Black Widow #1 Review!

By ‘Lil Yoda
Welcome to the new Black Widow series. Secret Wars set pretty much everyone back to #1, including Black Widow. The former Daredevil team: Chris Samnee (writer/artist), Mark Waid (writer), Matthew Wilson (color art), and Joe Caramagna (lettering) are all working together again. They are joined by Kathleen Wisnesk (assistant editor) and Jake Thomas (editor). A brand new series with so much potential, let’s take a look, shall we?

For those of you who are somehow unfamiliar with Black Widow, aka Natasha Romanoff, here is a quick crash course. She first appears in Tales of Suspense #52 back in 1964, and has popped up many times since then, primarily around occasional love interest Hawkeye and in the Avengers. She is a former Russian spy, trained since childhood by a program called the ‘Red Room’. She eventually defected and became an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. as well as a card carrying Avenger. Black Widow hit the main stream in Iron Man 2 and has been a fan favorite ever since.

Black Widow #1 starts on the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier with Natasha fighting her way through multiple agents. Director Maria Hill announces that Natasha is a traitor to S.H.I.E.L.D. and must be stopped at all costs. Nat manages to escape the helicarrier by blowing a hole in it and jumping through. We find out from Hill that Natasha stole something, and it’s obviously important, but we are not told exactly what. Then comes an epic air chase complete with a flying car and jet packs. After she ejects the driver out of the car and steals a jetpack off another agent, she lands on the ground and steals a motorbike from a civilian. One remaining agent chases Natasha down in the flying car, eventually running her off the road. The two battle it out with fists, with Natasha obviously winning but the agent not standing down. The agent tells her that he hopes it is worth it, and after she knocks him over the head with a rock, she says that she hopes it is worth it too.

Let’s start with the art: I love it. Simple yet classic. They stuck with the classic Black Widow costume design which I like. As for the writing, I also like it. The opening scene with Romanoff running is reminiscent of Steve Rogers running from Hydra/S.H.I.E.L.D. in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The whole mystery of wondering what Natasha has done to tick off S.H.I.E.L.D. so badly, as well as the incredible chase scenes remind me of a Bourne film. So has Nat betrayed S.H.I.E.L.D.? Or did S.H.I.E.L.D. have something they shouldn’t? Where will she go now that she is on the run? Guess we’ll just have to wait until issue number two, in order to find out.