Black Widow Venomous # 1

By Mark Rodriguez

Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow, has recently come in contact with a symbiote. In addition to the enhanced abilities symbiotes usually give their hosts, Natasha can send little symbiote spiders that can relay information back to her. After helping Hawkeye when he was framed for killing the Russian Minister, she now goes off on her new adventures while adjusting to her symbiote.

 

The issue opens with one of Black Widow's symbiote spiders sneaking towards the Alchemax building and one of the guards steps on it. He turns to see Black Widow leaping towards him as tons of symbiote spiders crawl all over him. 

 

 

Black Widow tells the symbiote to hurry since Alchemax only has a vulnerability once a month. The symbiote spiders look into the guard's mind and sees that the people inside are conducting painful experiments on symbiotes. Black Widow tells the symbiote to hurry once again since more gunmen are coming. The symbiote apologizes and leaves. The man aim their laser pointers on Widow, saying she is on her own. Widow cracks her knuckles and pops her neck, saying it's fine by her.

Sometime later at Natasha's Safe House # 115, she returns and calls out the symbiote. The symbiote crawls out from the shadows and says Natasha is angry. She says she's not angry but she does want to talk, especially since it left her up the creek. The symbiote apologizes and asks if she is alright. Widow says the guards weren't a problem for her, but there was another thing. She faced a huge monstrosity called the Symbiotech. It was too strong and Natasha wasn't able to complete the mission.

 

 

Black Widow asks the symbiote why it abandoned her. The symbiote says Alchemax has being doing horrible things to their kind. When it touched the guard, they felt his personal enjoyment as they burned another symbiote to death from the inside out. Widow determines that Alchemax must have K43 and this makes this mission even more important.

Black Widow tells the symbiote that if they're going to work together it needs to be an asset to her. She needs it to train in the Red Room like she did. The symbiote says it can tap into her memories. Widow says it's not the same and it needs actual muscle memory. She tells the symbiote it has to pass her tests or it will have to find a new host.

Black Widow lets the symbiote enter her memories of training in the Red Room. Natasha remembers that the Red Room broke more girls than it did graduate them. It hardened them and forged them in fire, like steel. She was so young and her teacher was so harsh. Natasha does a forward flip as the symbiote gets off her and forms itself as an individual. She says the first lesson is for it to anticipate her moves. The symbiote thinks it will be easy until it realizes it can't read her mind.

Natasha kicks the symbiote to spider bits and says her trained for years to protect her mind against telepaths and psychic assaults. She helps the symbiote back up and tells it to try again. Natasha would constantly knock the symbiote down with different attacks and ask it to try again. This coincides with her own training, as she was also constantly knocked down and asked to get back up by her own trainer. We see an overlay of both the young Natasha and the symbiote yelling out to stop.

Natasha pauses and realizes that she forgot that her training didn't have to be that way, and she can do better. The symbiote asks if she passed the test. Natasha says not yet, she has a lot to learn but not in the way that she had to. Natasha says the Red Room isn't the only training she remembers. She also had friends that helped her over the years. Natasha brings in Spider-Woman, Hawkeye, Winter Soldier now called Revolution, Nick Fury and agent Phil Coulson. She asks the crew who's first.

Revolution goes first and spars with the symbiote. Widow remarks that the symbiote relies too much on her own abilities, but she won't always be around. Revolution punches right through the symbiote, which isn't a problem due to its gooey composition. The symbiote says it now has Bucky, but he says not to be so sure. Revolution turns his metal arm into a blade and slices it in half.

Nick Fury is next, and Natasha says she learned a lot from him, but he can be intense at times. Fury tells the symbiote to always keep both eyes open. He says not to trust anyone or the symbiote can lose an eye too. Either that or an ex wife can try to kill you, or anyone could be a Skrull in disguise. Fury notices that the symbiote is writing all of this down. Fury smacks the notepad out of its hand and says to never put anything in writing.

Spider-Woman is next and helps the symbiote move just like her as they practice acrobatics. The symbiote tries to keep up, bending itself in unnatural ways. Spider-Woman says that would work when its on its own, but unless she's bonded to someone like Miss Marvel or Mister Fantastic, regular humans don't move that way.

Natasha explains that these aren't who her friends and colleagues are, but how she sees them. The exception is Hawkeye, since Clint really is that arrogant. Hawkeye fires off an arrow that goes over the symbiote's head. The symbiote asked if that is all, and the arrow comes back and hits it on the back of the neck. Clint says it's his boomerang arrow.

Phil Coulson is next and he teaches the symbiote to be more unassuming. Phil says when people think of spies, they think of James Bond, but he is too flashy. The more humble and meek one appears to be, the more people will underestimate you and that can be used as an advantage. He says one can be a fly on the wall and the symbiote takes this literally turning into a big spider. Coulson freaks out and says he hates spiders. The symbiote says it heard that a lot.

Natasha's friends head off and the symbiote asks if she is trained enough. Natasha says there is one more test. They fight it out, this time with the symbiote doing a lot better. Natasha asks how it likes her tutors, and the symbiote says it is trying to concentrate. Nastasha says it has to learn to deal with distractions. Fights are chaos and you can't lose your target in the fray. Natasha adds if they ever get to fight Spider-Man, he never shuts up.

Natasha asks the symbiote if it had decided what its name is. The symbiote says they are Widow. Natasha agrees that together they are Widow, but asks the symbiote about its own name. The symbiote has no answer. Natasha says to think about it while they decide on a new costume. The symbiote spiders crawl all over her and take shape. Natasha is pleased with her new look.

 

 

Later on, the Black Widow returns to Alchemax as she webs up the guards. She feels that this time things will work out better. As Natasha lands on the ground, she compliments Sliver on the landing. They take down the guards and now the Symbiotech shows up. Natasha says that was the one that gave her trouble before, and Sliver says they can take him. 

As the Symbiotech lunges forward, Black Widow slides underneath and gets behind him. Widow shoots off symbiote spiders from her gauntlets. The spiders crawl all over the robot, making it short out as Widow runs past it.

The alarm goes off and the scientists inside know there's a breach. Black Widow smashes her way through a window and webs up one of the scientists before she can get away with the others. Sliver says the woman is hers and demands to know where they keep the chemicals that kill their kinds. Natasha tells Sliver to stand down and asks the woman about the symbiote-killing serum. The woman points her in the right direction.

Natasha tells Sliver to stay on the mission. Sliver says the woman could know more. Natasha tells it to let her go. She explains that this is the long game. She understands that Sliver wants revenge, but killing a random lab tech won't change anything. She also says they're an Avenger and they can't just go around killing people. She promises that they'll make this right. Sliver tells Natasha that they believe her. 

Black Widow gets her hand on the serum and declares that they got what they came for. Now they'll have to get this to someone they trust.

My Thoughts-

So Natasha has had the symbiote for a bit, but it seems they were never on the same page until now. Two things were a bit confusing on this story though. The first one was where exactly the symbiote went when it left Natasha earlier on. I thought it went into business for itself and went deeper into the building, while leaving Natasha behind to get in the hard way.... but apparently it just ran home?

The other part was when Widow was going to give the symbiote Red Room training. The symbiote offered to just tap into her memories, but Natasha insisted it needed to develop actual muscle memory. But then it seems all of the training takes place within Natasha's mind anyway. Spider-Woman and the others were never really there, but were based on how Natasha sees them. I guess having the symbiote 'live' through these events in Natasha's mind is more helpful than just seeing her memories. When Natasha specifically mentions muscle memory I felt the symbiote needed to physically spar with Spider-Woman and the crew.

I liked seeing how Natasha compared how she initially trained the symbiote to how she was trained as a child. I like seeing that Natasha was able to pull back and realized that she didn't have to be as cruel a trainer as she one she was forced to endure. Like she said, the Red Room did end up breaking more girls than it did making them in successful Black Widows.

I learned a few more things about certain characters from the vast Marvel Universe. Bucky Barnes now goes by Revolution instead of Winter Soldier. I also forgot that Coulson was still in the comics. He was such a popular character in the early MCU movies that he started appearing in the comics and cartoons. I haven't heard about him for a while, especially since he hasn't appeared in movies since the Captain Marvel movie back in 2019 and Agents of SHIELD ended years ago.

It was also cool to see the symbiote think about its own name. Usually symbiotes bond with their host and they both share a name like Venom and Carnage, but we never go into what the symbiote's own name is. Apparently in recent comics, Venom told its current host its actual name, which was something that couldn't be pronounced in the human language. Despite that, I don't think Venom's name was actually spelled out.

The story will continue with a three-part Venom War tie-in about Black Widow. The overall event seems to have a 'there can only be one' element with either the several symbiote characters or that only one person can be the host of Venom himself. This story though, adds the fact that Alchemax has developed some sort of serum that can actively kill symbiotes. I'm not completely sure about getting the actual Venom War event issues, but I did grab all three of the Black Widow related tie-in issues. We'll see how Natasha's adventures continue with Sliver.