Black Widow & Hawkeye #1 - Marvel Comics

BLACK WIDOW & HAWKEYE No. 1, May 2024

Announced in November 2023 by Marvel Comics Editor in Chief C.B. Cebulski whilst at the Lucca Comics & Games festival in Italy, Stephanie Phillips’ opening instalment to this “action-packed” sixty-year celebration of Black Widow and Hawkeye certainly seems to have had a fairly solid storyline lurking within its twenty-four page plot. Yet due to some quite questionable decisions as to this book’s pacing and persistently changing time zones, many a bibliophile probably gave up looking before reaching its rather startling conclusion; “I was on the rooftop across from the ceremony. I am sorry, Nat. The Russian minister… I shot him.”

To begin with however, “Broken Arrow” certainly seems to start off well enough by depicting “a symbiote-equipped Natasha Romanoff” consigning a Soviet assassin to a truly-dreadful death in Siberia. This disturbing scene, which offers no explanation as to just how the Black Widow became a host for her new alien friend or just why Clint Barton is suddenly the target of an Eastern Bloc hitman, ensnares the reader with a hefty veil of murderous mystery, and should've caused a fair few within the mini-series’ audience to yearn to know precisely as what mischief the sharp-eyed archer has recently caused to warrant such terminal attention.

Unfortunately though, this is debatably where the “fan-favourite” creator makes something of a misstep, by insisting on telling her tale back-to-front. Such penmanship may well work for the adrenalin-fuelled action sequence involving the Avenger and aforementioned Cold War killer in Madripoor – especially when it is so energetically pencilled by Italian illustrator Paolo Villanelli. But subsequent head-spinning trips back thirty-six hours, forty-eight hours, forty hours and twenty-eight hours will surely make even the most ardent roller-coaster enthusiast both disorientated and dizzy.

Somewhat more successful is the oddly-placed four-page bolt-on yarn which strangely follows this comic’s “new chapter in the (titular) pair's storied legacy!” Set way back when the two super-heroes were first establishing themselves within the Marvel Universe, and resultantly featuring the Black Widow wearing her original 1965 Don Heck designed strapless unitard costume, this no-nonsense ‘short’ shows an infatuated Hawkeye risking all against Snapdragon so as to prevent “the Red Spy” from being forcibly returned to her Russian masters.

The regular cover art of "BLACK WIDOW & HAWKEYE" #1 by Stephen Sergovia & Jesus Aburtov