Black Widow #14 (Comics Review)

Black Widow ended on a great note last month, with the ongoing storyline of what happens when the global media at large learns of Natasha’s various activities, both covert and otherwise, and then proceeds to vilify her and question what her role with SHIELD and the Avengers really is. This also then segued into some bread-crumbs that Nathan Edmondson had left behind in his early issues, and we saw more glimpses of the manipulators behind some of Natasha’s recent missions. All very spy-ish and all, which was fantastic.

Black Widow #14 continues Natasha’s search for answers and it is a tale of a vengeful superspy who is out for blood and damn the consequences. In a world where almost everyone she knows has a superpower, barring a very small handful of people, it would be easy to consider her nowhere near as proficient at them in getting things done, but that’s far from the reality. She has her own methodology and this issue shows just how effective that really is. And Phil Noto’s artwork is as pleasingly beautiful as always, a big plus as always.

The Kitchen #3 (Comics Review)

Vertigo’s The Kitchen was one of my top 25 picks of the best new comics series to come out last year and with good reason too. Where Ollie Masters really captured the narrative feel of ’60s New York in the tale of three women making their own way after the arrest of their husbands, criminals all of them, artists Ming Doyle and Jordie Bellaire did the same with their amazing art, which pretty much perfectly captured the visual feel of the same. The first two issues have done a lot to flesh out this budding story, and it seems the team is still going all-guns-out.

The Kitchen #3 from last Wednesday furthers the story of Kath, Raven and Angie, picking up from the previous issue, at the end of which the women murdered a man who was trying to blackmail them. At the same time, one of their old friends, or rather a friend of their husbands’, is back in town and he joins up with them, leading to some really brutal scenes later on. As great as the previous two issues were, I think this one was even better. There’s something really compelling about how these three women are taking over their husbands’ businesses, and the art is pitch-perfect.