By Ralph Macchio, Gerry Conway, D.G. Chichester, Jim Starlin, Cefn Ridout, Mindy Newell, Scott Lobdell, Paul Gulacy, George Pérez, George Freeman, Larry Stroman, Joe Chiodo, Charlie Adlard, Bob Layton, Butch Guice, John Stanisci, Sergio Cariello, Randy Green & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-2126-2 (TPB) Digital edition
This book includes Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.
Natasha Romanoff (sometimes Natalia Romanova) was a Soviet Russian spy who came in from the cold and stuck around to become one of Marvel’s earliest female stars, reusing a nomme de guerre first coined for a golden age supernatural Timely Comics star. Today’s Black Widow started out as a svelte, sultry honey-trap during Marvel’s early “Commie-busting” days, targeting Tony Stark and battling Iron Man in her debut (Tales of Suspense #52, April 1964). She was subsequently redesigned as a torrid tights-&-tech supervillain before defecting to the USA, falling for an assortment of Yankee superheroes, including Hawkeye and Daredevil, before finally enlisting as an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. In the meantime she established herself as a freelance do-gooder and joining (and ultimately leading) The Champions and The Avengers.
Throughout her career, she has always been considered ultra-efficient, coldly competent, deadly dangerous and yet somehow cursed to bring doom and disaster to her paramours. As her backstory evolved, it was disclosed that Natasha had undergone experimental processes which enhanced her physical capabilities and lengthened her lifespan, as well as assorted psychological procedures which had messed up her mind and memories…
Traditionally a minor fan favourite, the Widow only really hit the big time after Marvel’s cinematic franchise was established, but for us unregenerate comics-addicts, her print escapades have always offered a cool, sinister frisson of delight. This expansive, explosive and wide-ranging compilation gathers contents of Bizarre Adventures #25; Marvel Fanfare #10-13; Solo Avengers #7; Black Widow: The Coldest War; Punisher/Black Widow: Spinning Doomsday’s Web; Daredevil/Black Widow: Abattoir; Marvel Comics Presents #135; Daredevil Annual #10; Fury/Black Widow: Death Duty & Journey into Mystery #517-519, cumulatively covering cover-dates March 1981 to April 1998.
Preceded by prose recaps ‘The Black Widow and Daredevil’ and ‘We are The Champions’, the clandestine actions open with an iconic appearance from 1981, first seen in monochrome mature-reader magazine Bizarre Adventures #25 which featured short tales starring female heroes. Here Ralph Macchio scripts a far more devious traditional espionage-steeped yarn of double and triple-cross with agents betraying each other while trying to ascertain who might be working for “the other side”. ‘I Got the Yo-Yo… You Got the String’ sees the Widow despatched by S.H.I.E.L.D. to assassinate her former tutor Irma Klausvichnova in an African political hot spot. However, as the mission proceeds, Natasha learns that she can’t trust anybody and everything she knows is either a lie or a test with fatal consequences…
The chilling, twist-ridden tale is elevated to excellence by the powerful tonal art of Paul Gulacy who fills the piece with sly tributes to numerous movie spies and the actors – such as Michael Caine and Humphry Bogart – who first made the genre so compelling.
Next up is a saga seen in Marvel Fanfare #10-13 (August 1983, March 1984), wherein Macchio & George Pérez – with inkers Brett Breeding, Jack Abel, Joe Sinnott, Al Milgrom & John Beatty – depict the spy in extreme peril as ‘Widow’ finds her recalled by S.H.I.E.L.D. to extract an abducted asset – her beloved mentor Ivan Petrovich. As she tracks and trashes assorted killers and crazies, we get an inworld review of her complex origins before arriving ‘Back in the U.S.S.R.’ to infiltrate a top-secret science project and face the assembled killer elite of a mystery mastermind with a grudge…
‘The Web Tightens!’ as the assassins close in, until a last-minute rescue by S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Jimmy Woo and a frenzied clash with deranged killer Snapdragon leads to revelation and full disclosure as ‘The Widow… Alone!’ faces a foe long believed dead and spectacularly triumphs…
A short from Solo Avengers #7 (June 1988, by Bob Layton & Jackson “Butch” Guice) sees the Widow brave unimaginable peril to return to her old dancing teacher ‘The Token’ she no longer feels worthy of before intriguing superhero spy Original Graphic Novel The Coldest War unfolds. Set in the last days of the US/Soviet face-off – with what looks to be an epilogue added to address the collapse of the Soviet State – the tale was clearly meant as a contemporary thriller (probably for fortnightly anthology Marvel Comics Presents) before events overtook the time-consuming process of printing a comic. The afterword – set after the fall of the Berlin Wall – doesn’t jar too much and lent an air of imminent urgency to the mix at the time it was finally released.
Gerry Conway provides a typically complex, double-dealing tale set in the dog-days of Mikhail Gorbachev’s government, during his radical policy of Perestroika (“openness”). It begins as an ambitious KGB upstarts undertake a plan to subvert Natasha and return her to Soviet control. Their leverage and bait is husband Alexei Shostokoff – whom she has believed dead for decades. Naturally, nothing is as it seems, nobody can be trusted and only the last spy standing can be called the winner…
Low key and high-tech go hand in hand in this sort of tale, and although there’s much reference to earlier Marvel classics, it can be easily enjoyed by the casual reader or movie convert. And what art! George Freeman is a supreme stylist, whose drawing work – although infrequent – is always top rate. Starting out on Captain Canuck, he has excelled on Jack of Hearts, Green Lantern, Avengers, Batman Annual #11 (with Alan Moore), Wasteland, Elric, Nexus and The X-Files (for which he won an Eisner Award). Here, inked by Ernie Colon, Mark Farmer, Mike Harris, Val Mayerik & Joe Rubinstein, with colours from Lovern Kindzierski, he renders a subtle and sophisticated blend of costumed chic and espionage glamour to make this tale a “must-have” item all by itself.
It’s followed by 1992’s OGN Punisher/Black Widow: Spinning Doomsday’s Web by D.G. Chichester, Larry Stroman & Mark Farmer. Action-packed but plot-lite, it sees Frank Castle clash with the super-agent as she tracks rogue killer Peter Malum: an atomic scientist with a taste for slaughter and an insatiable hunger to test the deadliest weapon he’s ever built…
Presumably her spicy spy cachet wasn’t deemed enough to win a regular series but warranted plenty of guest shots. In 1993, Jim Starlin & Joe Chiodo reunited her with an old lover for OGN Daredevil/Black Widow: Abattoir wherein a duo of depraved psionic predators inflict the tortures of the damned upon the Widow until the Man Without Fear saves her… and she subsequently rescues him.
Released in Late August 1993, Mindy Newell, John Stanisci & Sergio Cariello’s ‘Legacy’ was one quarter of Marvel Comics Presents #135 and saw Natasha touch base with her roots in New York’s Russian enclave, only to uncover prejudice, murder and hidden KGB agents, before 1994’s Daredevil Annual #10 with ‘Dead End’ offering a sort-of sequel by Newell, Cariello & Rich Rankin as Natasha retrieves a lost bio-agent and is unexpectedly forced into reviewing her own defection to find a supposedly long-deceased old enemy…
Presumably crafted under the aegis of the much-missed Marvel UK subdivision, 1995 OGN Fury/Black Widow: Death Duty is by Cefn Ridout & Charlie Adlard and is a bit of a misnomer.
Don’t be fooled by the title and brace yourself for a disappointment if you’re a huge fan of the World War II Howling Commando and irascible erstwhile leader of the planet’s most advanced espionage agency. Although he gets top billing, Fury is largely absent from these post-Cold War proceedings in this pacy thriller that is in actuality the spiritual conclusion to the saga of the mysterious Night Raven.
That enigmatic wanderer was a masked vigilante who fought crime in New York and Chicago between World Wars I & II. In later years, he was locked in a bloody, pitiless vendetta with immortal villainess Yi Yang, Queen of the Dragon Tong. Here, when a S.H.I.E.L.D. asset is murdered inside Moscow’s US embassy soon after the fall of the Soviet system, expatriate Russian super-agent/Avenger Natasha Romanoff is dispatched to unravel the secrets the new bosses don’t want revealed.
What she discovers is the incredible fate of the fearsome urban legend now known as Black Bird as he slaughters his way through bureaucrats and Russian Mafia alike in his single-minded mission to destroy the woman who kept him from a peaceful grave.
Superbly illustrated and tightly scripted, this is nonetheless an uncomfortable blending of genres, with a strange pace to it: as if a propose serial was savagely trimmed and pruned with no thought to narrative cohesion.
Closing the files is a 3-part exploit from Scott Lobdell, Randy Green & Rick Ketcham as first seen in Journey into Mystery #517-519 (February- April 1998). ‘The Fire Next Time… parts 1-3’ offers a convoluted hunt for a Far Right terror group’s hidden leader: someone whose scheme to simultaneously murder every S.H.I.E.L.D. agent on Earth revolves around a hidden traitor. However as the plot unfolds, it’s clear to the embattled and beleaguered Black Widow that absolutely nobody is who or what they seem…
Closing with a wealth of graphic revelations, the art show opens with Gulacy’s stunning 1982 Black Widow Portfolio (six monochrome plates and the cover image); and also offers pages from the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. These are supplemented by pin-ups and posters by Al Milgrom, Kevin Nowlan, Terry Austin, June Brigman & Jim Lee and Joe Chiodo, and also contains original art pages from Chiodo, Stroman & Farmer and covers by Yancy LaBat, Mark Morales, Pérez & Layton taken from previous collections of Black Widow: Web of Intrigue combining to create a suspenseful dossier of devious delights no fan should miss.
This is a genre-crossing dark delight to seduce movie buffs, armchair spyhunters and any superhero sucker in need of a wholly traditional yet wildly novel change of pace…
© 2020 MARVEL.
Today in 1932 Argentine mastermind of silent mirth & madness Guillermo Mordillo (Crazy Cowboy, Crazy Crazy, Las Girafes) was born, followed a year later by Indonesian-Dutch cartoonist Thé Tjong-Khing (Arman & Ilva, Oliver B. Bumble) and by Italian maestro Sergio Zaniboni (I Reporters, Il Campione, Diabolik) in 1937. In 1942 Comics Revue writer/editor Rick Norwood arrived, with editor turned co-founder/director of communication of America’s National Runaway Switchboard Mike Gold (First Comics, DC Comics) coming along in 1950; Canadian scripter screenwriter Martin Pasko (Superman, Wonder Woman, Star Trek, Metal Men, Swamp Thing, Blackhawk, Gargoyles) in 1954 and British illustrator Charlie Adlard (White Death, The Walking Dead, X-Files, Savage, Astronauts in Trouble) popping up in 1966.
This day in 1989, veteran Walt Disney comics artist Paul Murry (Mickey Mouse, Super Goof, Uncle Scrooge, The Phantom Blot, José Carioca, Panchito) died.