Black Widow (Natasha Romanova)

• 1. Introduction

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  Black Widow, whose full name is Natalia Alianovna Romanova, first appeared in 1964 as a Soviet spy sent to seduce Tony Stark. Editor Stan Lee, scripter Don Rico and artist Don Heck created her for Tales of Suspense #52. On that first page she was a seductress, infatuated with Stark's looks and wealth and easily distracted by jewelry. Nothing in that debut suggested a lasting hero.

  Over the following decades she defected, joined the Avengers, partnered with Daredevil and eventually led her own comic series. She has no superpowers. Yet she has been killed and revived, brainwashed more than once, and told that her own memories were fake.

  This documentary asks how a minor villain turned into one of Marvel's most durable characters. It asks what the Soviet Red Room did to her, why her stories keep circling the question of who she really is, and what a film role did for a character who spent long stretches out of print.

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• 2. From Enemy To Ally

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  Tales of Suspense #64 in 1965 handed Black Widow her first costume and her first true villain's job. The Soviet government forced her to keep working for them and supplied a blue bodysuit of fishnet-style webbing, a cape, and a mask designed to resemble the one Hawkeye wore. Gloves that let her stick to walls came with it, along with the weaponized bracelets that later became her main weapon. She went on to be the villain in five Iron Man stories, all within a span of twelve issues. Comics historian Brian Cronin has suggested that her name nodded to Natasha Fatale from The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends.

  Avengers #29-30 in 1966 turned her around. In that story she manipulated Hawkeye, Power Man and Swordsman into doing her bidding. Then, recovering from Soviet brainwashing, she reformed out of love for Hawkeye and allied with the Avengers. Her defection placed her among several Marvel villains who became good by leaving the Soviet Union for the United States. It also coincided with Marvel's attempt at a more nuanced portrayal of Soviets and the Cold War.

  Avengers #43 in 1967 gave her a husband. In that issue she discovered that the secret identity of the Red Guardian was Alexei, a man she had believed dead. The story explained that his supposed death was the reason she trained as a spy in the first place. After her redemption she became associated with the fictional intelligence agency S.H.I.E.L.D., though the Avengers did not trust her right away.

  Her next appearance, in 1970, would end her romance with Hawkeye and leave her on her own.

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• 3. The Black Costume

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  John Romita Sr. designed the look that finally defined her for The Amazing Spider-Man #86 in 1970. It gave her a black costume and long red hair. Romita based the costume on the 1940s Miss Fury comic strip. Before that makeover, Avengers #76 had ended her relationship with Hawkeye, who was then called Goliath, which made her an independent character.

  Amazing Adventures followed the same year with a run of Black Widow stories, shared with the Inhumans. It was Marvel's first series led by a female superhero. The book portrayed her as a wealthy jet setter who doubled as a crime-fighter. Gary Friedrich wrote the first issues and Gene Colan illustrated them, and the stories dealt with political issues.

  Roy Thomas and then Gerry Conway steered the series away from politics and toward melodrama. They developed her bond with her father figure, Ivan Petrovich, who worked as her chauffeur. A recurring gag had her changing clothes in the backseat of her car while warning him, "eyes front, Ivan". Amazing Adventures ran for eight issues, and then she was removed so the Inhumans could have a standalone series.

  Within a year she would find a new home in Daredevil's comic.

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• 4. Life With Daredevil

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  Gerry Conway brought Black Widow into Daredevil as a supporting character and called the romance he built "a way to re-energize the title". She joined in Daredevil #81 in 1971. Gene Colan drew her with an emphasis on acrobatics and long red hair, and Conway credited him with creating the "first empowered sexy babe" in comics. Issue #82 gave her a last name, Romanoff. Her story line there saw her framed for killing a supervillain, with Daredevil's friend Foggy Nelson leading the prosecution.

  San Francisco became the setting, and the couple became the series' main focus. Marvel handled the pairing carefully, since an unmarried couple living together might provoke backlash. They lived on separate floors, and Ivan lived with them.

  Criticism that Conway's treatment of her was sexist led him to change course in Daredevil #91 in 1972. From then on she stood up for herself when she felt neglected. The series was retitled Daredevil and the Black Widow the following issue.

  Steve Gerber took over with issue #97 in 1972 and moved the focus back to Daredevil's heroics, responding to weak sales. Her name left the title after issue #107 in 1973. Jenny Blake Isabella began writing with issue #118, felt the dynamic harmed both characters, and set out to split them apart. In issue #124 in 1975, Black Widow left, saying she felt overshadowed and that he robbed her of her independence. Daredevil kept a standalone series, and she did not.

  Isabella then wrote The Champions and kept Black Widow on the roster, partly hoping to stop another writer from reuniting her with Daredevil. Editor Len Wein had required the book to include a female character. The seventh issue, "The Man Who Created the Black Widow", introduced Yuri Bezukhov, the son of Ivan Petrovich. Isabella wanted to reveal Ivan as Natasha's biological father, but she left Marvel after that issue. The Champions ended after 16 issues.

  The couple reunited in 1978. Daredevil was domineering, they were sometimes physically abusive toward each other, and Black Widow grew dependent on him. In 1980 he left her for Heather Glenn. When that relationship became unhealthy, Foggy Nelson enlisted Black Widow to break it up, and she and Daredevil remained friends who relied on each other as heroes.

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• 5. Red Room Origins

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  Stalingrad is where her fictional biography begins, with an infant thrown from a burning building and found by the soldier Ivan Petrovich. He raised her, and he eventually became a cyborg and went insane, forcing her to kill him. In 1941 the Hand tried to kidnap and brainwash her, but Captain America and Wolverine rescued her. She married Alexei Shostakov, and the KGB faked his death to push her toward spycraft.

  The Red Room, a Soviet spy training facility, augmented her through biotechnology. The process brought her body to its physical peak and slowed cellular degeneration, so she could stay in her prime for decades. It also gave her false memories, including the belief that she had once been a ballerina. Later she learned that there had been many Black Widows and that the KGB had implanted her memories of life before espionage.

  Her skills are all trained, not inborn. She has expert knowledge of espionage and is a master of hand-to-hand combat, with training in aikido, boxing, judo, karate and savate. She can use most weapons and operate most vehicles. She is a gymnast who learned ballet in the Red Room, and she speaks Chinese, English, French, German and Russian, among other languages. Only in the "Venom War" storyline does she gain the powers of a symbiote host.

  Galvanic sensors tied to the muscles in her wrists operate the bracelets that hide her equipment. When her main design was set in 1970, they held tear gas pellets, a "widow's line" wire for swinging between buildings, and a "widow's bite" electroshock weapon. The bite has a range of 20 feet and can emit up to 30,000 volts. The bracelets also work as radio transmitters. She sometimes carries explosives in her belt, and microscopic suction cups in her fingers and feet cling to surfaces with an electrostatic charge.

  When Devin Grayson prepared to write her in 1999, she decided the character needed "tremendous strength and resolve" to have an identity of her own. That need is built into the job, since a spy constantly takes on false personas. She seeks to right the wrongs of her earlier life, yet she is more willing to kill than most heroes and has been called emotionally cold. She refuses to wear a mask, which she treats as a statement of confidence, although her early crime-fighting stories show her unsure about letting others see her face.

  Her relationships keep pressing on that question. Bucky Barnes was one of her instructors in the Red Room while he was the Winter Soldier, and the two were romantically involved. Yelena Belova, another Black Widow, is her counterpart and rival. Yelena's relative youth makes Natasha question her own place in the role as she ages.

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• 6. Cold War Shadows

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  Marvel built Black Widow as a foil for Iron Man, who stood for American values, and her Soviet origin made the Cold War her defining backdrop. As a communist spy she embodied the danger of the Soviet Union. Her trade of lies and deceit also contrasted with Iron Man's nobility. She was surprised to see him risk his life to save Soviets, as if such morality were unfamiliar to her homeland. When she tried to stop working for her handlers, they first threatened her parents and then brainwashed her, a stand-in for the Soviet image of a country without liberty.

  Her surname, Romanova, invites comparison to the Romanov family killed during the Russian Revolution. That echo links her to suffering at Soviet hands. Her superiors were drawn as evil, and she feared them more than she feared her enemies. Marvel usually drew Soviets as brutish and ugly, but she was beautiful, which suggested innocence and made her more appealing to readers. Femme fatale characters often come from Russia, and her rejection of American gender roles in the 1960s reflected the otherness she carried as a Soviet agent.

  Ballet adds another layer, since it is strongly associated with Russia and with discipline in the Russian Empire through the military and the royal court. Mixing ballet with military training draws on the cultural competition of the Cold War. Images of Black Widow beside rows of identical ballerinas suggest the lack of individuality she faced in the Soviet Union. The Red Room's later creation of clones of her pushes that idea further.

  Marvel's first solo female superhero was Black Widow herself. Unlike most superheroines of the 1960s, she was not a love interest or a female spin-off of a male hero, and she was not written as a mother or homemaker. She also fought her enemies hand to hand. She arrived while a growing feminist movement was competing with traditional femininity, and her portrayals swung between the two by the 1980s. Her danger to men echoes the female black widow spider, which kills and eats its mate, and her first appearance likened her to the exotic dancer and alleged spy Mata Hari.

  Still, the men around her defined her through most of the 20th century. As a villain she acted to honor her presumed-dead husband, and her ties to Iron Man and Hawkeye shaped her choices. She reformed for love of Hawkeye, with whom she inverted the usual roles, holding power while he played the dependent partner. This fit a 1960s pattern in which femme fatale characters were redeemed through a romantic interest. From the 1970s through the 1990s she suffered what was called the "widow's curse", unable to keep a relationship with a man because they kept dying.

  The Black Widow program also modified her body to make her infertile and give her a permanent hourglass figure. Daredevil's artwork put her sex appeal on display, characters routinely commented on her attractiveness, and she often wore revealing clothing out of costume. The series also relegated her to being a damsel in distress. She belonged to a 1970s trend in which strong women were drawn as traditionally attractive, as writers tried to please both a male audience and the feminist movement.

  Even her romance with Hercules, a fellow Champion, went nowhere, because as an immortal he had no interest in a long-term relationship with a mortal.

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• 7. Many Returns

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  Bizarre Adventures #25 in 1981 gave Black Widow a solo story under the issue's "Lethal Ladies" theme. Ralph Macchio wrote it and Paul Gulacy drew it. She infiltrated a Soviet arms depot in South Africa led by her former instructor. Macchio steered away from elements that felt like James Bond and looked to John le Carré instead, so readers "really didn't know who were the good guys and the bad guys". In Daredevil #187 in 1982, Frank Miller redesigned her with a gray leotard and shorter hair, a more casual and masculine look.

  Marvel Fanfare #10-13 in 1983-1984 carried her next solo tale, written by Macchio and illustrated by George Pérez with other artists. They had started it in 1978, and its planned publication was cancelled twice, first in Marvel Premiere and then in Marvel Spotlight. She chased Ivan for S.H.I.E.L.D. and found he had been brainwashed. Macchio made explicit what comics usually left vague, showing that she killed when necessary and once got information from another character by having sex with him.

  The Marvel Graphic Novel line featured her three times in the 1990s. Black Widow: The Coldest War in 1990 was the 61st entry, and it had her tricked into believing her husband was alive. Punisher/Black Widow: Spinning Doomsday's Web in 1992 was the 74th entry, pairing her with the Punisher against Malum. Daredevil/Black Widow: Abattoir in 1993 was the 75th and last entry. Fury/Black Widow: Death Duty in 1995 was a separate graphic novel in which she teamed with Night Raven.

  Iron Man #269 in 1991 reunited her with a black jumpsuit and a partnership with Iron Man under writer John Byrne and artist Paul Ryan. She rejoined the Avengers with its new roster in Avengers #343 in 1992 and became its leader for a time. In Daredevil #362 in 1997, she grew more vengeful after the Onslaught event apparently killed her Avengers allies. Scott Lobdell and Randy Green wrote and drew the arc "The Fire Next Time" in Journey into Mystery #517-519 in 1998.

  Inhumans #5 in 1999 introduced Yelena Belova, who took the Black Widow name. The two rivals clashed in a three-issue Black Widow limited series that year, written by Devin Grayson and illustrated by J. G. Jones. It told one story, "The Itsy-Bitsy Spider", under the Marvel Knights imprint. It was the first comic series with Black Widow as its sole main character. Grayson wrote a second three-issue miniseries in 2001 with co-writer Greg Rucka and artist Scott Hampton.

  Black Widow: Homecoming arrived in 2004, written by Richard K. Morgan with Bill Sienkiewicz and Goran Parlov. It ran six issues, simplified her backstory into a consistent sequence of events, and gave readers a more violent Natasha. Morgan's six-issue follow-up in 2006, The Things They Say About Her, found her on the run from S.H.I.E.L.D. Black Widow: Deadly Origin ran in 2009-2010, written by Paul Cornell with Tom Raney and John Paul Leon. It retold her history through flashbacks and gave her more modest costumes than her early appearances.

  A new volume began in 2010 with the "Name of the Rose" arc, written by Marjorie Liu and drawn by Daniel Acuña with film noir influences. Nathan Edmondson and Phil Noto launched a series in 2014 under the Marvel Now! branding. It was more introspective than action-driven, and at 20 issues it was the longest-running Black Widow series, ending in 2015 with Secret Wars. Mark Waid and Chris Samnee followed in 2016 for twelve issues, exploring her S.H.I.E.L.D. work and Red Room past.

  Kelly Thompson and artist Elena Casagrande began a 15-issue series in 2020. Its first arc, "The Ties that Bind", showed a brainwashed Natasha who believed she lived a domestic life as a mother. Its second, "I Am the Black Widow", returned her memory and gave her a team of sidekicks and partners. Its last, "Die by the Blade", sent her against a human-trafficking ring.

  Venom #26 in 2023 transformed her again, making her the host of a symbiote. CAFU designed her new costume, based on Venom's look. She became a major character in the "Venom War" storyline, introduced in the one-shot Black Widow: Venomous by Erica Schultz and Luciano Vecchio. The same pair created the three-issue limited series Venom War: Venomous in late 2024.

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• 8. Screen And Reception

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  Angie Bowie wanted, in 1975, to make a film or television series starring herself as Black Widow. The idea came over lunch with Stan Lee, and he sold her the film rights for one dollar. She had costumes made and cast Ben Carruthers as Daredevil. She could not raise funding, and production never went beyond test photography.

  In the 1980s, after the success of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, a Black Widow show was considered as a possible follow-up. A 1996 television film for Fox Broadcasting Company, written by Mel Friedmen and Christopher Cosby, made her a magazine publisher with a secret life as a crime-fighter. She fought a crime syndicate called Octopus that had killed her father. Later, Marvel Studios and Lionsgate Films worked on a film written by David Hayter, but Lionsgate backed out after several action movies starring women performed poorly in the mid-2000s.

  Scarlett Johansson finally brought the character to the screen in Iron Man 2 in 2010, as a supporting role. She played her again in The Avengers in 2012, Captain America: The Winter Soldier in 2014, Avengers: Age of Ultron in 2015, Captain America: Civil War in 2016, Avengers: Infinity War in 2018 and Avengers: Endgame in 2019. Black Widow in 2021 gave her the lead. Lake Bell voiced the character in What If...? from 2021 to 2024.

  Laura Bailey is the voice most often heard in animation and games, including Avengers Assemble in 2013, Lego Marvel Super Heroes in 2013, Marvel's Avengers in 2020 and Marvel Rivals in 2024. Olivia d'Abo voiced her in Ultimate Avengers in 2006, Lena Headey in The Super Hero Squad Show in 2009, and Vanessa Marshall in The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes in 2010.

  Before Iron Man 2, Black Widow was not well known in popular culture. The film's focus on her as a spy rather than a superhero shaped how comics portrayed her over the following years. Her popularity brought new books, such as Black Widow and the Marvel Girls in 2010, created by Salvador Espin, Veronica Gandini, Takeshi Miyazawa and Paul Tobin. She also became a focus for calls to give female comic characters more prominence.

  Darren Franich of Entertainment Weekly called her "THE Avengers B-lister, full stop". Andrea Towers of Polygon said her grounded values of empathy and loyalty kept her relevant despite inconsistent publication. Writer Gerry Conway has said his work with Black Widow inspired him to create Cinder and Ashe for DC Comics.

  Psychologist and popular culture writer Sherry Ginn praised her as a strong female role model. Other commentators challenged that, pointing to her history as a villain and her portrayal as a damsel in distress. Critics have called her portrayals sexist because of revealing outfits and subservient roles, especially in Conway's early Daredevil work. Nathan Edmondson and Scarlett Johansson have praised her later costume as empowering and as giving her legitimacy. Alan Kistler of The Mary Sue called her 1960s costume "a wee bit silly, even for the Silver Age of comics".

  Critics celebrated "The Itsy-Bitsy Spider" in 1999 and "Homecoming" in 2004-2005 for their handling of the spy thriller genre. The 1983 Marvel Fanfare appearances and Deadly Origin in 2010 won praise for their art, with Deadly Origin standing out for the contrast between Tom Raney's and John Paul Leon's styles in the flashback and present-day segments. Those Marvel Fanfare issues have been republished in multiple standalone volumes, beginning with a 1999 collection titled Black Widow: Web of Intrigue.

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