I've been hearing  Marjorie Liu's name around a bit, and I've always liked the concept super-spy/super-hero Black Widow, so I thought I'd give this new series a try.

The first half of the book does a decent job of setting up Natasha as a formidable woman with connections to the world of espionage. I like the tone that's struck here -- a slightly darker, gritter world that still exists within the Marvel universe. Fans of Brubaker's Captain America should be able to appreciate this book on that alone.

About halfway through the issue, Liu made some interesting choices, and I'm still not sure if they're bold choices or mistakes. I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt. There are some intriguing ideas here, but they didn't all play off as well as they could have.

Here's where we get into spoilers. Someone drugs Natasha and slices into her. She's found and brought to a hospital, where they perform surgery on her to see what this mystery villain has done to her. And that's the trick of it, see? If I'm reading this right, the villain didn't do anything to her, but s/he wanted the doctors to think s/he did so that they'd cut open Natasha looking for her over, unaware that Natasha was drugged in such a way that she was conscious and could feel everything the surgeons were doing.

Now, that's a fantastic idea, a real test of character (Natasha aware that her intestines are exposed and if she moves an inch she could be killed), but the problem is: I didn't realize the point of that scene until well after I had read it. The storytelling was a bit unclear, and I missed a key element. Still, it's a GREAT idea, if slightly flawed in execution.

And from this point on, our heroine is hospitalized and it's up to her old pal Wolverine to go track this person down. So... is it a bold choice or mistake to hospitalize your main character halfway through and turn the book over to the woefully under-exposed Wolverine? Hmmm, well I'm still going to give the benefit of the doubt here. Wolverine does his thing, but it ends up in a place that's more intriguing than not, as Logan finds the assailant, and then... walks away.

I like the tone, I'm intrigued by the mystery, and I think Liu's got some good ideas. The execution's a little off, but I'm willing to stick around for an arc and see how it all shakes out.