Review: Black Widow Vol. 1- The Finely Woven Thread

Quick Summary

Pros: The individual adventures highlight different styles of espionage-focused storytelling. The volume’s longer story arc highlights tension and suspense. The entire volume does well in highlight Black Widow’s heroic abilities, morality, and personality. The artwork looks incredible and does a fantastic job of bringing this book to life.

Cons: The volume feels very introductory and, thus, includes inorganic dialogue and a few lackluster moments.

Overall: This volume represents an optimistic start to a new series. It has action, drama, and suspense stretching through a variety of spy missions. These missions all help acquaint the reader with who Black Widow is and why she is doing what she is doing. Plus, gorgeous artwork makes the entire journey even more enjoyable. Fans of Black Widow or just fans of good-looking spy books should consider checking out this volume.

Story

Black Widow Vol. 1: The Finely Woven Thread, by Nathan Edmondson, is a solid introductory volume in a new Black Widow series. It starts by following Black Widow on several solo missions, all of which feel like quick and thematically diverse James Bond stories. Then, it kicks off a larger narrative that focuses more on building tension and suspense, while still delivering on plenty of excitement. The entire volume shows off Black Widow as a character, emphasizing her incredible abilities while still acknowledging her tumultuous emotions. There are places where the story sacrifices quality in order to make some introductions but these points do not severely damage the narrative as a whole. Instead, this volume did well in getting me excited to read more about Black Widow.

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The Finely Woven Thread opens with several individual chapters that depict Black Widow on various mercenary-esque jobs. Each of these jobs is exciting in its own way and the isolated nature of their approach makes them interesting to see played back to back. It allows one chapter to focus on a moral dilemma, as Black Widow wonders whether to save her target at all, while another focuses more on a clever twist, as the reader is lead to believe Black Widow’s target is one character when it is actually another.

The second half of this volume eschews the individual adventures to focus on one, longer mission. This puts Black Widow up against a mysterious and powerful enemy. It makes for a narrative with far more suspense and tension, one that also helps build up anticipation for the next volume. In addition, the longer story arc works well when paired immediately after a series of several, shorter stories.

The entire volume also gives readers the chance to learn more about Black Widow as a character. The individual adventures show she is willing to lie and deceive her targets if it means completing her mission but also show she is more committed to doing the right thing than she is to getting the job done. This commitment to morality is further emphasized through Natasha’s work with her attorney, which shows that she is doing all of this in order to make up for past transgressions. Meanwhile, each story also highlights her superb abilities as a fighter, negotiator, and spy.

The problem with The Finely Woven Thread is that it really feels like an introductory volume. There are many points of narration and dialogue that are focused more and delivering information than fitting organically into a conversation. The villains here are also too new to feel truly adversarial, making Molot’s return more underwhelming than it should have been. Many of these problems seem to come from the volume’s reluctance to incorporate elements from past Black Widow stories. This helps make the volume, as a whole, easier to jump into but prevents it from standing out as positively.

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Art

The visuals in The Finely Woven Thread is overwhelmingly positive and is easily one of the biggest selling points for this volume. Phil Noto’s artwork is gorgeous, making characters and locations look incredible on every page. Everything simply looks beautiful and the colors allow this beauty to stand out even further. This is especially noticeable when Black Widow’s trademark red hair is dramatically contrasted against the faded colors of her surroundings. In addition, Noto’s simple approach to panel composition immediately draws the reader’s eye to the action, which is important in a book about clashes between secret agents. Overall, this is book packed to the brim with beautiful visuals that make the entire volume better.

Continuity

Black Widow Vol. 1: The Finely Woven Thread starts the Black Widow Vol. 5 series. This series does not directly stem from any specific comic and can be read independent of most stories.

The story here continues in Black Widow Vol. 2: The Tightly Tangled Web (Review).

This volume also makes references to other comic books, detailed below:

• Black Widow’s association with the Avengers is mentioned. Though she has been associated with the team for many years, her most recent association with them began when they were reformed in Avengers Vol. 5 #1, collected in Avengers Vol. 1: Avengers World (Review).
• Black Widow’s first battle against Damon Dran took place across Daredevil Vol 1 92-94, collected in Marvel Masterworks: Daredevil Vol. 9. Her most recent battle against him took place in Captain America Vol. 1 #430, collected in Captain America: Fighting Chance: Denial.