sugarfey asked: Hi, what do you think the chances are of Black Widow getting another solo comic? I know a lot of people who would buy it! I thought Marvel dropped hints a while back but we haven't heard anything since and I'm getting worried.
When they were first announcing Marvel NOW! there was a widespread assumption they’d put a Black Widow book in there, since Marvel was notably strapped for female leads. They shot that rumor down pretty specifically, w/Alonso saying that they didn’t have any solo plans for her. (Besides being a “prominent character” in books like Winter Soldier.)
More recently though (early February) there were definitely hints:
We wanted more titles anchored by female characters — that was a goal — but that doesn’t mean that any pitch that featured a female protagonist got rubber-stamped for approval. “Fearless Defenders” was approved because Ellie [Pyle] submitted a great pitch. Elsewhere, adjectiveless “X-Men” got a gust of wind in its sails when Jeanine Schaefer and Brian pitched a phenomenal concept for an all-female team. And — spoiler alert — perhaps there’s something on the horizon for Bla>cough< Wid>cough
So I’m pretty optimistic something will be announced within the year. I’m not too worried about nothing announced yet— they hinted about DeConnick’s Captain Marvel way before title was launched. And we’re kinda just getting into convention season, when they announce new books. I also suspect they might try to tie it loosely to some Big Event fallout or another, the way Hawkeye kind of came on the heels of him being incinerated in AvX.
Sort of a weird thing to say, but: it helps Natasha’s chances that Winter Soldier was cancelled too. I’ve always kinda suspected that the feeling was a Black Widow book would be too similar, and yeah, pretty much everything Winter Soldier did had been done before thematically in earlier BW books. But they’re already hinting they might relaunch Winter Soldier fairly soon! That’s sort of where you go to see how screwed female characters are in superhero comics: Black Widow is a Soviet spy for decades, Bucky is a dead sidekick killed off because sidekicks are dumb, but bring the guy back and slap on a Soviet spy backstory and readers’ll go for that instead.
As long as Natasha keeps appearing in movies and raising her profile that way, I’ll have hope, even if that February hinting comes to nothing, even if she needs twice the screentime as Hawkeye to get half the chance. With Captain America 2, we’re coming up on four times the screentime as Hawkeye, so that’s like, one whole chance!
Viper: No— oh, no! I’m going over the edge of the propellor hub!
Even as Viper speaks— more in anger than fear— she reacts, her body twisting head over heels like a cat’s… her arms grabbing for the nearhest handhold.
Natasha: Very good, Viper. I couldn’t have done it better myself. In my younger days… I would have simply left you to your fate. But I’m older now, supposedly wiser, and I only kill when I’ve no alternative. So give me your hand.
I love this scene. Delicious Chris Claremont overwriting, amazing Bronze Age dialogue that should probably be inner monologue, and— “oh no! I’m going over the edge of the propellor hub!” But I love also how it gives Natasha mercy without having her forsake death. She’s as no nonsense as anyone can be, reciting their character arc to a green-haired superterrorist. No righteousness, but a sliver of weary compassion.
From Marvel Team-up #85, by Chris Claremont and Sal Buscema.
So, anon, I really like Hawkeye. I like him enough that when they said they were gonna put him in a movie I was immediately:
a) excited because they were gonna put him in a movie
b) angry because they were probably, inevitably, gonna put him in movie wrong
c) anticipating a legion of “hah hah arrows are so stupid lol” clever internet comments
I like Hawkeye, and so I’ve never understood why “he wears a purple loincloth, staples the letter H to his head, and proceeds to fight world-crushing horror with nothing but a bow and some arrows” is supposed to be a knock on Hawkeye. That’s exactly what makes Hawkeye great; he wasn’t born a god or subject to secret government power-granting experiments, he is a dude who put on purple tights and said, “alright evil, you’re next.” That doesn’t make him the most useful Avenger, maybe, but it sure as hell makes him interesting.
I love Natasha because I think she’s interesting.
She’s smart like the wink on a dagger. Not the sort of smart that builds plot machinetech superdevices but the sort of smart that twists and turns— the sort of smart that means her stories have to be smart, too. There’s something about Natasha that says, “keep looking.” Even her codename is fitting in how it’s all wrong.
I love how weird and rich and deep the Marvel universe is, but I also love its inconsistency. It’s a strange thing to say, but what fascinates me about Black Widow is the seeming contraditions: that she’s a spy, soldier, and superhero, an agent with agency, redemption without apology, the tragedy and the heroine together. She’s the best there is at what she does in a universe where the settings are much more looming-intergalactic-death than international espionage. She’s the best there is at what she does and that’s brought her suffering and white death and all the real good she can milk from it. I love that she’s so cold but so passionate, that her compassion comes from the same place as her cruelty. I love that vast Siberia of her continuity because there’s so much there to think about. Changing attitudes in politics, shifting standards of characterization, dialogue that Stan Lee wrote. There’s so much there to be confused by, and so much to figure out. But it works, I think. She’s enigmatic, but fully formed. Not broken. Just complicated.
It fascinates me too, that I can find all these things in her stories, all these ideas worth unthreading, and so many other people can see a token female or the ex-girlfriend of the Marvel Universe at large or a Mary Sue, or worse, a collection of bodyparts engineered solely for dudely amusement. None of those things are interesting, but the way people are often ready to call her useless before knowing much about her at all, that’s really interesting to me. And I might like her the way you would a secret: she’s much more badass than you know.
So I love Black Widow because I think about Black Widow, I think because I love, on and on forever and ever amen with karate kicks in the background.
(Source: fuckyeahblackwidow, via themantics)
biggestbaddestwolf replied to your post: What do you think of how Marvel keeps referring to Natasha as Hawkeyes…
but work wife doesnt mean dating it literally means that theyve spent so much time together its like theyre married- its a term that cops use too
I know that. I can’t speak for anon, but: Natasha and Clint haven’t teamed up constantly since the Silver Age, and their original working partnership was desperately entwined with their romance. They went in very separate trajectories for quite a while and they hadn’t been in the same Avengers line-up until the Remender run of Secret Avengers. (I’m ignoring the Crossing b/c everyone does.) That was also about when Clint started being a spy. Natasha’s “work” is something that’s divided the two of them as much as brought them together. The idea of the two them as working “spouses”/partners comes from Ultimates, and the “work wife” thing is a much better description of their MCU dynamic since in comics they’ve hardly had a steady working relationship.
None of that has to do with dating, except, well, the fact that Clint and Natasha’s original 616 partnership was definitely not platonic. I can see how someone would look at their comic book history, look at the Avengers movie, and say, hmmmm. And that’s what I assumed anon was asking about.
Anonymous asked: What do you think of how Marvel keeps referring to Natasha as Hawkeye's 'Work Wife' in both Hawkeye and Avengers Assemble? I know Fraction and Deconnick are fan favorites, but it seems rather forced; despite their history.
It’s not a particularly accurate description, no, since while Clint and Natasha were partners (in literal crime), that working relationship died before their actual romance. And, yeah, they’ve been teamed up pretty rarely since the Silver Age— since 1972 Natasha’s lived in the Daredevil sphere of things at least as much as the Avengers and neither Natasha nor Clint has been able to leg a solo series past issue eight. When they have teamed up (see, oh, the Nicieza Hawkeye series, Thunderbolts #43, or Avengers #400) they have had a pretty easy, familiar relationship. But the team-ups were infrequent; I’d call them old friends more than constant co-workers.
That said, now that they are on five different Avengers teams that inexplicably share the same six characters, idk, I think it makes sense to focus on that more. I don’t think it’s any more forced than five different Avengers teams that inexplicably share the same six characters. “Hawkeye and Black Widow working together a lot” is not a movieconsequence I’m afraid of, I guess. It always seemed like they would work together a lot if their schedules and comics were set up to permit that. And I guess I’m just too tumblr to blink at silly catch phrases. Pairing names have forever inocculated me. (A week ago I found out “Stucky” was a thing, guys. Stucky!!)
TL;DR, I don’t think it’s the most accrate description of what they’ve been in the past but it doesn’t really bother me as a character direction. There are so many things Marvel’s screwed up with Natasha since the Avengers film (not even trying to give her a starring role someplace in the ongoing Marvel universe, all the brainwashing, that whole Maxim thing, artists constantly forgetting to draw her costume all the way on) that like, I don’t think I could like comics at all if I got bothered about more stuff. Nitpicky continuity rage is one of the specific joys of being a comic fan and I would never try to take that away from anyone. But DeConnick just wrote the sort of Black Widow story I’ve been whining for months that no one was writing. So if I don’t want to give up on this genre, I have to focus on that.
Anonymous asked: are you dead?
Nobody stays dead in comic books.