Having had a chance to hang out with the Soska Sisters in a recent mini-series they’d written for her, one of Marvel’s greatest super-spies returns again for another five issues in Web of the Black Widow. This time, she’s following a script written by the prolific Jody Houser. She’s being drawn by Stephen Mooney. Color saunters into the page courtesy of Triona Farrell. The series makes its way into Natasha Romanoff’s life and pulls her into her past. As a mysterious figure forces her off the grid and into the shadows. Houser and Mooney give the Black Widow a graceful intro in a stylishly moody opening chapter.

As the issue opens, Natasha is in disguise in a low-cut black dress with long black hair. She enters an opulent gathering beyond a red carpet in the usual types of fabulously wealthy places that super-spies always seem to find themselves in. She approaches a man in a tux looking a bit like Howard Hughes. Naturally, this would turn out to be Tony Stark. They share a dance together. He’s thinking about her, but her mind is clearly preoccupied with other things. She wouldn’t be there if she weren’t working. Black Widow’s work plunges her into the usual sorts of the danger she has always found herself in. 

The challenge with a Black Widow story lies in balancing the super-spy end of her personality against the world of super-powers that go well beyond major governments. This is a world of magic and magical technology where masked people in bright costumes clash with demonic villains from other worlds and so on. Houser is careful to limit the amount of plot being bleeding into the panels in the first issue. While still alluding to the existence of Tony Stark, Iron Man and the Avengers. Without allowing the superhero genre to totally overpower the intrigue of a woman who still somehow manages to have a mysterious past after several decades on page and screen. 

Mooney’s art is drenched in that space between shafts of light. Radiance may find its way around the edge of the panels, but Natasha always manages to find the darker parts in the center of the page. Some of the delivery of the action is exquisitely beautiful. There is beauty and mystery there that subtly speaks to the inner struggles that the character will be facing in the course of the five issues of the series. Farrell gives the introductory issue a muted sepia that fuses with Mooney’s darkness. Without more of a contrast between light and darkness, the mystery feels very murky. Frank Miller’s work on the original Sin City series had that heavy contrast that amplified the shadows. Here it all sort of fades together in a soupy noir that carries its own kind of impact. 

The opening of the adventure feels firmly planted in this first issue. If the five-issue dance with Natasha is to launch itself into something more than murky moodiness. It’s going to need to find a way to coax the Black Widow into a stylish glide around the past of Marvel’s Russian super-spy in issues to come. 

Grade: B+