Review by Woodrow Phoenix

Mark Waid and Chris Samnee’s award-winning run on Daredevil generated some very high expectations that their take on the Black Widow would definitely be something to see. Russian super spy Natasha Romanova has never had an ongoing comics series, but has fared a lot better in a string of Marvel movies where Scarlet Johanssen kicks, punches, flips and shoots her way through an assortment of baddies. This peaked with her eponymous 2021 solo movie filling in a lot of backstory about the origins of the Widow before she joins the Avengers.

Taking their cues from the pace of the films, the first thing you’ll notice about Black Widow by Waid & Samnee is the cinematic way it’s structured. It starts explosively from the first panel, moving though brilliantly choreographed continuous action on board the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier as Director Maria Hill’s voice echoes throughout the structure: “Effective immediately, agent Natasha Romanoff, code name Black Widow — is to be considered an enemy of S.H.I.E.L.D.! She is to be stopped at any cost! I repeat — the Black Widow cannot be allowed to exit this facility!” Chris Samnee’s dynamic layouts and kinetic drawings demonstrate the fighting and strategy abilities of the Black Widow with flair as as we follow her escape, while wondering just what is going on. She’s a hero, right? There must be some mistake? So what happened and why is she running?

This book is designed to be accessible to any reader which turns out to be both the best and worst thing about it. Best because the action is non-stop, there is constant jeopardy, reversals of fortune, tricks, traps and a sky-high body count; there are illuminating callbacks to the Widow’s beginnings, her harsh training and the mental and emotional toll of those early years that has a direct bearing on how she wraps everything up neatly at the end. Worst because it’s an amalgam of every Jason Bourne/Atomic Blonde/Salt/Lucy/Hanna film you’ve seen already. The big bad villain behind it all and the guest stars who turn up along the way all function more like plot devices than characters. It’s a shame the ingenuity of the drawing is not matched by the writing of this adventure, but if you lower your expectations it all works well enough to keep you reading to the last page. The extras in this volume are all the variant covers for the original twelve issues by artists including Phil Noto, Skottie Young, Kevin Wada, Annie Wu, Joëlle Jones and Rachelle Rosenberg.

If you’re just interested in Samnee’s art, an oversized Artists Edition presents scans of the inked art pages covering the first six chapters.