1586 ( )

I realllllllly want to rate this higher, but the ending pissed me off so much I'm docking a whole star. MOST of this story features a smart, savvy, empowered Natasha. Then she gets lobotomized with freaking ridiculous comic!book!science. If you're going to wipe someone's memories of one particular person? Don't explain it with SCIENCE. The neurochemistry of memory encoding does NOT work like that! At all!! God. Brubaker knows better than that & he can generally be relied on to provide plausible plot devices. I mean, if this had been MAGIC...or if they'd just left out the description of HOW SHIELD medical was gluing her memories back together. But no. Over-explaining ruined it.

They're doing another Natasha book soon, and I really hope they will let her be her kickass self without reducing her to the Avengers bike, omg. She could kill them all with her pinky & she has a rich and fascinating backstory with ALL THE VILLAINS YOU COULD ASK FOR. You'd think they could write her a decent action plot, right?

Maybe she & Logan can take a road trip and reminisce about the '40s. They could wreak some awesome havoc before some scary new villain showed up to make them get back to work. It'd do them both some good.

Oh, and, the ridic "New Levels Of PAIN!" catchphrase for Bucky's next arc? Christ. Bucky's been an angst-muffin since he woke up! It's what he does. Seeing him in new levels of pain doesn't really sell me on whatever's next, and the implication that he and Nat were so codependent that this will be worse than EVERY OTHER HORROR HE'S SURVIVED IN A REALLY HORRIFIC LIFE? Um. Right.

Apart from the story, the art in the last issue seemed kind of lazy. Rain is a trick for hiding under-drawn panels as much as it's a visual metaphor for angst and heartbreak. Worse, visually not a whole lot HAPPENS in this book. It's all brooding and rain with very little action or interaction. Disappointing. ( )