For the most part, I was pleasantly surprised. Joss Whedon cut his teeth on directing female leads who have a lot of action sequences, and it showed. Black Widow had some of the strongest, most complex scenes in the movie and, misogyny/rape culture implications of that "mewling quim" conversation aside, I came away feeling like Natasha was a crucial member of the Avengers team, and not just a throwaway girlfriend character for Tony and the others to oggle over. She was smart, and complicated, and utterly unconcerned with her own nuerosis when it came time to save the world. She was more than just a hot actress in a catsuit. I liked her. I wanted more.
Since then, I've been waiting for Marvel to take this potential and reflect it back into their comic universe, the way they have with Hawkeye, Iron Man, Spider-Man, Wolverine, and so many others. With the exception of appearances as a guest star in other character's comics, she's largely remained out of the spotlight, which felt like a waste of her potential.
It seems like all that is over now, because BLACK WIDOW #1, while not at all what I expected, was definitely the book I've been waiting for.
Edmonson's Black Widow starts out traditionally enough: with Natasha in disguise, fooling a bad guy into thinking she might be on his side, lying about a piece of her history (or is she?) before she drops him off a building (with a bungee chord attached). That's more or less what you'd expect from a strong female character, right? If she's not beating someone up every second that she's on screen, if she's not focused on proving herself to be _better_ than somebody who underestimated her because of her gender, you won't know that the femme fetale hits as hard as the boys. That's the model for a sexy female super spy that we're so used to seeing that it's often confused for the only way to tell a story about female heroes.
But then Natasha promptly strides off the battlefield, victorious, and has a meeting in broad daylight with Isaiah, her accountant. This sets up the arc for the series, and ties into the shades of a backstory that most people are familiar with from the Avengers- that once upon a time Natasha Romanoff was a very bad person who killed people for money, and now she wants to do enough good that she can cancel out the negative impact she once had upon the world. She donates her money to trusts, presumably to help the families of her victims, and only takes jobs when her would-be enemy fits a certain low-life profile.
Noto was is an unexpectedly brilliant choice for this kind of story. His drawings are at once fluid and painstakingly meticulous, with effervescent, well chosen details. Natasha radiates with confidence, capability, and quiet introspection, basking in a palette of golds, blues, and reds that harken back to the 1960s and 1970s when Black Widow first turned into a legitimate superhero. The issue's two action sequences are sparsley choreographed, showcasing an emotional detail and painterly expression that would have been lost on mainstream comics audiences entirely before the anime boom of the late 90s.
She shoots a sniper on an opposing rooftop. She drinks a glass of wine and washes it. She accidentally adopts a cat. She's at once an Avenger and a spy and a real person who has fears and doubts about herself, but can't afford to be consumed by them.
"This is what I am now," she warns, staring straight ahead as a tiny black spider weaves a web on her window pane. "You'll never know who I was before."
Challenge accepted, Natasha. See you next month.
