"Fire and Mud", in Black Widow (vol. 3) #1, by Chris Samnee (writer/artist), Mark Waid (writer), Matthew Wilson (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer)
After the conclusion of last week's series, Natasha got a second ongoing in 2014 that ran for 20 issues, mostly by Nathan Edmundson and Phil Noto. I skipped that one, because Edmundson's writing hadn't impressed me in the past, and I'm not a huge fan of Noto as a sequential artist. Great individual images, but for telling a story, conveying action, not so much.
That series got wiped out in the mass cancelations brought on by Secret Wars. You'd think Marvel would have learned something from DC and the New 52 about ending all of your series, but apparently not. After that whole mess was over, we got another Black Widow ongoing, this time by the Daredevil creative team of Chris Samnee, Mark Waid, and Matthew Wilson. I figured if anyone could make a Black Widow series I'd enjoy, it was only the second creative team to really make me enjoy Daredevil.
I dropped the book after six issues. I only kept two, this issue and #6, although reading through it, I can't figure out why I kept the latter. Maybe I meant to keep one of the earlier issues with more fighting.
It was a very stylishly done book, the first issue is just one big chase scene of Natasha fleeing the Helicarrier and then a bunch of SHIELD agents who chase her through the city and into the hinterlands. Samnee and Wilson do some great work, especially Wilson. He did some stuff with red and black that worked so well for me. There was one issue, #4, where they did some great stuff with her infiltrating the new Red Room. That was probably the issue I intended to keep.
But at the end of the day, it's a story where all the good guys wonder if they can trust Natasha while she encounters problems from her past (in this case the Red Room) in the form of characters I'm not certain we'd ever heard of before. Gee, why does that sound extraordinarily familiar?
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