In Black Widow #7 written by Chris Samnee and Mark Waid, now that Natasha knows the Weeping Lion’s secret, she’s in control of his very particular set of skills. Natasha plans to use him to destroy the Red Room’s reincarnation, the Dark Room. But she’ll have to face Recluse, the daughter of the Red Room’s headmistress, who’s fixated on killing Natasha to prove her worth.

In this issue Samnee and Waid’s writing is pretty good, especially when they stick to telling the story and stay away from the geek club references. The story can sell itself and the pop culture references often seem out of place and jolt the reader from the story at hand. When they stick to the story they’ve got something great going for them.

Chris Samnee also provided the artwork for this issue which means that the art and story match up perfectly and there is a sense of oneness with the direction of this part of the arc. There is a nice little separation in the styles used with the flashback sequence using a more old school graphic style and the present panels are more stylized making the switch between time periods easy to recognize.

Overall this is issue is a nicely put together issue but, it has some cohesiveness problems at points. It’s not a bad issue and serves as a nice placeholder to fill in story blanks & move the story arc as a whole along.There was unfortunately not enough meat or Natasha to make it a real

There was unfortunately not enough meat or Natasha to make it a real page-turner but, I still hold out hope for the next issue because the arc must go on.

Story: Chris Samnee and Mark Waid Art: Chris Samnee
Story: 8.4 Art: 9.0 Overall: 8.7 Recommendation: Read

Marvel provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review