A new volume of Black Widow begins here. Black Widow #1 is the third different comic to bear that name since 2016. Honestly, given the fact Marvel will invariably cancel the title, ignore its events, and replace it within a year or two with a new comic from from a different creative team, selling the idea of a Black Widow comic is a bit hard to do. However, Black Widow #1 turns out to be a pretty good read even if it has some rather large flaws.
The comic opens with Black Widow performing a job for the Avengers in retrieving a hard drive before returning home to find someone has broken into her apartment. Karma’s a bitch, right? Oh, and then she gets thrown out a window. Not a bad cliffhanger.
More than the culmination of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that began back in 2008 with Iron Man, Avengers: Endgame is the coda to the series that climaxed in the last chapter and now offers an opportunity for one last hurrah, for heroes to take their final bow, and for Marvel to usher out one set of lead characters and set the stage anew.
For my money, the most successful films of the past 11 years have been The Avengers, Avengers: Infinity War, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Excluding Winter Soldier, a great standalone film which cares nothing at all about larger continuity (it basically wrecked Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. after all), both Avengers and Infinity War faced enormous obstacles in pulling together various threads of the MCU into a single story. And both succeeded brilliantly. Avengers: Endgame comes off like their less-successful younger brother. I’m not going to call Endgame the Frank Stallone of the Avengers franchise as it may outshine Avengers: The Age of Ultron, but it’s a messy final chapter that offers plenty of memorable moments while failing to live up to what has come before.
Despite her recent death (something which lacks the finality it once meant in the Marvel Universe), Black Widow returns in a new series. Black Widow #1 is a bit of a schizophrenic issue that attempts to honor the character’s past while pushing Natasha in a new direction.
The issue opens with a Black Widow and Captain Americateam-up versus a Captain America impostor and giant robots whose true goal… um, well is to be the ones who get stopped by Captain America and Black Widow, I guess. After a somewhat icy farewell, Natasha heads to Madripoor looking to get lost and find a new purposes as far away from the Avengers as possible.
The most ambitious Marvel Studios’ movie to date, Captain America: Civil War attempts to merge aspects of Marvel’s two best movies (The Avengers and Captain America: Winter Soldier) into a cohesive whole while telling a very streamlined version of the comic event of the same name. You know what? It’s pretty damn good. It may not be the best of the Marvel movies, but it’s certainly more successful than Avengers: Age of Ultron and halts the backslide we’ve been witnessing in the quality of the Marvel films since Winter Soldier.
Beginning with tragedy in Africa, the Avengers are called to task by the governments of the world who believe a group of powerful super-heroes must be made to answer to someone other than themselves. While Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) and War Machine (Don Cheadle) are in favor of putting the group under the oversight of the United Nations, Captain America (Chris Evans) opposes any such move. As the Avengers choose sides things take an even more dramatic turn with the return of the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) only further dividing the group with his latest actions.
A new volume of Black Widow begins here. Black Widow #1 is the third different comic to bear that name since 2016. Honestly, given the fact Marvel will invariably cancel the title, ignore its events, and replace it within a year or two with a new comic from from a different creative team, selling the idea of a Black Widow comic is a bit hard to do. However, Black Widow #1 turns out to be a pretty good read even if it has some rather large flaws.
