Здравствуйте from FYBW, your one-stop tumblr shop for Black Widow news, no-prizing, and oversaturated .gifs. Some MCU, mostly comics. Often overwritten. Always overthinking.
Black Widow created by Lee, Rico and Heck & is © Marvel Entertainment.
Natasha: Now I’m going to find the Punisher.
Logan: It’s a big world. Good luck with that.
Natasha: Logan… I don’t use luck.
For about a year now, Greg Rucka has been writing about the Punisher by not writing through the Punisher.
I’m a great fan of Chris Bachalo’s art, I’m a great fan of ladies punching robots. So you’d think I’d be a great fan of this comic, but alas and alack, I can’t quite get there. I read the issue, and I was definitely entertained— it’s a quick read and a cute story. But something gnawed inside and kept me from believing this book to the fullest.
And then, sometime after the eighth time the spoiler panels cycled through my dash, I figured it out. This issue ran through basically every cliché of girly team-up!! Rogue and Natasha were both written as generic sassy ur-superwomen with accents slapped on.
Here, let me explain.
In a luxurious penthouse high above the East River, the mysterious Madame Natasha whiles away the hours like any other international jet-setter…
You probably wanted me to talk more about Winter Soldier but instead here’s several rambling paragraphs about seldom-reprinted issues from the early 1970s. I do what I want, Thor!
Like most of Marvel’s women who haven’t carried a book in the long-term, which is to say, all of them, Natasha has a reputation as someone who cannot make up her mind. She’s never had a book work, goes the thinking, because writers can’t decide who they want her to be. But though Marvel has overcomplicated her origin in recent years, her basic concept remains remarkably steadfast. From beginning to end, Natasha Romanoff a.k.a. Black Widow is an elite Soviet spy who defected and found a new life as a superhero. Her stories deal with identity, redemption and control, the hazy undefineds of a four-color world.
There’s one big exception to that— Amazing Adventures #1-8. And it’s a curious exception, because those Amazing Adventures issues are Marvel’s first spin at Black Widow: Solo Star. They’re Marvel’s first spin at a solo heroine, period. So for that, anyway, I think they’re worth talking about.
I attempted to do a video review of the Avengers movie, keyword: attempt. But basically, my one sentence sum-up reaction was, “they made that movie, and Marvel decided they needed to push Hawkeye?”
In an interview about her upcoming Captain Marvel book, Kelly Sue DeConnick said, “Show me that a female-led book about the power of the human spirit, about the many guises of heroism, a book wherein no one gets raped or puts her cervix on display, can break six issues, won’t you?” This is not that comic book. Scarlett Johansson, speaking of the way women are presented in the exploding superhero film genre, said, “We need some superheroine out there who doesn’t just fight in a bra.” This is not a book about that character.
I registered my disappointment when rumors leaked about a new Black Widow mini (yay) that would tie into the Marvel Cinematic Universe (alright) and be published first in Russian Maxim (…). It’s a frustrating reminder that for all Marvel says and does try to register its superhero women as icons of empowerment and characters both, they still choose to market them as men’s magazine consumables, too. But, I thought, maybe it won’t be so bad. Marvel’s occasionally baffling marketing decisions have often disguised good books.
In this one, Natasha does all her fight scenes in her underwear.
Kongo: Ha! Kongo have hand! Kongo fight good!
Natasha: Kongo not count past one.
I’m going to say it: Secret Avengers #20 was the best Black Widow comic of the year.
