Today in good news for people who like good comics, Marvel has announced a new Black Widow comic coming from writer Mark Waid, artist Chris Samnee, colorist Matt Wilson and letterer Joe Caramagna—the award winning team behind the most recent Daredevil run (if you haven’t read it, what on earth is wrong with you?)
EW broke the news, with everyone remaining characteristically coy about what he’s got in store for Natasha Romanoff. What will happen in the series? “The worst things possible.” Will the run pick up where the last Black Widow series left off or will she get a fresh start? “A little bit of both.”
That’s pretty vague, particularly considering Romanoff’s history in the Marvel Universe. She’s been a Soviet operative, a Hand assassin, an American vigilante, a SHIELD agent, an Avenger, and the love interest of no fewer than four a-list superheroes. But one of the things Waid did make clear is that he’s taking the Widow back to her roots as a spy. Via Comic Book Resources:
“I think what we can say, without giving anything really away, is that it’s one of the approaches that we’re taking — and one of the things you’re going to be seeing in the first arc — is a lot more old school spy,” said Waid. “We have a reason why Natasha isn’t able in those first few issues to go super high tech. She can’t just call Tony Stark and say, ‘Give me the most recent stuff.’ She can’t just call Maria Hill at S.H.I.E.L.D. and say, ‘What’s new with the world of spy business?’ In fact, she has to turn to a lot of people, some of who we’ve never seen before but we’ll be introducing, who taught her spy craft at an early age. And in a weird way, that gives her a strange advantage over some of the people she’s facing because that’s the problem when you’re too reliant on technology: sometimes you miss the basics.”
That squares with the best depictions of Natasha’s character. She’s been written a lot of different ways, but the one thing that she has aways been is a consummate badass. (In her 2010 series, she wakes up during surgery and instead of shrieking like a baby—like you and I would do—she continues to play possum for the entire operation.)
The whole interview over at Entertainment Weekly is worth a read. In it, Waid and Samnee admit that Black Widow is one of their “bucket list” characters, and they turned down opportunities to take on various other Marvel characters before getting the offer to do Black Widow.
It’s a smart move. Black Widow hasn’t been a part of any of the promos for Marvel’s “All New, All Different” line that kicks off this month, but given her high profile in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it was only a matter of time. The Waid/Samnee team is one of the most bankable in Marvel’s roster right now, so there’s plenty of reasons to be excited.