This September, the world of Black Widow is getting a bit of a change as writer Duane Swierczynski and artist Manuel Garcia take over the title from the current team of Marjorie Liu and Daniel Acuna. CBR sat down with the duo to talk about their plans for Widow’s world and you can check out a couple snippets from the interview below:

CBR News: Duane, What was it about the character of the Black Widow and the world she inhabits that made you want to take on this assignment?

Duane Swierczynski: I’m a huge spy fiction nerd, from “Three Days of the Condor” to Greg Rucka’s “Queen & Country” to Trevanian’s Jonathan Hemlock novels to “Alias” to Donald Hamilton’s Matt Helm novels (and sure, Ian Fleming’s Bond novels as well, but Helm could kick Bond’s ass in a country minute) to Olen Steinhauer’s “The Tourist” and…well, many, many others.

Manuel, for the past few years at Marvel, your work seems to be pretty much about characters who are antiheroes or sort of walk the line between good and evil and light and dark. Like Pete Wisdom, Ares, and Mystique. The Widow is a character who definitely seems to fall into that category. What is it about these characters that makes them so interesting to you as an artist?

Manuel Garcia: To tell you the truth, I’ve thought about that myself, but well, in the end the most important thing is that they are all very interesting characters. I suppose they probably fit well with my style as an artist, which I think is also somewhat dark and dirty. Anyway, I tend to feel more comfortable with these kind of characters than with the more traditional clean cut superhero ones. I like to give my comics a realistic feel, and these characters and their situations make that easier.

You guys are picking up “Black Widow” after Marjorie Liu and Daniel Acuna’s introductory arc. How connected is your story to Marjorie’s?

Swierczynski: While Marjorie hasn’t left any unfinished business for me, I’m definitely following her lead in keeping Black Widow a suspenseful, gritty and wild book.

Taking a look at the art, it’s nice to see a little more of a realistic look to the character. Not that I don’t like Acuna’s art, which is fantastic, but having a similar style to a book like Captain America will undoubtedly give the book a much more gritty and real-world look similar to Alex Maleev’s work on the recent Spider-Woman book.

If you’re interested in checking out the full interview with the upcoming creative team, check out CBR. Black Widow #6, which is the first issue with Swierczynski and Garcia, is in stores this September.

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About this writer (Mike Haynes)

Mike is the creator and Comics Editor for Panels of Awesome. He gets far too excited when people start talking about books or games and owns more action figures than a person of his age probably should. He is currently the co-host of the comic book podcast Longbox Radio and video game review show Video Game Pipe Dream.

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