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Black Widow: Deadly Origin #4: Review

Apr 2010
Paul Cornell, Tom Raney

Story Name:

(No title given)


Synopsis

Black Widow: Deadly Origin #4 Synopsis by Peter Silvestro

As the Black Widow approaches the dreadnought in her stolen H.A.M.M.E.R. spacecraft, she realizes that her mentor Ivan Petrovich had himself killed so his brain and spinal cord could be transplanted into a cyborg body. Ivan has her craft destroyed and Natasha ejects onto the dreadnought and eludes the guards….

Her mind flashes back to a day in Paris when Ivan confessed his long-simmering passion for her—a passion that was rebuffed. She told him that she could never think of him as a lover and he explained that watching her with all those other men in her life was like an icepick through his heart….

As she makes her way though the ship’s corridors she is captured by Ivan who accuses her of betrayal—triggering a flashback to the superhero Civil War, when Captain America leveled the same charge at her when she took Tony Stark’s side. The deadly Ivan gives her a tour of the massive craft, showing off it nuclear arsenal and invites her to join him at last. As her mind flashes back to earlier incidents when she counseled others to do the right thing, she refuses, accusing him of wanting to twist her into something indecent. She then announces she is going to walk out the door and he will not trigger the nanites that will kill her. He pursues her into the hallway where she confesses that she became a whole person only when he left her. The enraged Ivan begins firing wildly at her direction and she steal up to him and kisses him—then reveals that she has just injected him with anti-nanites and now controls his cyborg body and the dreadnought. She gives him one last chance to apologize but he does not, so she causes his body to explode. She then sets the nuclear warheads to detonate and sets off the evacuation alarm. Minutes later, the crew is evacuating the doomed ship, and in one of the escape pods, the Black Widow drinks a final toast to Ivan….


 

Review / Commentaries

Rating:
3 stars

Black Widow: Deadly Origin #4 Review by (May 11, 2012)
Art credits unfolded: Raney, Hanna, and Milla contribute the main story; John Paul Leon does the flashbacks. Cameos by Yelena Belova, Daredevil, Cloak and Dagger, Luke Cage, Shang-Chi, Winter Soldier.


Black Widow: Deadly Origin #4 Review by (May 12, 2012)
Judging by their conversation, Ivan's pass at Natasha is while the Avengers were away in the Heroes Reborn universe. We are told that she was infected with nanites at that point. But I think this generates a serious problem with the plot. As I understand it she passed on the nanites via sex (because Ivan wanted to punish those she chose over him). She may possibly have slept with Daredevil since then, but her relationships with Hawkeye and Hercules were long over. And even a return bout with Daredevil is doubtful. One very recent flashback has Natasha meeting her ex-husband and ex-Red Guardian Alexei Shostakov, and passing the anti-nanite cure to him by touch. But she hasn't been intimate with him for a very long time. Incidentally Paul Cornell uses this cameo to clear up a loose end. He validates the appearance of Alexei in Daredevil (1998) #64, long after he supposedly died in Avengers #44. And also hints that he was given the Russian longevity serum Natasha and Ivan had, to explain his long life. Ivan also reveals that it was his agents stealing the bomber at the start of #1. So that wasn't just the irrelevant James Bond movie-opening sequence I thought it was.


> Black Widow: Deadly Origin comic book info and issue index

Elektra

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Holy smokes, Batman!
(The Boy Wonder)

Tom Raney
Scott Hanna
Matt Milla
Adi Granov (Cover Penciler)
Adi Granov (Cover Inker)
Adi Granov (Cover Colorist)


Characters

Listed in Alphabetical Order.

Black Widow
Black Widow

(Natasha Romanoff)
Captain America
Captain America

(Steve Rogers)
Iron Man
Iron Man

(Anthony Stark)
Ivan Petrovich
Ivan Petrovich

(Ivan Petrovich Bezukhov)
Red Guardian
Red Guardian

(Alexei Shostakov)