Review: Black Widow by Mark Waid and Chris Samnee

This book starts off with quite the bang, as Natasha Romanoff, AKA the Black Widow, finds herself hunted by the full force of S.H.I.E.L.D. The entire first chapter is a nearly wordless chase sequence full of visual grace notes and surprising twists and turns. It’s probably one of the best first chapters/issues/sequences I’ve read in a long time, perhaps one of the best of all time: A perfect example of the old “show don’t tell” adage, and leaves the reader wanting to know what the hell is going on.

Unfortunately, I don’t think that this series as a whole ever delivers on that promise. Don’t get me wrong, there is a whole lot to love here: Chris Samnee (who not only draws the hell out of this series but also shares story credit with Mark Waid here for the first time) has crafted a master class in how to depict action on the page and allow the visual language of comics create a propulsive narrative. Being grounded far more in in the spy/action/thriller genre than super heroic adventures, “Black Widow” is full of beautifully realized settings, and the characters moving through that world feel incredibly physical and real, even when they are doing insane and impossible things.

But on the narrative side of things, I felt like this series was a bit of a let down. The comic seems invested in building out Natasha Romanoff’s history and universe, with a batch of secret files detailing the Black Widow’s worst misdeeds, a veteran S.H.I.E.L.D. agent with an axe to grind, a manipulative new villain called the Weeping Lion, and most noticeably a new nemesis for our hero: A mirror-image fellow graduate of the Red Room named Recluse (get it?), who is leading a new set of young assassins. All this is intriguing, but in point of fact little pays off… Without getting into spoiler territory I think it is safe to say that almost as soon as new characters and ideas are introduced they end up being variously sidelined, revealed to be rather unimportant, or killed off rather prematurely (suffice it to say this book has a rather high body count). The book seems to want to create a big, epic tale that will cement Black Widow as a central figure in the Marvel Universe, but ultimately nothing really sticks. The back half of the book in particular feels rushed as Waid and Samnee tie up loose ends left and right in anticipation of the final issue. This series ended after just 12 issues, and one wonders what these creators could have done if they had had more time to stretch these beats out and experiment; this series was the follow up to his fantastic “Daredevil” run that feels like a sort of recent high water mark for fun superhero fare, and which really benefitted by slowly and surely ratcheting up the tension in Matt Murdock’s life over the course of many issues. Here Waid and Samnee try to do a lot of the same stuff as they did in “Daredevil” (the introduction of Recluse in particular seems very much like a retread of the introduction of Akari in their “Daredevil” run, an attempt to create a “dark mirror” version of an established hero who hasn’t historically had one), but the truncated run strips a lot of the pleasure and power out of it.

Two more quick, positive notes worth mentioning: I really appreciate that the reader definitely doesn’t have the be familiar with every element of the Marvel universe to dive into this story, other than a couple guest appearances there’s very little convoluted lore to get into. Second, I found this book to be very refreshingly feminist: There’s no gratuitous T&A to be found, no blatant misogyny-for-misogyny’s-sake, Natasha and the other female characters are not only strong but also allowed to have a wide range of very human foibles and emotions, and the book certainly passes the Bechdel Test as well.

I read these comics as they were coming out monthly, and I found myself referencing my dog-earred copies so often to look at Samnee’s masterful pacing and action that I decided to pick up this “complete collection.” This is seriously one of the best drawn books out there, and even with the occasional bumps in the narrative, this is well worth a read for any cartoonist or comics lover who wants to do a deep dive in visual storytelling… Or even just the casual fan who wants to have fun reading a gorgeously-drawn, one-and-done spy thriller that’s equal parts brutal and beautiful.