A multi-issue Black Widow story by Ralph Macchio and George Perez. Solid tale, excellent art. Giant boobs. A gang of new villains who never appear again.
The really cool part of the story is a four page recap of Widow’s entire life story. Here’s a taste of it:
Nick Fury recruits Natasha to go after some international criminals, alongside SHIELD agent Jimmy Woo.
Some of the villains who debut here reappear in a few comics in the future. Like Black Lotus…
…Iron Maiden…
…Kono Sanada (note Widow in bondage)…
…and Wrangler.
And then there’s Damon Dran, who we’ve seen before. And the leader of the baddies, Snapdragon).
In one battle, she crashes into a water tower.
In another, she’s fresh out of the shower (see the panel at the top of this page). Lots of wet widow.
The story ends up tying to Widow’s days when she co-headlined with Daredevil in his book, but old hornhead doesn’t make any appearances.
Overall, a fairly generic, but fun, espionage story with terrific art.
But it’s not all Widow in these issues: Up-and-coming artist Brent Anderson has some really beautiful pin-ups in the back of issue #10. Truly gorgeous work. I gave it a separate post here.
There’s also posters in the back of #11, but they’re by random artists, like Terry Austin, P. Craig Russell and Jim Shooter(!). #12 is a portfolio of Rick Leonardi that is, of course, stunning. I also gave that one a separate post here.
Beautiful work, all around.
In #12, it’s time for Marvel Fanfare’s contribution to Assistant Editors’ Month, which features Ann Nocenti meeting Captain America. It’s not great, but it’s cute enough.
And Gil Kane’s Jungle Book adaptation wraps up in #11, with a Warriors Three back-up taking its place in #13.
I love all Perez’s work at Marvel from 1974-1980, at which point he moved to DC.
This 4-issue Black Widow story is clearly earlier Perez art that had been in inventory for several years, as several issues of MARVEL FANFARE stories were. I would guess they were drawn in the 1975-1976 period, given that they are 18-page stories ( after which from 1977-1980 both Marvel and DC were doing 17-page stories, till they finally went back to 22 page stories in late 1980).
So the page count, and Perez’s art style in that period, tells you roughly when these issues were created.
I met George Perez once, who was one of the nicest and friendliest comics creators you could possibly hope to me, but I didn’t remember to ask him what the backstory was on this Black Widow series.
I’d love to know what title it was originally intended to be published in, and after commisioning 4 complete issues, why it was shelved by Marvel.
Clearly editor Al Milgrom found it in inventory, and rightly thought it was way too good not to see print, and published it in MARVEL FANFARE.