Web of Black Widow #5 // Review
Natasha Romanoff has had her mind and her memories messed with. This is to be expected in her line of work. The life of a super-spy of her caliber, however, happens to involve mind games well beyond the realm of routine espionage, as Natasha is all too aware of in the final issue of Web of Black Widow. Writer Jody Houser wraps-up her story quite efficiently in a closing chapter that is drawn by Stephen Mooney. While the installment is conceptually and thematically quite tight, Houser would have needed a series twice the length she had to work with here to bring across the full depth of what she was attempting with this very, very ambitious series.
Natasha Romanoff is bleeding on a rooftop. There’s a rifle pointed at her. The woman holding the rifle identifies herself as Black Widow as well...another super-spy trained in the infamous Russian Red Room. The two spies have a little discussion about things. There’s a good chance that there might end up being a death on that roof. Natasha has a few friends on her side who stand a good chance of tipping things over in her direction if she can keep her cool long enough for them to get into position.
Houser has constructed a very intricate plot. The convoluted backstory on Black Widow’s history is given a chance to breathe in sort of a strangely satisfying endgame. Houser had set-up isolated elements throughout the series that come to play here. The problem in the reveal is that there wasn’t enough of a fluid rhythm to the isolated chapters of each individual issue to make this payoff feel totally comfortable in the end. There was clearly a lot of planning done here, but without more of a fluid rhythm to earlier issues, the final chapter feels like a bit of a rush to get everything to resolve.
Mooney manages the close of the series with admirable flourish. The darkness and the shadow fill the panels with an appropriate mystery as Natasha reaches the end of her current journey. The action between one Widow and the other is elegantly brutal. The sudden appearance of all the other heroes DOES feel a bit strained, however. Mooney does such a brilliant job with the shadowy end of things. When called-on to deliver shiny heroes of a different radiance, Mooney’s style fumbles a bit. All of the drama and aggression are there in any case.
The year begins with the ending of another Black Widow mini-series. Houser’s story is an interesting contrast to the Soska sisters’ mini-series, which ran earlier-on in 2019. Theirs was a more populous series that lived in action. Houser’s work has been an altogether more shadowy journey. The two series show a bit of versatility in a character who still holds a great deal of appeal as she makes her leap to the big screen in a solo film later-on this year.
