This Week’s Best New Comics Include The Thrilling ‘Black Widow’ And More

Of all the Avengers, Black Widow has always been among the most interesting, walking the line between superspy and superhero, and not always balancing the two. Black Widow #5 (Marvel) knocks that out of kilter, both by putting Natasha in the crosshairs and revealing the truth that no matter how good a superhero is, she can’t save everyone.

Mark Waid and Chris Samnee have followed up their brilliant run on Daredevil with a rich action story where Black Widow has seemingly turned traitor. She’s being blackmailed, and that’s forced her to revisit ugly parts of her past as well as pick fights with her friends in the intelligence community. What makes it work, though, is that Waid and Samnee don’t linger too heavily on the details. This is a book where much of it unfolds in action, not words, and Natasha’s thoughts aren’t strewn about the page in captions, but kept to herself.

That gives the comic a dark, Bourne-like edge without trying to hard or imitating a movie franchise. Samnee and Waid care more about telling us how Natasha feels by the expressions on her face and the blood on her hands than monologues, and it’s made for a compelling story. We’re coming up on the finale next month, where we’ll finally learn the secret she’s willing to betray everyone she knows to keep, and we almost wish it was kept under wraps just so this superb arc could keep going.

Black Hammer #1, Dark Horse

When Jeff Lemire writes about superheroes, he tends to focus on the moments between the big dramatic beats. If a superhero is only seemingly dead, but trapped in an alternate reality for years, what did they do? Be trapped in stasis? Play cards? What if, Lemire asks, they built a new life?

Working with Dean Ormston on art, with Black Hammer Lemire tells the story of a team of superheroes who, in the wake of an apocalyptic event, wake up on a farm. They’ve got all their powers, but no villains to fight, and problems ranging from creeping senility to being trapped in the body of a nine-year-old. It’s been a decade, and they’ve tried to make a go of it, but they’re all going a little stir-crazy. Where Ormston and Lemire excel is in emphasis the simple humanity of shape-shifting space aliens and sentient robots; these are all good people, but they’re also people, messy and complicated, who might have to relearn being heroes in a hurry. Once again, Lemire finds gold in the space between panels, and it’s a warm, human take on a genre normally about gods.

Faith #1, Valiant

Jody Houser and Pere Perez give Valiant’s irrepressible Faith her own ongoing. Much like the four-issue miniseries she carried, Faith’s book is as much about putting a spin on typical superhero tropes as it is about fights and superpowers, and the first issue gets a lot of mileage riffing off her Clark Kent-esque persona and how a nerdy woman handles great power and the supposed perks that go with it. If you like your superheroes with a driving plot but slightly more cheerful, give Faith a try.

Red Team: Double Tap, Center Mass #1, Dynamite

Garth Ennis and Craig Cermak wrapped up their last miniseries about vigilante cops with the Red Team somehow, by some miracle, getting away with it and keeping their jobs. But our two “heroes” are still on crap detail, running down small-time dealers and under careful scrutiny. Until, naturally, they stumble across something much bigger and uglier than they expected.

Ennis can be tricky as a writer, as he tends to either go completely over-the-top in books like Crossed and The Boys, or stays more grounded like in Johnny Red. Here he seems to be walking a balance between the two, helped by Cermak’s sharp, straightforward art. Time will tell what side Ennis falls on, but either way, it’s great to have the Red Team back in action.

Astro City #37, DC Comics

One of the great qualities of Astro City is that Kurt Busiek and Brent Anderson seem to have heard the discussion on the lack of diversity in comics, and, without tooting their horns or making a big deal out of it, decided that, you know what, it was a good point. So we’ve had transgender characters, we’ve had the stories of women in Astro City, and now, they’re tackling Astro City’s race problems, through the theme of how music can bring people together, and have others attempt to tear them apart.

Specifically, Astro City is focusing on the sometimes uncomfortable vigilante Mister Cakewalk, a Robin Hood of sorts who looks and talks like a minstrel show stereotype even as he hits like Batman. It turns out there’s a bit more to Cakewalk than we thought. The racial politics of the book are honestly a bit simplistic, in the sense that it’s nice black people and white people can both like jazz, but it’s not healing any deeper seated issues. On the other hand, though, there’s a lack of books willing to even talk about race, let alone racial politics in the Jazz Age, and Busiek is just warming up with a twist that we won’t ruin here. This has the potential to be a strong arc for a great series, and we’re excited to see where it goes.

Velvet #15, Image: Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting wrap, for now, their brilliant dirty martini spy series on a question of just how spies view the outrages committed by politicians and the bankers who fund them, giving the series a low-key, thoughtful ending. But I doubt we’ve seen the last of Velvet Templeton.

Betty and Veronica #1, Archie: Adam Hughes’ writing is perhaps a little arch, if you’ll pardon the pun, but his art is gorgeous as always and his riffs on Archie’s goofy plots can be utterly hilarious.

Sombra #1, BOOM!: Justin Jordan’s thriller about a DEA agent losing his mind and the daughter hunting him down has a pleasing Apocalypse Now feel, but Raul Trevino’s art, while excellent, clashes with the tone of the story.

The Hunt #1, Image: Colin Lorimer’s thriller feels a bit like Stephen King with an Irish lilt, as we follow Orla, who can see… things. And she’s not the only one, it turns out, in a clever horror thriller.

The Hellblazer: Rebirth, DC Comics: Simon Oliver and Moritat bring John back to old London town, and it’s great to see him fully back to his Vertigo self.

This Week’s Collected Editions

Four Eyes: Hearts of Fire, Image (Softcover, $13): A heartbreaking and beautiful musing on how children struggle with situations they don’t understand and abuse, set in a Depression-era alternate reality where dragons are real, and dragon-fighting is a sport.

Plutona, Image (Hardcover, $40 and Softcover, $16): Jeff Lemire spins two stories here: the tragic end of a superheroine who’s so much more than her powers, and a group of teens who can’t quite handle how fast they have to grow up when they find her body.

Lantern City Vol. 2, Boom! (Hardcover, $25): Yes, yes, it looks like a steampunk book, but don’t let steampunk fatigue put you off this smart, morally complex story of a would-be revolutionary finding that deposing the ruling classes is just the beginning.

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