Late to the Party: A Review of Black Widow #12

co-written by Chris Samnee and Mark Waid
drawn by Samnee
colored by Matt Wilson

This review is over a month late, but I'm posting it anyway for some sense of closure.

Last March Chris Samnee and his co-conspirators that included writer Mark Waid, colorist Matt Wilson and letterer Joe Caramagna delivered the last issue of their twelve-run on Black Widow, which will probably be rebooted in a few months' time after the whole "Secret Empire" business has worked out. The last issue saw Natasha Romanov's deadly rival Recluse bring her six young recruits to destroy S.H.I.E.L.D. at a remote facility, and this issue resolves everything. At the risk of sounding spoilery, suffice it to say that this issue, and the series in general, does not upset any character's status quo, which should give you an idea of how this ends.

When Samnee and Waid set up the climax to their year-long story with a threat to the very existence of S.H.I.E.L.D. I groaned out loud, and this issue is really no different as they trot out yet another well-worn story trope to wrap up all the loose ends.

As an exercise to help Chris Samnee get his feet wet with the whole writing thing, I think this series was definitely worth picking up. His art is better than it's ever been, and doing his own plotting has given him a degree of freedom I don't think he's ever had before. As a visual storyteller, this guy is right up there with the best of them, though I confess I am not a fan of the story he put together.

All told, I end the series with no regrets, but at the same time I hope that Samnee's next creative endeavor is something that manages to achieve the narrative as well as visual heights of his work with Waid on Daredevil.

6/10

Anticlimax: Black Panther #11 and #12

written by Ta Nehisi Coates
drawn by Chris Sprouse, Brian Stelfreeze

For the most part I genuinely enjoyed Ta Nehisi Coates' overtly political take on the Black Panther series, largely because of Brian Stelfreeze's distinctive art, and also because of Coates' discussion of government and of the deceptiveness of revolutionary movements. It felt like heady stuff for a comic book, and even though the discourse often got in the way of effective story pacing, I was willing to see the arc through.

Well, with issues 11 and 12 the revolution comes to a head as T'Challa and his allies, who include his newly-resurrected sister Shuri, Australian ex-Avenger Manifold, and Stateside recruits Storm, Luke Cage and Misty Knight, go head to head with insurgents Tetu and Zenzi and their army of insurgents. T'Challa has also won over, through the intervention of Shuri, his two rogue Dora Milaje Aneka and Ayo. Issue #11 presents the climactic confrontation, and in issue #12 the characters take stock of how it all went wrong in the first place, and what needs to be done from here. Some loose ends are left hanging, clearly baiting readers for the next story line.

I have to say, for a series that started with such promise and which contained genuinely interesting ideas, the climax it presented disappointed me quite a bit, both visually and thematically. The normally talented Chris Sprouse presented a rather subdued set of action sequences, and even Coates didn't bother to stage anything particularly dramatic, which is the sort of thing that would certainly be appropriate to close out a year's worth of stories with.

Issue #12 fares somewhat better than issue #11, as Brian Stelfreeze returns to help tie up the series' first "season," but I really couldn't help but feel a little underwhelmed by such a muted conclusion to something that started with much fanfare. Still, even though Coates action narrative falters, his commitment to the conversation he started stays the course, and for that he deserves some credit, even though I, as a reader, have pretty much shown myself the door as far as collecting this series on a monthly basis is concerned. Maybe I'll come back for the trades, but for now, I'm done with this book.

6/10 issue #11
7/10 issue #12