Strangers on a Train

[colonel_green]

Four scans from Black Widow #4.

 

Natasha is on the run from various groups, while trying to track down the mysterious man attacking her.  She knows he hired Lady Bullseye, so she and Lady B meet and talk (they call each other "Natasha" and "Maki", which seems to suggest they've known each other for a while, which was an interesing touch).  They bicker a bit about whether they're going to have a fight in the middle of the train, and Natasha eventually reveals that she poisoned Lady B.



"Nice try, but I'm in that crossover coming up."



As funny as Prince of Power was this week, that last panel made me laugh the most.




Natasha heads off to finish the case. At issue's end, she's locked naked in a chair in a meat freezer full of slaughtered cows, but apparently this is all according to plan, or something.

The plot of this arc can be a bit overly vague in places, but I really like the characterization, and Acuna's art works a lot better than I thought it would.
 

Comments

[rordulum]

Nice art, definitely. Black Widow's got a great 40s femme fatale look to her.

When did Bucky stop calling her 'Natalya' though? I liked that he was the one who used her real name, rather than her anglicized nickname.

[colonel_green]

Cornell wrote him as using her nickname in the last BW mini, which to me seemed to miss the point of the gesture - I can't recall, but I think he still uses Natalia when Brubaker is writing. Liu may be writing in continuity with Cornell (the plot of that mini gets a mention here, too).

[terra]

Nah, in 606 and Reborn #2 Brubaker definitely has Bucky calling her Natasha. So Liu's in line with most things, really. (Though it'd make sense if she wanted to follow previous Black Widow stories more than previous Captain America stories.)

[colonel_green]

Ah, okay then. Not surprised at the continuity being good - this whole run so far has been heavy on well-used continuity.

[terra]

It's not an anglicized nickname, it's rather like saying Jim for James. I tend to read it as their relationship becoming less formal and more intimate over time. In any case, it's been that way for a while in the Captain America title.

I think it'd be interesting, though, if he used further Russian diminutives instead of using Nat and Tasha like everyone else.

[rordulum]

Well, anglicized or not, I preferred that Bucky was the only one who didn't use it.

Even if it is more formal, it suggests a level of intimacy between them, just as she's the only one who calls him James. It also points to them knowing each other back in the Soviet Union.

[terra]

I have mixed feelings on it, myself. On the one hand, yeah, him using another name is a good indicator of their unique relationship. On the other hand, from what I can tell, the way they're doing it makes more sense to how Russian nicknames actually work. So idk. :|9

[darklorelei]

If anything, he should probably be using something MORE diminutive.

[terra]

That's what I thought. But I can see Bucky just staying away from overly-Russian phrases just on principle.

[harmoner]

I love Bucky/Natasha together. I'll have to pick this up.

[shadowpsykie]

oh then she's back at the start of issue one?

[fredneil.livejournal.com]

Wait a minute. If she's still alive, then she's not completely paralyzed. She can breathe and her heart's still working. That's the kind of thing they check before burying people.

I'm betting Steve wouldn't have been cool with that, either. Maybe that should be the company slogan. "Marvel. Where heroes do the kind of stuff that The Joker would come up with at DC."

[colonel_green]

Those kinds of "living death" agents are a common device in fiction (and this is a sci-fi world).

And, no, probably not - but Natasha's usually depicted more as a hardened spy than anything else.

[terra]

I'm inclined to believe she was bluffing, personally.

[stolisomancer]

Natasha, at best, is a part-time superhero. She's a full-time spy and she just did something terrible to a hired assassin, assuming she was telling the truth.

Besides, I'm not sure you want to trade "heroes going too far" stories between Marvel and DC. Both of them have been holing up at the corner of Grim and Gritty for the last couple of decades.

[fredneil.livejournal.com]

It's still something The Joker would do. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if he had done it in the past..

But the thing that bothers me isn't just Natasha doing that. It's a Captain America ignoring it. I realize that this isn't Steve and the current Bucky is a darker character, so this might be an irrational feeling of squick on my part, but Captain America should be one of the most kid-friendly superheros around and waving away burying someone alive just isn't. Granted, the most kid-friendly hero at Marvel should be Spider-Man, and his current stories aren't any better.

[terra]

Bucky explicitly doesn't know about it, though.

[colonel_green]

With their relationship, "don't ask, don't tell" is in effect.

[stolisomancer]

Marvel has somewhat explicitly shoehorned its "kid-friendliness" into out-of-continuity titles like Power Pack and Marvel Adventures. At the same time, the mainstream Marvel books have been quietly adopting a more "pulp" sensibility. The big '90s conflict, killing vs. not killing, has been rather decisively resolved in favor of "well, sometimes it happens."

You're probably better off just assuming that 616 Marvel books are written for young adults, not small children, and leaving it at that. Black Widow in particular is essentially a spy thriller.

[skalja]

That scene bothered me, too. Natasha says, "Everyone is going to THINK you're dead. Long enough for you to be buried." She's good at her job, and I can't imagine she wouldn't have accounted for medical professionals checking the body. So whatever she dosed Bullseye with, it's REALLY convincing.

But that means emergency services are going to be faced with a young woman who seems to have suddenly died in a train (a public space) without any visible cause of death. Now, I freely admit that I don't know very much about real life procedures in forensic pathology. But I would think that, presented with those circumstances, the coroner's office would want to rule out murder and most especially a contagious illness. Which means an autopsy to determine cause of death. Which Lady B would be alive and very possibly conscious for.

That's not grim and gritty edgy heroism, that's sadistic torture.

[colonel_green]

In the real world, probably. From how Natasha describes it here, she'll just be buried ("just") - the autopsy would kill a person, and, as I noted, Lady B obviously escapes, since she shows up in Shadowland.

[skalja]

Yeah, but can you provide a logical reason for the autopsy to be skipped that doesn't boil down to, "Well, otherwise the story wouldn't work?"

[stolisomancer]

"Hey, this chick has a pulse and she's breathing. Power down the bone saw."

[skalja]

What I said two comments ago: She's good at her job, and I can't imagine she wouldn't have accounted for medical professionals checking the body. So whatever she dosed Bullseye with, it's REALLY convincing.

I think I'll just go with hymn's theory that she was playing head games, actually.

[stolisomancer]

Well, if you'd prefer to get more technical, if Bullseye isn't actually dead, someone along the line is going to notice that all her blood isn't pooling in the parts of her body that are closest to the floor.

[skalja]

See, that works within the pre-established constraints of the universe, and I think it's perfectly reasonable that even an extremely good spy like Natasha would not necessarily think about something like lividity, because she's not a pathologist. I'll go with that, thanks.

[stolisomancer]

If you get a No-Prize off of that and don't send it to me, we will have Words. Yes.

[skalja]

No worries, it's all yours.

[terra]

It's a pretty good theory, given she seems to have called the police. And she was bluffing in the scene before about the poison, which isn't scanned. And one of the recurring themes of the book is that appearances do not equal reality, especially where Natasha is concerned. And Lady Bullseye is obviously not dead— when a slow death by suffocation is exactly what Nat was threatening her with.

[skalja]

Fair enough! But you can see why, going only by these scans, I went, "Wait, WHAT. O_O," right?

Possibly I watch too many police procedurals, it's true XD.

[terra]

Sure! And I do think it's deliberately left ambiguous— appropriate in a spy story.

[colonel_green]

The coroner was overworked and wanted to get out of the office early that day.

I just mean, that's a sort of procedural nitpick; that's not what the story suggests is the procedure in the comic itself. It's the sort of thing you just take on the story's terms.

[skalja]

Again, this is a rather young woman who apparently keeled over on a train -- that is, a public, high traffic space -- for no visible reason. In the real world I'd think that it'd be an extremely high priority to rule out a contagious fatal illness. In the Marvel universe there are probably a dozen additional concerns that don't exist in reality. I really can't think of a reason for coroners in the Marvel universe to be LESS careful about this rather than more (except maybe that every NPC in Marvel is an idiot, granted, but still).

Yes, it is a small detail left out/glossed over, but it's a small detail with rather disastrous implications for Natasha's character, because leaving someone to be tortured/murdered by an autopsy is a really sick way to kill someone. As such, it completely shattered my suspension of belief (i.e. taking stuff on the story's terms) while reading, even though stolisomancer provided a solution. Maybe it didn't bother you, but that doesn't mean my reaction is illegitimate.

[jaybee3]

I really like this, I had hoped Marjorie Liu would keep writing. She really gets the character and her relationship (with Bucky, Wolverine, etc.) in the MU really well. Acuna's art seems to fit the title as well.

[stolisomancer]

She has a pretty nifty website at marjoriemliu.com that tracks what she's working on.

[chipsnopotatoes]

I really this too. I've been following this series except I missed issue 3. Am still trying to track that down. Could someone kindly post scans?

i see ms. liu is off starting with issue 6 so i dont know if i'll continue. any case, i hope DC picks her up to write Catwoman. I think she'd write a better Selina than the one we're seeing in Sirens.

[terra]

I can post some scans of issue 3! And the new writer is very excited about the character, so I'm at least giving him the intro arc to sell me.

[espanolbot]

Nice hat, Nat.

Bring to mind this,

[colonel_green]

I had originally planned to make a Carmen reference when doing this post, but forgot about it.

[stolisomancer]

One of the things I've really liked about this storyline is that, when informed that Natasha has been keeping dossiers on pretty much every cape she knows, Tony, Bucky, and Logan's reaction is something like, "...yeah, that sounds like something she'd do," and nothing more is said on the subject.

[moneyless_jew]

This is excellent work both visually and in the script and I'm not familiar with Marjorie Liu. I'll have to look into her.

I've always adored Daniel Acuna. The art's just too gorgeous. Stylized, yes, but gorgeous.

[blackruzsa]

Liu writes for Dark Wolverine and romance novels :D Good stuff.

[schala_kid]

I really like how Bucky is concerned for her enough to go and look for her but at the same time he's all "I know you don't need me but I want to be there for you if you let me" he respects her and knows she can kick ass on her own.

I guess this is what I like Bucky/Natasha so much, the understand and respect each other.

[blackruzsa]

Bucky/James is gorgeous here.

[greenmask]

That is one fantastic hat.

I've been enjoying all the Black Widow & Bucky stuff I've seen on here, I think I shall make a note about looking into trades.

[comicoz]

That's the biggest train bathroom in history!

Love the "ooooh" looks on the people's faces.

[valtyr]

I love badass Natasha and Bucky/Natasha. And Natasha's hat, I love that too!