Morgan quickly makes up for any deficiencies in the last issue. It’s almost like he realized it, because this issue establishes Black Widow as being about gender issues. It turns out the bad guys are this freaky pharmaceutical company (probably using mutant gene in their face cream) and Natasha finding out about it.

Along the way, there’s more with her sidekick and their youthful charge (they rescued a teenage girl from some rednecks first issue). Unfortunately, there’s the implication the sidekick might be a problem later on. But for now, it’s an awesome dynamic. It brings humor to the comic, something it desperately needs.

It also needs Nick Fury to beat up the slimy NSA agent. Morgan’s pretty quiet on the political angles, but it’d be shocking to see Disney’s comic company release a series today about how corrupt the U.S. government has become.

Some especially lovely Sienkiewicz panels too.

With Parlov taking over the layouts, all of a sudden it reminds me of Ennis.

Well, not really. Morgan does a fine job with Natasha—his brief first person narration works, instead of the usual, lengthy nonsense male writers do when writing first person narration for female characters—but the only other female character in the issue is so bad Jeph Loeb could’ve written her.

Some evil spy lady is—shocker, a lesbian—and violently lusting after a waitress. It’s like Ennis done bad.

Otherwise, the issue is good. It’s not as strong as the first issue because there’s not as much going on. None of the action scenes are memorable. Morgan sort of front-loaded it, especially for a six issue series. His second issue is a bridging issue, which is odd.

I’m confident he’ll get back on track, since he doesn’t leave it here… he just slows down.