Black Widow And The Punisher Cross Paths In Friend From Foe This August

One is Marvel’s foremost super spy and a high profile member of the Avengers. The other is a deadly vigilante with one of the coolest symbols in all of comics. And when Black Widow and the Punisher end up on the trail of the same crime syndicate, you just know the result is going to be a combustible mix — particularly when Crossbones and his Skull Squad are thrown in for good measure.

That’s the set-up for “Friend From Foe,” a crossover that will take place this August in the pages of Black Widow #9 and The Punisher #9 (so it should be easy to remember!). Both are writter by Nathan Edmondson, with art by Phil Noto on the former and Mitch Gerads on the latter.

“Both stories led us to a place where a crossover was possible at just about the same time,” Edmondson said in an interview with Marvel.com. “We knew fans were clamoring for it from the beginning, but we didn’t want to rush into it – when it was a natural time, we came up with a really unique way to launch into it.

“Frank and Natasha are a really interesting pair to combine together. On the one hand, they seem to exist in the same kind of heroic/antiheroic space in the Marvel Universe, but at some point the similarities stop and the disparity begins, and the tug and pull between those two ends will be at play here.”

Odds are that “tug and pull” may involve some bullets. The showdown awaits later this summer.