Natasha Romanov: Black Widow Appreciation 2019

[Frontier]

Black Widow had another poor sales month.
Black Widow 4 13,459 Bad!
Domino: Hotshots 2 18,963 Not good, but better than Natasha's solo
Avengers Edge of Infinity 18,401

Man, it's really tough to keep a Widow book going in today's market .

[millernumber1]

Black Widow had another poor sales month.
Black Widow 4 13,459 Bad!
Domino: Hotshots 2 18,963 Not good, but better than Natasha's solo
Avengers Edge of Infinity 18,401

To be fair, Hotshots has a Big Name and it's only issue 2.

This is very sad. (Also to be fair, I'm only buying Black Widow from that group)

[OOTCS]

Man, it's really tough to keep a Widow book going in today's market .

Is it just me, or did they stop promoting it after the first issue? I heard a lot of buzz before it started, but nothing since except for the occasional tweet from the authors and artist.

[Winterboy]

Relax guys, I'm gonna write and draw the next Black Widow ongoing.

COVER PRONTA.jpg

[millernumber1]

Hmmmmmmm. I wonder...

[Darthfury78]

Man, it's really tough to keep a Widow book going in today's market .

It's not hard at all to make sales of the Black Widow strong. It's the lack of the writer's imagination to combine fiction with current events that will hold the reader's interest. There is too much James Bond dialog fantasy to the Black Widow series and not enough grounded stories that are tied to current events. A good example is Natasha investigating the real reason to why the Notre Dame Cathedral burned down or the Russian Military buildup in Ukraine. Those are the type of stories that would get people to read The Black Widow comics...

[Snoop Dogg]

The way to keep a BW book going is to have a movie that will drive trade sales so you can circumvent the DM.

Or have better covers (I love you Crain, but this ain't it.)

[responsarbre]

The way to keep a BW book going is to have a movie that will drive trade sales so you can circumvent the DM.

Or have better covers (I love you Crain, but this ain't it.)

It's just weird because the sales are uncharacteristically low for a Black Widow book. The only other BW book that's sold this badly is the all-ages miniseries (and all-ages books never really do well in the DM as a given). Actually, I haven't compared the sales since issue 2, it might even be selling worse.

The last two ongoings weren't amazing, IMO, but they at least got a little bit of promotion, and they had pretty stable sales up until the end. Both of them only just hit the cancellation plateau around the time the final issues were coming out, instead of being forced into cancellation after months of bad sales.

I actually don't think that a movie is a good indication that Black Widow will have a consistent ongoing in the future, at all, though. For one, she already has a strong backlog of trades they've printed going back to her old stories from the 70s that audiences will probably check out first. Another is that the movies only did so much to make Lang Ant-Man last, and even that's gone now. Heck, Ant-Man at least had a sequel spoilers:

which I don't even know is possible for the Black Widow movie in light of Endgame..

end of spoilers

And yeah those covers did suck lmao

It's not hard at all to make sales of the Black Widow strong. It's the lack of the writer's imagination to combine fiction with current events that will hold the reader's interest. There is too much James Bond dialog fantasy to the Black Widow series and not enough grounded stories that are tied to current events. A good example is Natasha investigating the real reason to why the Notre Dame Cathedral burned down or the Russian Military buildup in Ukraine. Those are the type of stories that would get people to read The Black Widow comics...

I think we just need a good writer that commits to a specific direction and executes it well. If you want to do edgy spy fiction, I want something that feels as atmospheric and noir-tinged as Brubaker's Cap run or Velvet. If you do straight superhero action, I want a story with heart and good characterization like an Ewing book.

I think they could probably get Rucka to do another Black Widow story if they wanted, but I don't know if he's on the editor's radar.

[Snoop Dogg]

Well, the new book is by essentially new comic writers, unlike darlings Waid and Samnee. And while I like Flaviano on the book, it is very untraditional for this kind of project.

This is the exact same scenario that happened with the Falcon book, so I've been on this horse before.

[ed2962]

I don't doubt that the choice of lesser know creators was on purpose. Noto, Waid, Samnee are big names in comics, but they didn't guarantee big sales for Marvel. With B-List creators Marvel isn't paying high page rates and "losing" when sales are on the mediocre side.

[Snoop Dogg]

I don't doubt that the choice of lesser know creators was on purpose. Noto, Waid, Samnee are big names in comics, but they didn't guarantee big sales for Marvel. With B-List creators Marvel isn't paying high page rates and "losing" when sales are on the mediocre side.

I do think it's actually a good strat to foster new comics talent by getting them on projects like this, but notice how it is consistently more successful when you get a novelist with an install-base that's there entirely for that author, compared to TV/Movie talent where they are a part of projects that have many fans who don't care about following all of the different people who worked on the thing.

[Winterboy]

I think they could probably get Rucka to do another Black Widow story if they wanted, but I don't know if he's on the editor's radar.

I want to see Rucka writing another Black Widow MAX story, this time with Natasha.

Or maybe Garth Ennis...

bw MAX COVER.jpg

[Chris0013]

How Avengers: Endgame Writers Factored in Black Widow Movie

https://comicbook.com/marvel/2019/05...death-writers/

What's so difficult with bringing her back...the comics have established the Red Room clones its operatives...set the main movie in the past and wake her clone up in a credit scene.

[Agent Z]

by Yasmine Putri

[responsarbre]

What's so difficult with bringing her back...the comics have established the Red Room clones its operatives...set the main movie in the past and wake her clone up in a credit scene.

Ehhhhh, I'd rather not open the can of worms that is the clone plotline. Though part of me sees the MCU deciding to adapt all my least favorite story elements just to Personally Spite Me

spoilers:

Honestly, with how little attention her death got in the funeral scene, and the fact that they had Bruce say he tried to bring Natasha back with the Gauntlet, I could see them saying the Gauntlet did work at bringing her back. It's the easiest explanation they could go for, and they could do it at anytime.

end of spoilers