In July 2010, Marvel Comics announced that
Hawkeye & Mockingbird writer
Jim McCann and
Black Widow writer
Duane Swierczynski will be collaborating on
Widow Maker, a four-part crossover that will take place in
Hawkeye & Mockingbird #7-8 and
Black Widow #9-10 starting in December 2010 and running through January 2011. The idea for a crossover was originally incepted when the writers found out that their respective titles would be launching around the same time. McCann explained, "It's a logical crossover; there is a shared history between Hawkeye and Black Widow, the books operate in the world of super hero super spies, and the fans have been asking for this since the books were announced. So, give them what they want!" When coming up with ways that Black Widow, Hawkeye and Mockingbird could all interact, McCann threw out the idea of revealing the origins of
Ronin and introducing a new Ronin. In the comic book the new Ronin surrounds himself with the
Dark Ocean Society, of which McCann did extensive research stating, "I actually did a lot of research for this in Japanese spy craft and secret societies. The Dark Ocean Society in Japanese is actually called Genyōsha, but we couldn't call it that in Marvel because we have something called
Genosha and it might confuse everybody". McCann also researched
Japan–Russia relations for the comic book's setting on the
disputed Kuril Islands revealing that the week that
Widowmaker #1 came out, talks broke down between Russia and Japan over the real life Kuril Islands. In November 2010 it was reported that
Widowmaker will instead be solicited as a stand-alone miniseries starting in December 2010, following the cancellation of
Hawkeye & Mockingbird in issue number six. The report also came with an announcement that
Widowmaker will be followed up by another four issue miniseries,
Hawkeye: Blindspot. ==Characters==