Over the past year or so, Black Widow has become one of my favorite comic book characters. Part of why is because of the beautiful art done by Phil Noto in his run of the comic. Noto’s style has a certain painterly quality rather than the traditional style that is associated with comic book art. His style is quite a departure from the classic design and style of Black Widow. Black Widow has had a certain look for most of her existence. This look follows the typical comic look of heavy black shading and lining with blue color to give the impression of a black suit.

Typically with comics, there are 2-3 artists for each series – a penciler who roughs out all the sketches of the panels, an inker that goes in and cleans up the pencils and adds the classic comic book black hatching, and a colorist who takes the inks and brings them to life with color.

In this series, Noto does every step of the art process which allows him much more freedom in his styling of the character. By choosing to avoid heavy black shading and outlines, his art is much softer looking than typical comics. He only uses heavy black in one scene to give the impression of it being night time.

Another part of Noto’s art is his panel layouts. In many instances, you see Black Widow literally jumping out of the page. On the page below, She does a backflip out of a panel and over the bad guy. As she flies over him, you see him upside down and even his text is shown upside down. This is something that I have never seen in a comic and think it is absolutely ingenious.