Widowmaker is a mini-series published by Marvel Comics which spans four issues. It tells the story of heroes Hawkeye, Black Widow, and Mockingbird teaming up with WW2 hero Dominic Fortune as they deal with elements of their separate and collective pasts. The past comes full-circle as they must thwart the plot of Alexi Shostakov, Black Widow’s ex-husband. Alexi has united the Dark Ocean Society, a group of Japanese “ultra-extreme nationalists,” with high-powered Supreme Soviets. Our heroes are faced with the murders of numerous spies around the globe. The endgame is to tear down both Japan and Russia in an effort to arise as the leader of a new united empire.

The credits for this story are split between two creative teams. One team consisted of writer Jim McCann, penciller David Lopez, inker Alvaro Lopez, colorist Nathan Fairbairn, and VC’s Cory Petit as the letterer. The names for the other half go as follows: writer Duane Swierczynski, artist Manuel Garcia, Lorenzo Ruggiero with Bit on inks, Jim Charalampidis and Sotocolor on coloring duty, and Blambot’s Nate Piekos handling the lettering.

I have no doubt that two different creative teams may turn off some readers. I would have liked if the latter art team, led by Garcia, had worked on the entire story. It seems as if that team had the issues with more action, so that may have some influence there. This is not solely based on the action sequences, but just in general, I preferred their look as opposed to the group led by Lopez.

While reading this, I could hear several characters voices in my head. That could be due to the writing or my highly active imagination. While both of which are likely, it is a good occurrence. It was evident when reading Hawkeye and Black Widow’s dialogue. This could possibly be because those were the characters I am most familiar with. With that said, unlike with the artists, I would have a much more difficult time choosing which writer stood out.

I’d heard about this mini and was interested because I like Hawkeye and had recently become a fan of Black Widow upon reading her recent ongoing series. That series was an all too short, but engaging eight issues. It does a good job presenting readers with some events from her past such as training and other connections she has had.

The ending feels somewhat anticlimactic and there probably won’t be any significant ramifications from this series. With that stated, recommendations for this story will vary person to person. If you have interest in any of the heroes involved as I did, which as stated prompted me to grab these issues in the first place, you’ll probably have already picked this up. In the case that you do fall in this group but have yet to read it, I would suggest searching for the trade. If you don’t have much interest in these characters, you can skip this.


I purchased these books with my own funds.