Black Widow & The Marvel Girls # 1

 By Mark Rodriguez

While checking out several comics over at Bent Wookie, I found the first three issues of this four-part story. I held off until I could get the final issue so I can have the full story. Now that I found the fourth issue in a comic shop named Stories, let's check out what this story is about. 

We start at the Ballant Compound in Rubtsovsk Russia as some military men hide in a room. Their trackers and other devices aren't working and the alarms have been disabled. Just then they see a man with a mask and they open fire, killing him. They realize he was one of theirs with black tape wrapped around his face. They see that he was used a decoy and the Black Widow leaps in and takes them all out. Widow reports to Ivan via earpiece that she might reach Gregor before he's aware of the attack. Ivan says it's doubtful because he knows they're aware of his rogue weapons dealings and he'll hide in his Red Room at the slightest warning. 

Black Widow reacts to the phrase 'Red Room' and Ivan apologizes. She notices the ghostly form of a girl in a red dress, a younger version of herself, reaching out to her. She suddenly has a flashback of herself fighting off soldiers alongside the Enchantress from Asgard.

Ivan snaps Widow out of it and she says she was seeing ghosts, then backtracks that as a joke. Ivan tells her if Gregor Ballant makes it to his Red Room, the mission will be aborted. Widow leaves a vent door opened on purpose, so when the soldiers see it, they all shoot towards the vent. Widow shoot the men from behind a door as they were too busy focusing on the vent.

Black Widow opens the door to make sure all the men are dead but one of them comes around the corner and shoots at her. Widow runs down the hall and sets up a trip wire. The man trips over it and Widow shoots him. As the dying man shoots his gun wildly, one of the bullets hits the alarm and it goes off. 

Widow runs down the hall and takes out more men, just in time to see Gregor lock himself into his Red Room, which is a large safe. Widow reports that the alarm was triggered and Gregor hid away in his saferoom. Ivan says the mission is over, but Widow says she worked six months for now and will see this through. Ivan says they only called her on this a month ago. Widow says she doesn't wait for assignments to start planning. Life has taught her the foolishness of patience.

We flashback 10 years prior at the Red Room Training Grounds in Siberia. We see a group of girls in red dresses, all armed with staves and Natasha is called up. Her opponent, a full grown military man, takes her out with a single staff strike and calls her miserable. Later on, it's her turn to crawl under electrically charged barb wire. She accidentally touches the wire and gets zapped, making her fail the test and be called miserable again. 

Later on, the Red Room officials discuss Natasha and how she is down to Rank E. She is considered disposable and will be used as training equipment for Rank A, as a test to prove they can be ruthless. Enchantress floats by as a ghost and whispers that Natasha will end being their test. 

Enchantress enters Natasha's room and stops her in her tracks before she can run away. She tells her that she is not a ghost or demon, and arrived to rescue her. Enchantress says she also doesn't particularly care what happens to her her and asks if she realizes she will die in the Red Room. Natasha is aware but says she has no choice. Enchantress says that she's pretty and pretty girls always have a choice. However, being pretty won't save her life this time so she will teach her the skills she needs to escape a heavily fortified training facility. She leaves the choice to her, and Natasha chooses to live.

Enchantress sets her hand on Natasha's forehead and says she will temporarily give her the skills she has the potential to learn. Natasha isn't sure how she feels and Enchantress says she feels better. Enchantress uses her powers to make the steel door fly off its hinges on its own and Natasha runs out.

One of the soldiers sees her but Natasha takes him down and then uses his gun to shoot the other soldiers down. Natasha dives into another room to avoid the returning gunfire and Enchantress creates a force field to protect her. As they fight their way outside, Natasha asks Enchantress why she's doing this, and the goddess tells her she's immortal and is bored the way only an immortal can be. She saw a chance to cause a few explosions as she blows up a military van. Enchantress blows up a military jeep and tells Natasha that if she can make it past the fence, she will teleport her to freedom. Natasha goes for it.

Back to the present, Widow remembers 'she just needs to get past that fence' from her childhood and snaps out of it as Ivan asks why she is still there. Widow tells him that Gregor's Red Room seals him away from the outside world except for audio and visual feeds wired from three different cameras in the room she's in. Ivan asks how she knew that. Widow says it's because Gregor's top security chief Constantine Barlow is a man and she's a woman. Ivan is confused because his intel shows that Barlow hasn't shown up for his shift yet.

Gregor asks if the Black Widow is still outside when she suddenly taps into his feed and speaks to him directly. Gregor panics but his subordinate reminds him that she can't get in. Widow says he can come out, and he will need to or else the men she has surrounding his family's home will do what they must. Gregor doesn't care and tells her to go ahead. Widow says 'can't blame a girl for trying' but she does have explosives ready to get him out of there. 

Gregor says she doesn't have enough explosives to so much as scratch the surface of his Red Room and tells her the alarms would send all the guards over to her. Widow says she has set up distractions when she is suddenly attacked. The men struggle to keep her own until one of them shoots her 'Widow's Bite' wrist mounted guns. As she makes her way towards the exit, she gets gunned down by Constantine Barlow, one of his men. Barlow looks into the camera and tells his boss that the Black Widow is dead and it's safe to come out.

Gregor is pleased to see this as he starts to open up the vault door. His subordinate tells him that Barlow should have been here much sooner according to his shift. Once the door is open, Widow shoots the military man down and Gregor is confused since he just saw her die. Widow says was filmed a few days ago on a fabricated sound stage with the help of Barlow. Gregor asks about Barlow and she says he is well beyond his hearing now. 

Gregor pulls a gun but Widow kicks it away. Gregor is confused as to how this all happened since it felt like she was directly talking to him over the video feed. Widow said she had recorded several responses and played the best ones that would go along with what he was saying. She says they still have business to conduct and she shoots him dead.

Ivan tells Widow that many guards on their way and she should abort the mission. Widow tells him that the mission has been completed and Gregor is dead. Ivan asks how she managed to get inside the Red Room and Widow says her methods are her own. Her contract has been fulfilled and it makes little difference how she made it inside.

Back to the Red Room flashback, young Natasha is about to make it to the fence when Enchantress suddenly blasts her. Enchantress fades away, telling her to never trust beauty since it lies. Natasha falls and is captured. The men ask if they should dispose of her. The man in charge says he hasn't seen such promise from a student in a long time and tells them to bring her back inside.

My Thoughts-

So this was an odd story, particularly the retcon (I believe) that the Enchantress had a hand in Natasha becoming the Black Widow we know today. She was low in the ranks and quickly on her way to getting killed, but thanks to literal divine intervention, she will survive and become one of their best. Given this is Enchantress we're talking about, it's hard to tell if she meant for things to play out the way they did, or if she was just messing with Natasha for the hell of it.... or both. It's also odd that the story ended in a way that this could have been a one-shot story. I was expecting the cliffhanger to be something like Enchantress coming back in modern day saying something like 'you owe me favor'. Or rather, I was expecting any kind of cliffhanger to lead us into the next issue.

The mention of Gregor's Red Room was a valid reason for her to have flashbacks of her time in the Red Room, but the Enchantress being involved is so random. I mean, will her help an amateur Spider-Man perfect his wed-slinging next?

The main story is pretty much a standard mission for Black Widow, especially since she's dealing with regular soldiers. Black Widow was a bad-ass as you'd expect. Gregor was a scumbag not above sacrificing his own family as long as he's safe. We never see Ivan but he's kinda there to be surprised at how skilled Natasha is at every turn.

The way she tricked Gregor with a fake feed was clever, but I'm not sure how she was able to patch in all her multiple responses seamlessly without it looking like a series of jump-cuts that would change every time Gregor says something. Then they played out an entire fight scene in the chance that an alarm was triggered when she got that far. I'm assuming she filmed an entirely different scenario if the alarms were not triggered. Just how seductive was Natasha to Barlow to talk him into doing all of this? Especially pretending to shoot someone he's paid rather well to shoot for real? 

It was an entertaining read and it had nice art and action scenes. I'm not fond of Enchantress having a hand in Black Widow's training, and I'm surprised the story felt like a stand-alone and not part one of a four part series. We'll see if the other three issues have anything that takes us back to this one.