After producing a seminal stint on Daredevil from 2014 onwards, Mark Waid and Chris Samnee's next collaboration came as something of a pleasant surprise.
Black Widow, everyone's favourite spy who came in from the cold, was the subject of this new series, and by the time it ended in March, it had taken just about as many plaudits as that other series did the previous year.
Undoubtedly its best moment, however, came in January. Bucky and Nat - the item everyone celebrated during Ed Brubaker's own stint on Marvel's espionage books - had been apart for some time on account of some mind-wiping shenanigans. The implication in the series' tenth issue, however, restores the romance anew, reiterating Widow's own agency while returning one of Marvel's most formidable partnerships right to the forefront.
It wasn't the last time Waid and Samnee would work their magic in 2017, but as far as standout moments go, they don't get much better than this one.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
