Review - Black Widow: The Name of the Rose

Following a brutal attack that left her on the brink of death, Black Widow is hospitalized. When a data storage device containing classified information is discovered inside of her, she is declared a traitor. Knowing that she’s being framed, Black Widow must escape and uncover the truth in order to clear her name.

Black Widow: The Name of the Rose collects Black Widow #1-5, written by Marjorie Liu and illustrated by Daniel Acuña.

The Name of the Rose is an elaborate espionage thriller that digs deep into Black Widow’s past. She is nearly killed, framed, and has a hit put out on her life by an unknown force. The key to unraveling this mystery is a single black rose, which is an obscure reference to something from her past. Black Widow must evade the government and overcome attacks from the world’s deadliest assassins (like Lady Bullseye!), so that she can find the puppet master who is pulling the strings. In some ways, this narrative feels reminiscent of a lot of prior stories starring Black Widow. It relies upon her past to build intrigue and to fill out the supporting cast. It reads like a more sophisticated version of Deadly Origin, but isn’t quite as intriguing and meaningful as Homecoming.

Despite the somewhat predictable narrative elements, Marjorie Liu proves herself to be incredibly adept at writing Black Widow. She’s still the icy spy that we know her as, but Liu also adds in some humour to the character and allows us to see her vulnerability. What stands out to me is that, for much of this story, Black Widow is gravely injured and she pushes on regardless of that. There’s a particularly memorable sequence where she and Elektra get into a physical altercation. Black Widow holds her ground and maintains her steely façade, but after Elektra is gone we see just how much pain she’s in. While Liu employs figures from Black Widow’s past to act as supporting characters, she doesn’t strictly rely on former lovers like most other writers do. Wolverine plays semi-important role in the story, which gives us an opportunity to see the unique dynamic that exists between the two. They have a mutual respect for one another that’s built on friendship rather than romantic feelings. It’s refreshing.

Daniel Acuña’s art is a perfect match for this story. The paint-like quality to his work gives the story an almost vintage feeling, which suits this world of espionage and intrigue quite well. In fact, it almost gives the story a noir kind of aesthetic. This is especially evident in how Black Widow is depicted. She looks like a film noir femme fatale, complete with a variation of the Veronica Lake hairstyle. There are a lot of characters featured in this arc and he does them all justice, with some standouts being Elektra and Wolverine. Beyond that, it’s worth highlighting the gorgeous usage of colour. There’s a lot of red and black throughout, which seems to be an obvious reference not only to our lead heroine but also to roses (the black rose being a pivotal plot element). The vibrancy of the red that reoccurs offers a lot of punch to the otherwise muted palette, while there’s some really neat contrast due to the shine placed on Black Widow’s iconic catsuit (since most of the colours used are matte).

Black Widow: The Name of the Rose is a worthy addition to any Black Widow fan’s collection. It’s visually stunning and features some incredibly strong writing from the award-winning Marjorie Liu. Though the story itself may not be the most original, the quality of the character work and action sequences are more than enough to make up for it.

RATING: B