White Widow #1 Review

Written by: Sarah Gailey
Art by: Alessandro Miracolo
Colors by: Matt Milla
Letters by: VC’s Travis Lanham
Cover art by: David Marquez, Rachelle Rosenberg
Cover price: $4.99
Release date: November 1, 2023

White Widow #1 catches up with Yelena Belova as she settles into the quiet town of Idylhaven to get away from it all. Unfortunately, a nefarious mega-corporation is moving into town and up to no good.

Is White Widow #1 Good?

Good gawd. White Widow #1 is what happens when you have a new writer who doesn’t understand the character he or she is writing. Every modern (read: bad) trope is present – from cutesy, jokey narration captions to LOL-so-random dialog – to make this first issue a bummer for anyone who’s a fan of White Widow in the comics or on screen.

Sarah Gailey’s script centers on Yelena Belova as she settles into the supposedly quiet town of Idylhaven. She spends her days consulting for other widow assassins remotely while she struggles to figure out the logistics of living a mundane life and relating to everyday people on a social level. When Yelena’s favorite local stores appear to be succumbing to buyout pressure from a mega-corporation called Armament, Yelena realizes something isn’t quite right.

If you haven’t picked up on the tone of the review so far, White Widow #1 did not leave a favorable impression. In fairness, the issue ends better than it starts with an intriguing mystery at the center of Yelena’s adventure. However, everything around the plot is where this comic runs into trouble.

What’s great about White Widow #1? A nefarious mega-corporation buying up a small town for some insidious purpose is nothing new, but Gailey lays the groundwork to make Armament’s intentions a decent mystery. In addition, Gailey constructs an eclectic cast of supporting characters to give the story multiple points of view.

What’s not so great about White Widow #1? Gailey’s dialog is horrendous. Unfunny jokes, stiff delivery, and weirdly distorted turns of phrases abound. Yes, Yelena naturally speaks with a thick Russian accent, but the nature of her upbringing and training requires that she be fluent in multiple languages, including English, so to see/hear Yelena struggle with common manners of speech is a bizarre misunderstanding of the character.

Worse, Yelena struggles to fit in with “normal people” despite her years of extensive training that allows her to blend in under any circumstance to complete her mission. Yelena isn’t an alien who doesn’t understand the nuance and complexity of human behavior. If anything, Yelena is an expert on human behavior as one of her many tactics for infiltration and spycraft.

In short, Gailey doesn’t understand Yelena as a character, so Yelena’s presentation here feels completely wrong-headed and off despite a decent mystery at the heart of the issue.

About The Reviewer: Gabriel Hernandez is the Publisher & EIC of ComicalOpinions.com, a comics review site dedicated to indie, small, and mid-sized publishers.

Follow @ComicalOpinions on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter

Bits and Pieces

White Widow #1 is a disappointing miss. At the heart of the story is an intriguing mystery, but Sarah Gailey’s characterization of Yelena Balova is so bizarrely wrong and off-putting that you can’t get into the plot. It’s clear from this issue that Gailey’s interpretation of White Widow is a “silly, cutesy assassin who can’t relate to people.” That’s a rookie mistake Marvel should have nipped in the bud.