Graphic Novel: Collected Run; Black Widow, Nathan Edmondson, Phil Noto, et al.

Black Widow: The Finely Woven Thread (Vol 1) 
Collecting Black Widow #1-6, and selections from All-New Marvel Now! Point One #1
Writing, Nathan Edmondson
Artist and Covers, Phil Noto
Letterer, VC's Clayton Cowles
ISBN: 9780785188193

Black Widow: The Tightly Tangled Web (Vol 2)
Collecting Black Widow #7-12, and Punisher #9
Writing, Nathan Edmondson
Artist and Covers, Phil Noto
Letterer, VC's Clayton Cowles
Punisher Artist and Covers, Mitch Gerads
Punisher Letterer, VC's Cory Petit
ISBN: 9780785188209

Black Widow: Last Days (Vol 3) 
Collecting Black Widow #13-20
Writing, Nathan Edmondson
Artist and Covers, Phil Noto
Letterer, VC's Clayton Cowles
ISBN: 9780785192534

This is a hard one to review because I REAALLLLY WANTED TO LIKE IT SO MUCH!!! Black Widow deserves some good stories, and truly can be an engaging character, and OH MY GOD Phil Noto's artwork is freaking gorgeous with everyone's pale glassy eyes and slightly washed-out palette with sharp slices of black holding everything together. But the story just didn't hold up. I mean - it wasn't BAD, but it was just... eh?

Inspired by the riotous success of Fraction's "off-duty" Hawkeye run, Marvel tried to re-spark the lightning with Edmondson and Noto.  And they knocked it out of the park with the artwork, but Edmondson is not quite Fraction, and the story and dialogue and character development just weren't there. Again, nothing objectionable, but it's very slim pickings. Nat is working for SHIELD now, and whenever she's not spying and assassinating (and also doing commando work, or running gun battles, or taking down helicopters... ?) for SHIELD, she's doing it on her own under false names, making money as a merc taking down "bad guys" (by a very tenuous definition of bad guy) for guilt money to send to the families and friends of the people she killed during her Red Room years.  Why she doesn't feel the same about the people she ganks for SHIELD, or for herself while doing these "penance money" missions is frankly beyond me, because we never get to see enough of her character to wonder about it. Edmondson takes the "I'm alone and lonely and I WALK ALONE" vibe a bit too seriously, even to the point of including a feral cat slowly being adopted as a through-plot.  A bit tooooo on the nose for me.

The over-arching plotline is supposed to be about this dread organization Chaos, but it's incoherent and muddled and the capstone issue that's supposed to clear everything up didn't do anything of the sort.  A final set of codas - a flashback to an early hit in Cuba under the auspices of the Red Room, interspersed with scenes from a fill-in-the-blanks SHIELD  (?) rescue op, does even less to satisfy - if we'd seen more flashes of that sort of cold-blooded past throughout, perhaps things might have acquired some depth?

Ah well.  The art is bloody freaking gorgeous, and the story isn't painful so much as paint-by-numbers, so if you like Nat and like looking at beautiful scenes and people, definitely check it out.

Movie Novelizations: MCU Phase One, The Avengers, Alex Irvine

I found this in the bookstore and couldn't resist the lovely cover!

Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase One, The Avengers
Alex Irvine
ISBN: 9780316256377
MG novelization of the 2012 movie, The Avengers.

To state the obvious first, this is an actual novelization of the film, and therefore has all of the scenes and events of the film in order, all the way to completion.  This is not a "teaser" or a "movie storybook" with character bios or plot hints.

I was interested to see what sort of changes and omissions would be necessary to make The Avengers (overseas title: Avengers Assemble) into a MG-level book as far as content, and I have to say that I was impressed with the deft handling of the storyline, characters, and content.

I may possibly be a giant MCU fangirl, and so there were a couple of places where I have quibbles about the dialogue - please note that these aren't the places where certain not-so-PG comments are elided or rephrased, but other sections of dialogue that I felt were unclear or badly formatted.  Dialogue is seriously difficult, and transcribing actual human speech, even in an environment as structured as a script, is even more difficult.  It is impressive that Irvine got as much of Whedon's patter down in a manner I felt was satisfying, so the few bits I read as flubs sadly stood out quite a lot to me.

As far as the PG alterations, here's what I noticed:
1) Black Widow's introductory scene is handled beautifully by simply refusing to comment on her clothing.

2) In the scene with Barton, Loki, and Selvig, Loki's query as to what Barton needs garners a different response: "I need a distraction" he says, "and a biometric ID" instead of the slightly more disturbing comment in the film.

3) In related plot-developments, Loki doesn't gouge out any body parts in Stuttgart.

4) The Loki/Black Widow interrogation scene omits a certain nasty British imprecation.

5) Banner's despairing speech about Hulk's utter invincibility is left as an implication of suicide, with the actual description of his attempt left entirely out.

Now, oddly enough, despite all that, Cap still gets to call aliens "bastards" in the final battle, and I'm not sure if they just missed that one, or decided it was their single use and better make it a good one.  It isn't like I mind language (although that it's CAP's language is especially amusing, given Ultron's running joke) but when it's the only instance in the whole book, it does become rather more noticeable and a bit jarring.

This one was super cute, and now I'm planning to hunt up the other ones.