Single Issue Standout

Warren Ellis took over Secret Avengers for a handful of issues recently and delivered an excellent,high concept,high action series of stand alone stories.#20,his penultimate issue on the title features Black Widow prominently,and shines a light on a very cool character who gets lost in the shuffle too often in this and other books she appears in.

The issue starts with the Avengers in the midst of a firefight with members of the Shadow Council when suddenly Steve Rogers is shot down and killed as are the rest of the team,except for Widow,who uses a device in War Machine's armor to transport her to safety.The machine flings her back in time to before the assault,and thats where the issue really starts to kick ass.

Widow spends the rest of the issue trying to set up every event that will lead her back to the present,and also try to figure out how to avoid her friend's demise and save the day.She can't just go forward in time and help herself,because that would collapse the space time continuum,y'know the usual time travel headache.

We follow Widow as she sets out to have the time machine that she will eventually use in the future be invented,reverse engineer the weapons that the Avengers were defenseless against and generally move back and forth in time setting up the correct sequence of events.The storytelling is brilliant and the outcome is more enjoyable because you see every piece fall into place.Alex Maleev's art is gritty and at one point he uses the style of old newspaper comic strips to tell a chunk of story,and it's welcome,not distracting.Right down to the John Cassaday cover tributing Jim Steranko's famous S.H.I.E.L.D. covers this issue is well worth the time even if you don't read the series.