The Monkey King's Used Primate Emporium and Book Reviews

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Devin Grayson and Greg Rucka, �Marvel Knights: Black Widow�

Started February 24 � Finished February 24, 2004; 144 pages. Posted 24 March 2004

Hmmm. It�s been a long time since I�ve been able to read anything Daredevil related. Thing is, this isn�t really Daredevil related either, instead it�s just an off-shoot of a character who isn�t very popular with the masses, and has the honor of being the only Daredevil girlfriend who didn�t die.

This will be very hard to explain amongst the non-geek amongst you, though if you�re reading this, you�re pretty goddamn geeky, so I shouldn�t worry.

Anyhoo, when Marvel got a new Editor in Chief, they revamped a lot of the lesser characters that everybody didn�t know about. Daredevil was included on this list, along with Black Widow. I don�t remember who else was involved. Anyway, in addition to having new titles (which meant Daredevil went from being at issue 376 to issue 1, making it harder to put my books away for safe keeping), they also had collaborations with all these lesser heroes hooking up for a small run. I say small, because it was crap and people stopped buying it.

But the smartest thing they did was to stop having issues brought up and resolved in one issue. From what I can tell, Marvel has revamped all their titles to have a story arc, not unlike a soap opera, so you want to pick up the next issue just so you can see what happens next. You can practically hear the organ music sound off when you reach the last panel.

But the other smart move in having these story arcs is that they can release them later in graphic novel format. These collections are fairly cheap, so it works on two levels � if you�re a rabid fanboy, like me, you pick up the issues AND the graphic novel collection. But single issues are expensive, and some of us, like myself, don�t buy everything when it first comes out. The relative cheapness of these collections makes them feasible to pick up. More so if you�re getting them at 75% off the cover price.

So I picked this up for that reason. I didn�t know the authors. I hadn�t read anything related to this character in a long time (though I do have the Black Widow statue on my Daredevil Shrine above my computer � yes, I know, I�m a dork. But I�m a dork with a girlfriend, so that�s gotta count for something). And surprise, it was actually all right. My view was always that Black Widow was provided as eye candy and not much else, even though she wears more clothes than the average female in the comic world.

I�m still not going to pick up the individual issues, and to be honest, I�m not sure this title still exists. But I would pick it up if it came into the store in graphic novel form.

But I probably would have done that anyway, as it�s daredevil related.


Rating: Worth working in a used bookstore and getting for cheap.

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