I’ve never really had any sort of interest in the Black Widow, so it’s fair to say I wouldn’t have given this a glance were it not for the presence of Paul Cornell. As it turns out, however, it’s a pretty accessible introduction to the character (undoubtedly by design, with her upcoming appearance in Iron Man 2), and Cornell’s work is of a typically strong standard, making it an easy and fairly engaging read.

It’s also pleasing to see an apparently randomly-chosen buzzwordy-sounding title actually make some kind of sense upon reading the thing – intertwining a present-day threat story with rattling through Natasha’s background, and ensuring that the two threads actually have a link between them. Aside from a quite superb opening sequence that simply shows Cornell having fun with espionage story tropes, it’s the “origin” stuff that actually engages more, with a few surprising guest appearances (two present-day Marvel heroes and… er… one infamous Communist leader) and a good conveyance of the relationship between Ivan and Natasha, as well as Cornell’s ability to concisely draw character giving a good sense of her personality in relatively few lines and actions. And while the main conspiracy/threat plot wouldn’t really be enough to support the book on its own, the flashback sequences get me just interested enough in the character to care about her fate in the present.

On the visual side, this is a tale of two artists – literally. John Paul Leon does well with the flashback scenes, at the same time making me realise that it’s him as well as David Mazuchelli that JH Williams III reminded me of in last week’s Detective Comics. As for Tom Raney in the “main” scenes, though… well, he has his fans, but I’m not really among them, finding his characters too often lumpy and misshapen facially. He particularly struggles with Natasha – perhaps down to what is clearly an editorial mandate to make her look more like Scarlett Johansson – and an otherwise lovely title page idea is ruined a little by a particularly wonky interpretation. Still, his level of detail is good, and his storytelling clear (and he turns in by far the best of three covers, particularly compared to an especially wretched Greg Land effort) – it’s just hard to shake the feeling that – especially as Cornell is one of the best writers Marvel currently has – this should look as good all the way through as it does on Leon’s pages.