There’s an unshakable cool at the heart of Black Widow Modern Epic Collection: Chaos, a feeling that, even swept up in conspiracy and buffeted by violence, Natalia Romanova is unflappable.
This isn’t to say that the Black Widow in Chaos is without struggle, physically or emotionally; the aforementioned conspiracy hovers just out of view, leading Nat on a jarring chase around the world. Heavily armed and heavily muscled mercenaries plague her, as do faceless corporate figures intent on a new world order. This is a book filled with all the gunfire and explosions one might expect from a Black Widow comic.
Marvel Comics
But for all that, Nat exists in a place of emotional smoldering, ever hardened by a life filled with constant, almost casual violence. She has been wearied by life, thrown up walls to keep people out of her life, refuses even to admit that she has developed an affection for the stray cat she occasionally feeds.
This is a version of Black Widow who has ‘red in her ledger’, ever-so influenced by Scarlet Johansson’s turn as the character in the Avengers films. Endlessly working to make some sort of karmic amends, Nat fills her time with mercenary work; she’s taken on legal counsel to funnel all her pay to charitable causes. Violence and loneliness somehow beget atonement.
Marvel Comics
In other books, the ‘lone wolf’ mentality has the ability to wear thin quickly – it’s hard to take endless caption boxes insisting on a character’s inability to care for people, going on and on about how having people near them will only lead to people getting hurt. Wolverine and the Punisher have a tight grip on that style of narrative.
Rather than the ever-whining monologues, Widow’s reticence to form emotional bonds (with her cat, with her peers, with her lawyer) is much more cleverly illustrated. Rather than being told, we are shown her propensity for hurting (even killing) those who are near her. She is the product of the Red Room, after all, a calculated killer originally programmed for unthinking subservience.
Marvel Comics
Near the end of the book – after a lion’s share of the overarching plot – we are given two issues highlighting Nat’s unique history. We see a period in which she and her childhood friend live on the streets after briefly escaping the Red Room; even freed of the programming, Nat is forced to resort to violence to protect her friend. Years later, she is sent to Cuba to support that same friend in an undercover sting operation. The gruesome end of this mission makes clear where her propensity for avoiding emotional attachment comes from.
The events of Chaos force Nat to reconsider her isolated existence – she comes to care for her cat – but the book relays this shift subtly, quietly. Her shift happens organically, and the book avoids the sort of hamfisted thesis-and-conclusion format other stories might insist upon. Rather, we are given a Black Widow endlessly proving her essential role of badass, a collected killer coming to terms with her propensity for violence. Every bit of action almost epitomizes the character: this is how Nat is, what she is capable of.
Marvel Comics
There is no narrative or artistic fat to trim in Black Widow Modern Era Epic Collection: Chaos. Artist Phil Noto delivers incredible nuance and dynamism, and writer Nathan Edmonson perfectly understands paramilitary drama. But Natalia Romanova seems to supersede even their creative efforts; this is a character, distilled.
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