Black Widow: Pale Little Spider #3

Posted: Tuesday, June 18
By: Jason Cornwell

Writer: Greg Rucka
Artist: Igor Kordey

Publisher: Marvel Comics

Plot:
The book opens in the past where we see Yelena is engaged in hand to hand combat training with her late mentor Colonel Starkovsky, but their father/daughter relationship is given a new look now that we've learned about the unspoken feelings that he held for her. We then join Yelena in the present as she attempts to locate the employee of the S&M club that Colonel Starkovsky used to enact his fantasies, using the woman as a substitute for the real Yelena. However, as we discovered last issue this woman has convinced herself that she is the real Black Widow, and she is busy killing off anyone who could prove that she isn't, including the pair of homicide detectives who were originally assigned to Colonel Starkovsky's murder investigation. As Yelena discovers the body of one of the detectives in this woman's room, we see she soon finds herself in a battle for her life, as the woman returns to her room, and she is dead set on killing Yelena for daring to call herself the Black Widow. However, her training allows Yelena to get the edge in this battle, and her anger drives her to kill Colonel Starkovsky's murderer.

Comments:
There's a revelation in the final pages of this miniseries where the readers discover the true party behind the murder that Yelena believes that she solved, and this scene makes for a particularly rewarding finishing note for what I had been ready to write off as an entertaining, but rather familiar obsessed crazy plot. Now sure the idea that a woman believing herself to be the true Black Widow is the one that carried out the murders is a staple of the thriller genre, with Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" being the first film that I believe explored the idea of a killer latching on to a second identity. However, in addition to offering up an intense final battle, where this crazy woman actually managed to come across as a very real & dangerous threat, Greg Rucka offers up a very strong closing scene where we learn that this situation wasn't nearly as random as it seemed to be. This finish also lays the groundwork for a nice future story where Yelena is made aware of the information that we learn in the closing pages of this issue, and finds herself targeted by the very organization that created her.

This issue also did a fairly nice job showing us why her superiors felt Yelena needed to be put through this ordeal, as over the course of this story we have seen a degree of uncertainty, and even a hesitant to act when she was placed in an emotionally intense situation. Now I'm not sure that her actions during the battle would serve to redeem her as much as they seem to, as if I was her superior I feel the true test would be her use of a lethal attack upon a party that hadn't killed a person that she had cared deeply for. Now perhaps the Black Widow isn't meant to be an assassin and as such they only wanted to test her instincts of self-preservation & see how far she would need to be pushed to make her deal out a life-ending attack. In any event this miniseries did manage to develop Yelena into a character who I wouldn't mind seeing again, as it's not often that one gets to look at an agent at this formative stage of their career. This issue also has Yelena cross a line that makes her a fair sight more dangerous, as we see that she can kill when she's given reason to do so.

Igor Kordey turns in some wonderful work on this issue, from the opening training sequence, where we're treated to a cleverly choreographed fight, to the emotionally charged final battle, where the Black Widow finds herself in a battle with a crazed woman bent on taking over the role of the Black Widow. The art also does a nice job aiding in the delivery of the more suspenseful moments, as the scene where Detective Dobrova is lured into the basement by Petra is quite chilling, as is the scene where Yelena enters Petra's room to find the other detective. There is one scene in this book that did strike me as a bit obvious in it's bid to remind the reader that this book is set in an S&M club, as Petra attacks a couple in the middle of a session, simply to get a cloth to hide her gun under. I realize the mature label allows for scenes like this, but this scene struck me as simply being gratuitous for the sake of being gratuitous. I also have to wonder why Yelana's costume would leave her lower torso unprotected, as a gunshot to the abdominal region could be just as lethal, not to mention a great deal more painful.

Final Word:
The last page of this issue is what really sold me on this miniseries, as while it's not a wholly unexpected development, I must admit I was rather surprised by this revelation, and it nicely lays the foundation for a future miniseries. This miniseries has done a pretty fair job developing Yelena into a character, as she was allowed to display a degree of naivety, and uncertainty, which made her a great deal more sympathetic than when she was just an ambitious young woman gunning to replace the original Black Widow. In fact my only real problem with this miniseries is that the villain is little more that a crazed loon who was driven by a cookie cutter motivation. Still, Greg Rucka does succeed at offering up a pretty thrilling closing battle, as the earlier killings did generate a sense of dread, and the final encounter does have a couple moments where Yelena looks to be in a rather tight spot. It certainly rates as my favorite comic work Greg Rucka's done.