Marvel Graphic Novel (1982 series) #75

In a remote cabin on a snowy night, Black Widow and SHIELD Agents Fred Wilson and Dexter Bancroft are prisoners of a pair of insane serial killers, Rose and Charlie, who have just finished torturing Wilson to death. Then Rose chooses the next victim and it is Bancroft. Natasha, shackled to the ceiling by her arms, tries to kick Rose and is slashed for her trouble. Weak after hanging for days, Natasha sinks into her own mind, recalling her friend Anne Baxter, an American she met in Moscow who helped her defect. She was recently told that Anne had been gruesomely murdered and Natasha announces she is returning to SHIELD to hunt down her killer….

Later, Natasha reviews the case Anne was working on and it turns out that someone is killing SHIELD Espers and other low-level telepaths working for the government; the body count is 20, all last seen in Lower Manhattan. The evidence pointed to an amateur psycho—except for one detail: how did the killer know the victims were telepaths? While this narrative is going on, the art shows Daredevil pursing two guys who have kidnapped a little girl; DD dodges their bullets, delivers a beating and rescues the child. And then we see that Natasha has been discussing the case with Matt. Interviewing parents of several of the now 50 victims leads to the conclusion that the killer is also a telepath. So they need to set a trap; Nick Fury transfers all of the SHIELD telepaths out of the area, except for one: former agent Fred Wilson, unaware he is part of a mission, followed by Agent Dexter Bancroft, who will be followed by Nat and DD….

Late one night, Bancroft is overpowered by a huge brute, Natasha goes to his rescue and she is clobbered by the big guy’s partner and captured along with Bancroft and Wilson to be taken away in a van. Daredevil follows the tracking device placed in the Widow’s bracelet; Fury tells him to take no action as he is sending a specially equipped squad after them….

DD follows the van through varying traffic conditions and learns the SHIELD squad is stuck in traffic so he acts, hijacking a cab as Fury tells him a helicopter has been dispatched to pick up the squad. And then DD stops picking up the transmissions, meaning the van is now out of range….

And now Black Widow is chained up, watching Rose, a minx in black leather, carving her artworks in Bancroft’s flesh and savoring his pain, both mental and physical. And then Natasha starts picking up Rose’s deeper thoughts: she sees that Rose was beaten by her brutish father and her mother refused to believe her stories about him. Nat can’t help crying for the villain but as she feels the effects of dehydration, she discovers she can work her left wrist free of the shackle….

Meanwhile, Daredevil is driving through a blizzard, vowing to save Nat….

Rose now has Bancroft under her mental control and she hands him a knife and tells him to cut Natasha but he stabs himself in the chest. Rose laughs…while Nat finds herself back in Rose’s childhood, watching her father kill her mother by knocking her down the stairs and telling the police she must have fallen while drunk. And Child Rose tells Natasha her father is going to pay. Rose knew she could control people since she was ten and used it for pranks on other children until she came upon her father drunk. She made him walk up to the building roof, largely aware of what he was doing but unable to resist and making him jump to his death, making her feel special….

Daredevil abandons the cabin the snow, estimating he has only an hour or two to find Natasha before he succumbs to the cold….

But Natasha sees that when young Rose met another telepath, she didn’t feel so special anymore so she slew him in an alley. After that she decided that all telepaths must die so she could be unique. Charlie is just a mindless serial killer she picked up to do the heavy lifting but she learned the art from him. And together they make Bancroft lean forward, piercing his own heart with the knife. And as Natasha wonders where Matt is, Rose picks up the thought and knows someone is coming….

The tracer starts beeping again, the frostbitten DD wondering if he will be in any shape to help Nat when he finds her. He finds Charlie waiting for him with an axe and can smell drying blood on him. Charlie is a big brute but determination pushes DD to beat him down. And then Rose hits him from behind with a crowbar, giving Charlie the chance to hit him with he axe. When she sees Matt dragged in, Natasha pulls and her left wrist comes free. Charlie tries to grab her but Natasha, stiff and in pain, manages to wrap the other chain around Charlie’s neck. Rose holds a knife to DD’s throat and demands she let Charlie go. Instead, she snaps his neck and challenges Rose with “Let’s see how special you are.” Rose, stung by the reference, charges Nat with a knife; they struggle…and then Nat realizes that Rose just wanted to get close enough to hypnotize her. She hands Nat the knife and tells her to kill herself. As DD crawls toward them, Nat raises the knife to her own throat…and then DD kicks Rose and Natasha turns the knife so that it pierces Rose’s heart. She kisses Nat as she dies. And Nat can’t help but cry for the dead horror….

Later they meet in the Helicarrier sickbay. Natasha explains how she was trapped for 18 hours with two psychopaths and entered the mind of one of them. She’ll get over it but it will take a while…and she wonders if she ever again will feel clean….