Obsessively putting our comics in chronological order since 1985.
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Punisher/Black Widow: Spinning Doomsday's Web
Issue(s): Punisher/Black Widow: Spinning Doomsday's Web
Cover Date: Dec 92
Title: "Spinning doomsday's web"
Credits:
D.G. Chichester - Writer
Larry Stroman - Penciler
Mark Farmer - Inker
Richard Ashford - Assistant Editor
Nel Yomtov - Editor
Review/plot:
A criminal named Dr. Peter Malum had recently been arrested by the FBI, but he was subsequently freed by a group of supporters.
The Black Widow was originally supposed to supervise the prison transfer. When things get violent, Nick Fury issues orders for her to stand down so that a strike team can go in, but she ignores him and tries to stop Malum on her own. It doesn't go well.
In fact, Malum would have killed the Widow if it wasn't for one of his supporters urging him to flee.
When Fury catches up with her, she blames the fact that she hesitated in using lethal force against Malum.
Fury explains that Malum was the director of a 1960s government project Operation: Pluto, aka SLAM: Supersonic Low Altitude Missile. The program would detonate a dozen nuclear bombs and produce a devastating sonic boom. The program was discontinued but SHIELD is now afraid that Malum and his allies will now build a new one. The explanation for why he would want to do this, and i guess how he's able to defeat Black Widow in hand-to-hand combat, boils down to him being insane.
As for SHIELD, they are actively manipulating Black Widow. We see Alexander kind of smitten with her, and that may very well be legitimate...
...but when Widow expresses doubt about her ability to complete the mission, Fury uses some reverse psychology on her to get her to stick with it, and after she leaves Pierce shows that he was aware that Fury was going to manipulate her.
For what it's worth, at least from Fury's perspective, it's a "for her own good" kind of manipulation.
As SHIELD told the Widow, the Punisher is on the trail of Malum as well.
Black Widow goes undercover to get information on Malum from an old associate of his.
While she's talking to him, we get a flashback paralleling Fury's manipulation to what the KGB did to her after her husband was killed.
Malum ends up attacking the naval ship where Black Widow is talking to Malum's former associate.
During the fight, the Punisher tries to snipe Malum from afar, but the Widow stops him since she needs info.
While they are fighting, Malum gets away with the reactor, and Punisher and Black Widow have to dive into the water to avoid fire from one of his allies' helicopter.
They manage to destroy the chopper and then Team-Up to go after Malum.
In the rematch, the Widow does use lethal force.
They also stop the SLAM weapon.
In the end, Fury (of course) approves of her actions, talking about how some people have to live in the grey areas to deal with people like Malum.
It's been noted by me and others in comments on this site that Larry Stroman had an interesting art style during his run on X-Factor, but it didn't always work well in depicting the action sequences in that book. So i thought that this graphic novel would give him the opportunity to do his thing without constraint. But, ironically (from my perspective), Stroman is actually very reserved on this book, much less abstract and "artsy" than on X-Factor. His style is definitely still evident, but he's much more straightforward, with much clearer action sequences.
From a story perspective, it definitely feels like a D.G. Chichester story. I'm a little curious about how Chichester writes the Black Widow in several regards: her relationship with Fury (e.g. his manipulation of her), the idea that lethal force is something she has become uncomfortable with, and in some of the details about the flashback regarding how she was recruited into the KGB. I'm not saying anything is necessarily wrong with it, and i try not to think too much about Black Widow's convoluted backstory, but things seemed a little off to me. Chichester will write Black Widow again in Daredevil's Tree of Knowledge arc, so we'll see if he picks up on anything he does here.
Quality Rating: C
Historical Significance Rating: 1
Chronological Placement Considerations: Nick Fury is director of SHIELD at this point, placing this after Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD #47.
References:
- No footnote, but we learned about the Black Widow's husband the Red Guardian in Avengers #43-44.
Crossover: N/A
Continuity Insert? N
My Reprint: N/A
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Comments
One more complication regarding placement fnord- this has to take place before Avengers 355 since Natasha isn't wearing an Avengers jacket over her costume.I'm not sure how this complicates placement re Nick Fury 44-45.
The characterization of the Black Widow here actually makes sense. Several months before she had become an active member of the Avengers for the first time in years, and this was, truthfully, the first time she ever had a lengthy stint on the team. At this time the Avengers still had a very definite no-killing policy, as seen by Captain America's views during & after "Galactic Storm." So I can see that the Widow, either consciously or subconsciously, was also now defaulting to utilizing non-lethal methods in her solo missions, and that this could end up playing out in such a manner as it did in this story. It is an interesting, if somewhat indirect, examination of what happens when a former spy & assassin becomes a member of a high-profile superhero team with a very different set of ethics.
Nice artwork on this by Larry Stroman on this. I do wonder if he was trying to channel some of the Image founders here, though. In the two scans below fnord's description "They manage to destroy the chopper and then Team-Up to go after Malum" the poses look very much like Liefeld's work, albeit with somewhat better anatomy :)
@Michael, i'm not saying anything about placement vs. Avengers #355 yet, but i'm assuming the jacket can come off, right? When she's doing a SHIELD mission, it would even make more sense for her to take off the jacket with the little Avengers logo.
For what it's worth, at least from Fury's perspective, it's a "for her own good" kind of manipulation.
But that what he always says abou his actions.
