Yelena Belova

• 1. Introduction

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  Yelena Belova, a Marvel Comics assassin, started life as a sketch in a sketchbook. The drawing ran in Marvel Knights: Wave 2 Sketchbook #1 in January 1998, a full year before she appeared in an actual story. She was trained in a Russian spy program to take over a famous codename that already belonged to someone else. That raises a few questions. What happens when a successor is sent to destroy the person she was built to replace? How does a woman who is burned, rebuilt, copied, cloned and shot keep coming back? And how did a character from the margins of Marvel's catalogue end up played by an actor on the big screen?

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• 2. From Sketch To Series

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  Inhumans, volume two, issue 5, carried Belova's first story appearance in 1999. Writer Paul Jenkins and artist Jae Lee handled that issue. The character had been designed by writer Devin Grayson and artist J. G. Jones, and the pair soon gave her a showcase of her own. Their 1999 miniseries Black Widow, subtitled The Itsy Bitsy Spider, ran for three issues between June and August of that year under the Marvel Knights imprint. In it, the original Black Widow, Natasha Romanova, doubts her claim to the title when a younger spy challenges her while both hunt a biotoxin. Grayson and Jones had planted Belova in Inhumans precisely so they could use her here.

  A second Black Widow miniseries followed in early 2001, running January to March. Grayson shared the writing with Greg Rucka, Scott Hampton drew it, and Daredevil joined the two Widows. In 2002 Belova finally carried a book alone. Black Widow: Pale Little Spider ran three issues, from June to August, written by Rucka and drawn by Igor Kordey. It appeared under the adults-only Marvel MAX imprint.

  Later books pushed her to the side or revived her. From November 2005 to April 2006, a six-issue series by Richard K. Morgan and Sean Phillips used her as a supporting character while Natasha hid from Nick Fury and Daredevil. In January 2021, Grayson returned for a one-shot pairing Belova with Red Guardian, drawn by Michele Bandini. Then in early 2024, writer Sarah Gailey and artist Alessandro Miracolo gave her a four-issue run called White Widow: Welcome to Idylhaveven.

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• 3. The Red Room Rival

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  Belova was born in Moscow during the Soviet era and was later recruited into the GRU. Her training took place in the Red Room, under the same spymasters who had shaped Natasha Romanova, the first Black Widow and later an Avenger. When her trainer died, she was activated and sent to find out why. She tracked down the killer and killed him. What she did not know was that the mission had been staged to convince her that she deserved the Black Widow name.

  Convinced she was the rightful heir, she volunteered to eliminate Romanova. The confrontation went differently than she expected. Romanova called her "little one" and urged her to find her own identity instead of serving her country without question. She also put Belova through a cruel manipulation, meant to show her how the espionage business really works.

  Belova did not defect. She stayed loyal to the GRU but withdrew to Cuba. There she built a second life as a successful businesswoman and model, a long way from the Red Room.

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• 4. Burned And Rebuilt

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  Antarctica is where the next chapter of Belova's life turned violent. After S.H.I.E.L.D. recruited her, she became involved in the agency's vibranium mining in the Savage Land, the hidden prehistoric region at the bottom of the world. Soon afterward, Sauron attacked her. She barely survived, with severe burns and disfiguring injuries.

  A man working for the terrorist organization Hydra then approached her with an offer of revenge against S.H.I.E.L.D. and the New Avengers. Scientists from Advanced Idea Mechanics, known as A.I.M., working for Hydra, experimented on her and altered her genetically. The result was a version of the Super-Adaptoid, a body that could copy the powers of the Avengers.

  The borrowed strength had limits. Belova was eventually beaten by a combination of Iron Man's armors and the Void persona of the Sentry. She absorbed that persona along with the Sentry's powers. Hydra then shut her down with a remote fail-safe that had been implanted in her. Her story was not over, though, because someone else was about to wear her name.

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• 5. Stolen Names And Second Lives

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  At some point, Natasha Romanova took over Belova's identity on behalf of Nick Fury and worked with a vigilante group called the Vanguard. Meanwhile, during the Dark Reign event, Norman Osborn put together his own Thunderbolts. He revealed to Scourge that he held Belova's real body in stasis, and he warned her that Belova could replace her on the team.

  Belova was later freed by A.I.M., which elected her to its High Council. Her fellow members were Andrew Forson, Graviton, Mentallo, Superia and an undercover Taskmaster. S.H.I.E.L.D. then targeted A.I.M. and sent Romanova, Hawkeye and Mockingbird to execute Forson. Belova went after Romanova. An A.I.M. agent shot her, mistaking her for Mockingbird.

  After the events of Secret Empire, Belova was revived in a clone body. She took up the Black Widow identity again, this time in honor of Romanova, whom she believed to be dead. She traveled the world to hunt the remnants of Hydra, which drew the attention of Hawkeye and the Winter Soldier. Later she took the name White Widow.

  The Winter Soldier eventually recruited her for his Thunderbolts team. It included Romanova, Valentina de Fontaine, Sharon Carter, Red Guardian, U.S. Agent and Shang-Chi, and its target was the real Red Skull.

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• 6. Skills And Rankings

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  Hand-to-hand combat, gymnastics and martial arts form the backbone of Belova's craft. The comics often describe her as being in "peak athletic condition". Those are the tools of a trained spy and assassin, and they were hers before any laboratory touched her. As the Super-Adaptoid, she added the ability to mimic other heroes and absorb power from those around her.

  Comic-book journalism has taken notice. Comic Book Resources placed her seventh on its list of the 10 Most Powerful Russians In Comics. Screen Rant included her in its roundup of the 10 Best Versions Of Black Widow From Marvel Comics, and also in a list of the Red Room's most powerful members. Scary Mommy named her in a long list of more than 195 heroic Marvel female characters.

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• 7. Beyond The Page

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  Julie Nathanson voiced Belova in the animated series Avengers Assemble. In that version, Baron Strucker reactivated the Red Room program, making her the second Black Widow and a self-declared rival of Natasha Romanoff. She later renamed herself the Crimson Widow while working as a Hydra agent.

  The larger leap came in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where Florence Pugh plays the adult Belova and Violet McGraw plays her as a child. This version is the adopted sister of Natasha Romanoff, and the adopted daughter of Alexei Shostakov and Melina Vostokoff. She was trained in the Red Room as a Black Widow assassin. Pugh played her in the film Black Widow in 2021 and in the Disney+ miniseries Hawkeye the same year. Thunderbolts* followed in 2025. That year Pugh also voiced an alternate Belova in the adult animated series Marvel Zombies. Avengers: Doomsday, a film set for 2026, is slated to include her too.

  Games and audio fiction have used her as well. In Marvel Ultimate Alliance, in the PlayStation Portable version, her Black Widow suit is an alternate skin for Natasha. The same is true in Marvel Heroes and Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order. She is a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent in The Punisher: No Mercy and a miniboss called Dark Widow in Marvel Avengers Alliance. Marvel Puzzle Quest makes her a mini-boss and an unlockable playable character, with the film version added later. Marvel Contest of Champions and Marvel Future Fight added her as a playable character as part of the Black Widow film tie-in update.

  She also turns up in audio and prose. JoEllen Anklam voices her in Marvel Knights - Spider-Woman: Agent of S.W.O.R.D., and Sarah Edmondson voices her in Marvel Knights: Inhumans. In the novel New Avengers: Breakout, written by Alisa Kwitney, she is Natasha Romanoff's former friend and roommate from the Red Room program, who joins a rogue S.H.I.E.L.D. faction.

  The podcast Marvel's Wastelanders, set in the post-apocalyptic world of Old Man Logan, features a future Belova who goes by the alias Samantha Sugarman. Eva Amurri voices her. Five one-shot comics adapted that podcast in 2022, and Wastelanders: Black Widow, written by Steven S. DeKnight, shows an older version of Belova.

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