There was a move, at the end of the 1990s and dawn of the 2000s, away from the more comic-booky and into the realm of the “real”. Comic books moved away from their sillier antics and took a turn to the serious, and the Marvel Knights imprint was at the heart of that shift.
As Daredevil and Black Panther grew more cerebral, Black Widow was transitioned slowly away from her big-conflict, Avengers-style action. Her high-collared gray jumpsuit and widow-sting bracelets were retired in favor of black latex and military intrigue. To make the Black Widow more serious, creators embraced high espionage and violence.
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The stories in Black Widow Modern Era Epic Collection: The Itsy-Bitsy Spider succeed and fail in their aesthetic purpose to varying degrees. The introduction of Yelena Belova as the second Black Widow presents the opportunity to explore the Red Room, the Soviet super-spy program that produced both Widows, while later stories like The Things They Say About Her throw Natalia Romanova into corporate drug trade and Cuban cronyism.
At its best, Itsy Bitsy pushes the envelope; in Pale Little Spider, Belova gets wrapped up in an S&M murder mystery – an adult-themed Marvel MAX story presenting content even Marvel Knights books would swerve away from. It’s a distressing story (Belova’s Red Room Handler develops a disgusting sexual fixation on her, despite her very young age), but it shows early hints at the upsetting moral corruption of the Widows in their violent handling.
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Later, in the 2004 eponymous miniseries, we learn about the mind-altering drugs, trigger scents, and brainwashing the Widow candidates are subjected to; it’s in this series that we first learn about the chemical sterilization of the women. That plot point was controversial in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and lambasted by the archaic notion that a woman’s worth was tied to her ability to mother children.
At the book’s worst, confusion reigns. Creators mistake unnecessary narrative complications for intrigue, piling on nefarious criminal and government forces, sending Romanova far and wide, and jumbling supporting cast members in such a way that keeping track of boring white men in suits becomes a chore.
It can’t be said that the series collected here doesn’t lean into stylistic visuals – artists like J. G. Jones, Scott Hampton, and Igor Kordy make markedly different approaches at establishing a reality-based story with none of the bombastic surrealism of the superheroic Marvel Universe. In the book’s fuzzier narratives, the art – finishes by comics master Bill Sienkiewicz over layouts by Goran Parlov and Sean Phillips – struggles to cohere to any reality whatsoever, lending to the confusion.
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The Itsy Bitsy Spider is a collection of extremes, dizzying in its assault of wildly differing creative direction. It takes wide swings, makes bold character revisions, and attempts to ground a character more often defined by her relationships to heroes and super teams than by her own history. It’s a sloppy, compelling mess, and made all the more interesting by that mess.
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