• Written by: Sarah Gailey
• Art by: Alessandro Miracolo
• Colors by: Matt Milla
• Letters by: VC’s Travis Lanham
• Cover art by: David Marquez (cover A)
• Cover price: $3.99
• Release date: December 13, 2023

White Widow #2 finds Yelena Bolova slowly acclimating to life in the suburbs when the mysterious company named Armament shifts from property buying to the recruitment of Yelena’s friends.

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Is White Widow #2 Good?

Oof! White Widow #2 is a perfect example of the writing, humor, and character work that’s currently putting the MCU Phase 4 in the dumps as the worst money-losing effort in Marvel history. If you want to get to know White Widow through terrible jokes, Twitter-levels of human interaction, and a complete lack of grounded sense, Sarah Gailey is giving you all you can stand… and more.

When last we left Yelena Bolova, aka White Widow, her new career as a consultant/coach for assassins in the quiet town of Idylhaven took a turn for the worse when a mysterious corporation, Armament, appeared to be pushing people out of their homes and businesses to buy up the local property. Yelena also started to make a connection between Armament tech and the cybernetic augmentations of rival assassins.

Now, Yelena spends the day at a Farmers’ Market with her obligatorily diverse group of neighbors when she learns Armament is recruiting people for jobs and internships. When Yelena learns her neighbor, Griffin is considering an internship due to an interest in cybernetics, she asks Griffin to examine a cybernetic eye recovered in the last issue’s tussle. Later, Griffin confirms the eye is Armament tech, triggering a cascade of visits by assassins who do repo work and eviction notices.

“Huh? Eviction notices?” you might puzzle. Yes, that’s right. Yelena is going to war with Armament because she broke the terms of her lease and is getting evicted. That’s the level of conflict Marvel is using to showcase/elevate their (2nd? 3rd?) greatest assassin.

What’s great about White Widow #2? If nothing else, Miracolo’s art is good to great, especially in the creative use of color for the panel layouts. Plus, Miracolo’s action sequences are energetic.

What’s not so great about White Widow #2? For one of the world’s top assassins, trained in multiple languages, cultures, and forms of combat, Gailey crafts a White Widow shockingly ignorant about the country she’s living in and how to blend in. For whatever reason, Gailey writes Yelena as an alien visiting from another planet who has no idea how to interact with people, and it’s a bummer to see a potentially cool character so egregiously misrepresented.

Further, the opening prologue flashes back to a fight with Wolverine that doesn’t have any connection to the present, so Gailey is wasting page space on irrelevant fluff.

Further still, Yelena’s beef with Armament seems oddly unnecessary when she has the connection to call on any number of covert organizations and hero teams to investigate the clandestine dealings of Armament. If you’re going to invent a problem, it should be a believable one. This problem is not believable.

In short, bad character work, poor use of page space, and an unbelievable antagonist make for a painfully unentertaining reading experience.

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

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Bits and Pieces

White Widow #2 takes everything you dislike about the MCU Phase 4 and cranks it up to 11 with terrible “I don’t know how to speak human” humor, a conflict that doesn’t fit the world, and an antagonist that doesn’t make sense. If you’re pinching your pennies, this is the comic to skip.

4/10