Welcome to The Comic Book Virgin, the series where I dive headfirst into the world of comics and never look back.
This week: “Black Widow: The Things They Say About Her“.
Natalia Romanova. Natasha Romanov. The Black Widow. Resident bad ass of the Red Room, the Avengers, and S.H.I.E.L.D. Let’s meet her.
“The Things They Say About Her” by Richard Morgan is a series set in Cuba sometime after the Cold War. I loved the setting; I’m a huge history buff, so it was really nice to catch references to the Red Scare, Castro, and Augusto Pinochet.
Plot wise, I thought I held my own. In this series, Natasha is on the run after murdering Ian McMasters, CEO of Gynacon. She seeks refuge in Cuba, where she starts tracking down the kidnappers of Sally Anne Carter, who the Black Widow briefly knew. While all of this is happening, she is being tracked by Agent Kestrel and Martin Ferris, who seems to hold a vendetta against her.
However, I don’t think that I knew as much as I should have going in to the series. I don’t know anything about the Red Room, Kestrel, the other twenty six Black Widows, S.H.I.E.L.D., Ferris, or how Natasha knew Daredevil. Hell, I don’t even know who Daredevil is. I’d love to find a series that outlines all of that for me. If you know of it, leave a comment down below.