Black Widow #7 - Marvel Comics

BLACK WIDOW No. 7, July 2021

Whilst Kelly Thompson’s “new story arc” for Issue Seven of “Black Widow” may well have featured Natasha Romanoff “with a new suit, a new base of operations, new allies and a new perspective”, it was probably still a little difficult for many readers of this twenty-page periodical to get too enthusiastic about the titular character’s latest mission. In fact, up until Spider-Girl’s covert phone call to the ex-Soviet spy detailing the location of Apogee’s latest criminal cult meeting, little of any interest arguably takes place within this comic as the book’s plot is slowly progressed via several incredibly fraught conversations; “I’m going to speak to Lucy about this… Are you still mad at me? Will you get over it soon?”

In addition, the Eisner Award-nominee’s handling of “Natalia” appears inconsistently contrived at best, with the cloned assassin suddenly changing her stance on not bringing adolescents into the super hero business simply to help push the plot along at a reasonable rate. The entire opening half of this publication focuses upon Romanoff vehemently arguing with Yelena Belova over the White Widow’s desire to train the twenty-year old Lucy because Natasha feels the young girl is still young enough to “escape” a life of battling villains. Yet, just as soon as the Black Widow requires “someone on the inside” of Apogee’s organisation, the Avenger immediately recruits the teenage Anya Corazon to go deep undercover. 

Admittedly, the youth is given plenty of opportunity to bow out of the job offer should she wish too, and has previously undergone S.H.I.E.L.D training in espionage. However, having spent so much of this comic waxing lyrical about how she deeply cares about super-powered juveniles becoming involved in her mixed up world of ‘war, death, honour, betrayal and loss’, the fact Romanoff has already recruited just such a person to her cause debatably makes her actions appear duplicitous at best.

Enjoyably though, Corazon’s presence (or at least the information she provides) does lead to this book’s biggest highlight in the shape of Elena Casagrande pencilling an astonishingly dynamic punch-up between the two former Red Room operatives and a cadre of Apogee’s latest disciples. The Italian illustrator provides some first-rate panels of the gun-toting pair shedding their red-robed disguises mid-ceremony, and then follows this up with a sense-shattering double-splash of both women seriously cleaning the clocks of the entire congregation.

Writer: Kelly Thompson, Penciler: Elena Casagrande, and Letterer: VC's Cory Petit