Author: Sharofat

The comic book that I chose is called “Black Widow: The Ties That Bind” by Kelly Thompson. This one was incredibly sad, but really enjoyable.

The story is about the Russian spy Natasha Romanoff, aka Black Widow who has been missing for three months. When her friends Hawkeye and Winter Soldier spot her in the background of a news report from San Francisco, they become suspicious because if Nat is undercover, there is no way she would be so chilled out to be caught on camera. So they hunt her down and find Nat living a happy life with her fiance James and baby boy Stevie. However, the thing is that Nat doesn’t remember anything about her past and who she is. That is because all of her enemies have plotted ways to get her out of their way, they kidnap Natasha and put an implant in her head that brainwashed her into thinking she’s an ordinary person living a lovely life. Despite her perfect life with her fiance, a son, a perfect house and a job, Nat feels like something is wrong, like some huge part of her is missing. One night when Nat comes back home she gets attacked, surprised by her own fighting skills she tries to save James and Stevie. At that moment the implant went off but instead of killing her it brought Natasha’s memories back, and that’s when the villains realized they’re dead meat.  (I also would love to tell where that baby came from and how the story ends but I really don’t want to spoil it lol)

I think  this graphic novel is pretty clear and easy to read as the speech bubbles and overlapping panels guide the reader’s eyes. In terms of the layout, the artist uses tons of different panel shapes and sizes as well as different points of view to convey the story and show the character’s emotions. Depending on the kind of shot the art style changes between being super detailed to very simplified. My favorite part of this comic is the action scenes, the artist uses full-bleed pages for the setting to portray characters in complex fight poses all over the setting to show the sequence of the fight. I also like how the small details are highlighted/zoomed in boxes within the panel, so the reader doesn’t miss out on those little moments. 

So far this was the most interesting Marvel comic that I’ve read and definitely would read the other volumes! I do recommend reading this, it has great action sequences and many unexpected turns in the story, and just because Black Widow is a badass assassin and a spy!