The appearance of Scarlet Johansson as Marvel Comics' Black Widow in the upcoming Iron Man 2 movie is reason enough for Marvel to put as much Black Widow merchandise on the shelves as it can.

In the past, similar tactics have sometimes paid off poorly for the big comic-book companies. In the case of Deadly Origin, they came up with a winner.

Former Soviet spy Natalia Romanova, also known as Natasha Romanoff, has a varied and poorly defined past in the Marvel canon. Some contradictions -- such as her nonexistent career as a Russian ballerina -- have been explained away as false memories implanted through brainwashing by her Soviet masters, but that still doesn't explain her still-youthful appearance so many years after the Cold War ended. Deadly Origin puts the pieces together with a complex web of plot twists that fleshes out her rough beginnings and sets the Black Widow solidly in play for 21st-century adventures.

The story at its surface is about a plot, the Icepick Protocol, that uses implanted nanites to destroy everyone Natasha has ever loved. (And over the years, she's loved quite a few -- including fellow Marvel heroes Captain America, Daredevil, Hawkeye and Iron Man.) She scrambles to prevent their deaths and find out who murdered Ivan, the man who raised her, trained her and was in many ways her surrogate father. The story in the present, however, is punctuated by a great many flashbacks to various points in Natasha's history, and it's there we begin to learn who she really is.

The story by Paul Cornell is presented by two artists with very different styles. Tom Raney pencils the current storyline with tight, highly detailed pages, while John Paul Leon handles the past with a rougher, looser appearance. The distinction serves the story well, clearly dividing past and present.

I don't know yet how well the Black Widow will come off in the new movie, nor do I know how successful her new, ongoing comic-book series will be. But Deadly Origin gives this underused character a solid foundation from which to build. Let's hope the creative teams at Marvel are up to the task.