, if I felt like I wouldn’t like this book, did I buy it? Honestly, I’m just buying all the Modern Era Epic Collections, so I wouldn’t pass on even a single one. I will say, however, that I was a fan of the art. I thought Phil Noto’s work was genius. The medium he used was watercolor paints, which was incredibly unique for a comic book. Traditionally when you think of comic book colors you think of ink, so this change was brilliant in my opinion, I was incredibly pleased by it. It was rather refreshing, so my hat is off to Mister Noto. I say it in my reviews of graphic novels that story and art are a partnership. A graphic novel is a union. You can have an exceptional story but have awful artwork and it totally ruins the book. Or you could have a horrible story, but the art is pleasant to look at. I’m getting a little ahead of myself here, but I do feel like that while the story didn’t appeal to me (I’m not saying I HATED the story per se), the artwork made me appreciate the book enough to find some enjoyment in it.

            Now, I always talk about accessibility when I write my reviews. What do I mean by that you may ask if you have never joined me before (and if you’ve graced this page before, bear with me for a few sentences)? Simple. If you’ve never heard of Marvel Comics before, or know nothing about Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow, can you still pick up this book and enjoy it? Now, the back of this book credits it as Vol. 3. I have to say to you: IGNORE IT! This could easily be Vol. 1. Marvel doesn’t always release their Modern Era Epic Collections chronologically, as you shall come to know as my reviews on these continue. Right now, the line is relatively new and there are not a lot of options, but the graphic novels are not published in order all the time. (I do have a few Modern Era Epic Collections in my possession I have yet to review, give it time, they will be there eventually). The first volumes of some of the titular series are not actually Vol. 1. “Daredevil: Underboss,” which has been previously reviewed, was the first collection published, yet it was Vol. 2. (We’ll get around to “Venom” around August, that will start with Vol. 4.) But let’s get back to “Black Widow.” This collects a complete twenty-issue series that was published between 2014-2015, plus a lead-in story and an issue of “Punisher.” I feel as if you know absolutely nothing about Mavel Comics, you could still follow this book. This book is completely standalone. It has no tie-ins to any other stories. Some Modern Era Epic Collections coincide with events and storylines that were ongoing at the time  and don’t actually contain any issues of the main event, just the issues focusing on one character/team from around that time period (take “Spider-Gwen: Ghost-Spider: Edge of Spider-Verse” for example, and I promise you there will be more, I already have a few volumes in my possession that crossover with events). You may have seen it with my reviews of the original Epic Collection formatted books. But again, I digress. This book focuses on just one narrative, and that’s it. I don’t find it to draw on knowledge of any previous Marvel storylines or storylines going on at the time, with the slight exception of the Punisher issue, but even that was a one-and-done. Yes, there are Avengers that pop up over the course of the book, but it doesn’t focus on any of their storylines. This book doesn’t dredge up any old Black Widow storylines either, it just focuses on the current story of Natasha and her mission to discover the truth about Chaos. I feel like it’s a perfect gateway Marvel graphic novel.

            Okay, now that we’ve got all that out of the way, you probably want to know my score of the book. Some of you may have noticed that this book hasn’t evoked as much of a discussion from me as some of my other prior Modern Era Epic Collection reviews. As I said, it has a singular storyline, and Natasha faces a lot of dead ends, so there’s really not a lot to mention, and if I did talk about that it would probably get a little boring. Plus, there is a lot of content that my blog site doesn’t allow me to discuss, so I had to leave that out. On top of that, there is a definite lack of dialogue and a surplus of action in this book, so there’s not a ton of story to discuss. There are several factors that kept this review slightly shorter than others, and I’d just be boring you explaining them, so I’m just going to move on. Now, my score. I score on a very simple scale, one to ten. One is the lowest, that means this book is trash and should be burned from existence and not reprinted, ten is the highest, that means this book is perfection. Now this score is, of course, my opinion. I don’t expect you to agree with me on my opinions. I highly invite you to disagree with me. Please feel free to leave a response in any of the proper formats possible if you’ve read this and have any opinions on this book, I’d love to hear them. I’m also a hard scorer, I don’t just go around handing out tens, but I’m also not an ogre and say everything is a one either. So, let’s balance this out here. So the story really didn’t interest me, there were a lot of false leads, it got confusing, there were points where what you were led to believe weren’t really what was going on, there was convolution, not a lot happened, there was a distinct lack of dialogue, all these factors detract from my score. And yet I really enjoyed the art, so the score is going to come up from there. Now, I’d hate to just throw out a low score, so I’m not going to do that. And I didn’t hate the book, but it just didn’t wow me. It was a little underwhelming, sure, but it was about what I expected. So, all cards on the table, story, and art combined, everything all in, I score this book at… five. Usually, I go on a little bit after about why I scored as I scored, but I think I’ve done enough already, so I don’t feel like I need to give any more reasons why I gave this book the rating I did.

            Next before I begin to wrap this up, I’ll tell you if I recommend the book. Honestly, I don’t. Not generally, anyway. If you’re not a regular reader of Marvel comics or even comic books in general, I’d really tell you not to go out of your way to get this. I really love Black Widow, I think she’s a fantastic character, but I still don’t feel like this was her at her best and I can’t just tell you to go out and buy this book, even if you are a huge Black Widow fan. I mean, if you ARE a HUGE Black Widow fan, then, yeah, you COULD read this book and YOU might like it, you’re entitled to your own opinion, this blog is all just mine. We’re all entitled to think whatever we want, so don’t let me stop you from potentially enjoying what you might think is a phenomenal book just because I didn’t like it. And, if you are into the whole spy/espionage genre, then yeah, I’d say this could potentially be a good read for you. But in general, I don’t recommend this book.

            Okay, I think it’s about time we wrapped this up. I’ve spent a lot of time digressing in this post, and for that I highly apologize, I honestly don’t mean to waste your time. If you’re still reading this review at this point, you are THE BEST! I really appreciate you! I hope you enjoyed this review. If you did, I’ve posted several dozen other book reviews on this site, feel free to check those out. I don’t have any more reviews planned for this month, unfortunately, but I will have one next month, so keep an eye out for it. I’ve also posted original short stories and poetry on this site, so feel free to check those out too if you have some time to kill. If you really want to waste time, I write B’ings, I haven’t done one of those in a long time, I feel like I’m overdue for some new ones. I write editorials, essays, and articles. I write other things, I just write what comes into my mind, as my blog site title implies. I have so much stuff planned, so keep coming back. And so, I say to you until next time, Tim Cubbin… out!