Black Widow Epic Collection, vol. 1: Beware the Black Widow

Date Completed: 8 Mar. 2025

Grade: D+

I was genuinely looking forward to this collection, but was sorely disappointed. It contained a lot of early Iron Man and Avengers issues which can be found in other Epics. This in itself isn’t a problem, but the stories felt disjointed when just taking the Black Widow issues or even parts of issues. She did not seem to have a cohesive narrative, unlike the Hulk volume 1 that did a similar thing. I thought things would improve when the Widow did have a solo title as part of Amazing Adventures, but even this was a slog. Instead of leaning in to what makes her an interesting character (a Soviet spy who defected to America) they opted to try to make her a small community fighter, all while trying to also portray her as a rich jet setting playgirl (with no jets or international travel in sight…). At least the art was quite good, and there is some fun comparisons to the original drawings and inks as part of the extras.



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