White Widow #1 - Marvel Comics

WHITE WIDOW No. 1, January 2024

Perhaps a little surprisingly weighing in as the twenty-second best-selling comic of November 2023, and featuring an impressive opening which sees the titular character face-off against Captain America, things certainly seemed to be going in the right direction for Issue One of “White Widow” when the mini-series first hit the spinner-racks. Indeed, Yelena Belova’s initial interaction with the First Avenger, along with the appearance of the Superspy’s mentee Marthe appears to promise plenty of future skirmishes between the rogue agent and the finest super-heroes that the Marvel Universe can offer.

Disappointingly however, this notion seems to go completely out of the window once Sarah Gailey’s storytelling begins in earnest within the somewhat sleepy town limits of Idylhaven, and the American author rather unimpressively throws more information about the titular character’s new neighbours at her audience than any reader can possibly assimilate with even a couple of perusals. True, rattling off a number of lists concerning people’s ages, jobs and motivations, as well as those detailing the titular character’s loves, likes, dislikes and hates, certainly helps establish some sort of context for this book’s adventure in quick order. But it also arguably brings the publication’s pace down to that of a snail's crawl too.

Finally, any hope for Belova’s fans that this twenty-five-page periodical will show the Shadow of the Black Widow knee-deep in a yarn about international espionage, or simply tell of the deadly assassin’s code of conduct inexorably crashing into the moral virtues of the World's Mightiest Heroes are soon disconcertingly dashed when its revealed that the former Thunderbolt will just be confronting a somewhat small-time extortion racket in her own back yard; “I wanted someplace where things aren’t so much happening all the time, you know?” This underwhelming plot development must genuinely have frustrated those onlookers expecting so much more from a comic dedicated to “one of Marvel’s most enigmatic anti-heroes” and caused a fair few to refrain from pre-ordering its second instalment.

Unhappily, Alessandro Miracolo’s layouts don’t debatably live up to this “groundbreaking new chapter” in Yelena’s life either, despite the Italian illustrator demonstrating so much promise with his pencilling of the White Widow’s aforementioned skirmish with Captain America. Much of this frustration is undoubtedly due to the comic’s rather clunky script rather than anything else though, as whenever the artist is asked to sketch a punch-up or pulse-pounding panel he ramps up the adrenalin-fuelled violence in spades.

Writer: Sarah Gailey, Artist: Alessandro Miracolo & Color Artist: Matt Milla