Paul Cornell tells Natasha Romanova’s origin story in Black Widow: Deadly Origin - and it’s a pretty boring one. Though a short book, it manages to feel padded out with filler because there isn’t much to Natasha’s story: she got the Soviet version of Cap’s super soldier serum, hence why she was born in the 1920s yet somehow manages to look youthful 100 years later, and at some point in the late 20th century she switched sides to work for the ‘muricans. She’s been superheroing since.
Parts of the first half were quite entertaining. The book opens on a fun 007-ish scene and Cornell writes Natasha well giving her snappy dialogue and a smart, no-nonsense demeanour that helps barrel the plot along nicely. And you do get all the background you could want on the character - how she came to be who she is - even if a lot of it isn’t terribly interesting.
And then it kind of spins out in the second half into a creepy story of unrequited love from a father figure in Natasha’s past, ending with silly OTT action in spaaaaaace. The plot about ex-lovers being targets (and Natasha is quite the player too - Bucky, Hawkeye, Daredevil, Iron Man, and Hercules? Alriiight girl!) never really came together well either. The Adi Granov covers are cool but I didn’t really like either Tom Raney or John Paul Leon’s interior artwork.
Maybe there’s a better origin story for Black Widow but maybe there isn’t - and I’m not sure if there even needs to be one given that she’s just not that compelling a character really. Or at least her past isn’t, to me anyway - who she is now and what she’s doing as the Black Widow are more interesting than how she got her start. If you’re going to give this one a shot anyway to read up on the character, don’t expect much from Black Widow: Deadly Origin.
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