It's been a long, hard road to the silver screen for Natasha Romanoff, the Marvel super-spy
with the codename Black Widow. Like any super-spy, Natasha has her secrets. Thankfully, we've
got all the details of her untold history for you right here.
Black Widow made her first appearance in 1964, but if it weren't for the name, you wouldn't
know it's her. Not only is Natasha missing her black catsuit and signature red bob, but
in her debut, she's not the heroic spy you've come to know and love. She's evil all the
way through.
In fact, in her debut, Natasha doesn't even fight. During one of Iron Man's first adventures,
he fought Anton Vanko, a Soviet scientist who's also known as the Crimson Dynamo, and
then helped him defect to the United States.
In Stan Lee and Don Heck's Tales of Suspense #52, the Soviet Union sends the Black Widow
and her partner, the super-strong secret agent Boris Turgenov, to the U.S. to get revenge.
While the widow uses her feminine charms to seduce and distract Tony Stark — honestly,
it doesn't take much effort — Boris attacks Vanko and steals his super suit.
The Black Widow is a little more active her next outing, Tales of Suspense #53, and she
gets her own proper superhero costume in Tales of Suspense #64, although it's a fishnet-heavy
mask-and-cape ensemble, not the skintight jumpsuit she's known for today.
Still, during these early appearances, Black Widow is little more than a Cold War-era stereotype:
the glamorous and beautiful femme fatale who uses her looks to manipulate men into doing
her dirty work. It'd be a while before Natasha emerged as a complex, capable, and fully independent
character. Still, better late than never.
You know Black Widow's most iconic costume. The form-fitting black suit. The bright red
hair. Those stylish and ultra-dangerous bracelets, better known as the Black Widow's Bite.
As it turns out, none of those belonged to her — at least, not originally. In 1941,
a costumed hero named Miss Fury debuted in newspapers' comics sections, and her outfit
should look very familiar to Black Widow fans. Like Natasha, socialite Marla Drake slipped
into a sleek black outfit — one made out of panther skin, in Fury's case — when she
stepped out to fight crime. Miss Fury wasn't the first female superhero, but she was the
first female superhero created by a woman, and she quickly gained a number of fans.
Legendary Marvel artist John Romita Sr. was among those fans. In 1970, while illustrating
Amazing Spider-Man, Romita learned that Marvel had the rights to the character. He told his
Spidey collaborator Stan Lee that he'd love a chance to draw a Miss Fury book someday,
and Stan suggested that they just make Black Widow into Miss Fury instead.
Romita traded Miss Fury's mask for the Black Widow's shock of red hair, and the revamped
Black Widow debuted in The Amazing Spider-Man #86. The look's been Natasha's ever since.
Black Widow was Marvel's first female superhero, but there's a catch: she's not the Black Widow
you're thinking of.
The Black Widow that Timely created in 1940 was a psychic named Claire Voyant (yes, seriously)
who lost her life after a seance went bad, only to be brought back to life to work as
a superpowered servant of Satan himself.
In fact, her whole gig was killing evildoers so her boss could harvest their condemned
souls a little faster. Yeah, it's real weird.
Claire Voyant only appeared a handful of times, and never had a regular book to call home.
The second Widow, meanwhile, helped kick off the second volume of Amazing Adventures in
1970. Unfortunately, the Black Widow's first stint as headliner didn't last very long.
While Natasha's strip blended stunning artwork with pointed social commentary, her Amazing
Adventures co-stars, the Inhumans, proved much more popular, and the Black Widow's solo
outing ended after eight installments.
Thanks to writers and artists like Frank Miller, Brian Michael Bendis, Mark Waid, and Ed Brubaker,
Daredevil has become one of Marvel's most popular heroes, especially among hardcore
comic fans. In 1971, however, ol' hornhead was in trouble: His ongoing book wasn't selling
all that well. Creatively, things were stagnant.
Marvel originally decided to shake things up by putting Iron Man and Daredevil in the
same comic, but Daredevil writer Gerry Conway came up with a different idea.
As Conway remembered in a 2010 interview with "Back Issue,"
"I was a fan of Natasha, and thought she and Daredevil would have interesting chemistry.
I'm not sure what I based this on, other than my desire to bring the characters together.
I'm a sucker for redheads!"
Whatever his reasoning, he was right to do it. The Widow joined the Man Without Fear
in Daredevil #81 and stuck around for over 40 issues. She even got her name added to
the title of the book in Daredevil and the Black Widow #93, where it stayed until #108.
Sales rose accordingly, and with Black Widow as a co-star, Daredevil rediscovered its groove.
During Black Widow's run on the title, Natasha and Matt Murdock started dating and moved
to San Francisco. (Allegedly, showing an unmarried couple living together got Marvel in trouble
with the Comics Code Authority).
When writer Steve Gerber took over the book, however, it meant an end to Marvel's biggest
power couple. When Matt's best friend, Foggy Nelson, was shot, Daredevil headed back to
the Big Apple to help. Black Widow stayed behind. Speaking about the decision, Gerber
said,
"I didn't miss her. Daredevil works better as a loner."
In the movies, Natasha doesn't have any real superpowers. She's just really good at sneaking,
fighting, and blowing things up. Like any spy worth her salt, Black Widow has lots of
handy gadgets to help her out, but at the end of the day it's her training, quick reflexes,
and razor-sharp mind that lead the way to victory.
"You sure about this?"
"Yeah. It's gonna be fun."
In the comics, things are a little different. For the most part, writers and artists tend
to attribute Natasha's superior abilities to her time at the Red Room, a Soviet training
facility. One story, however, reveals that Natasha's got something a little more special
running through her veins. In 2004's six-issue Black Widow series, Natasha learns that the
Red Room brainwashed her and 27 other orphans, gave them false memories, and injected them
with a special super soldier serum to craft them into weapons.
Thanks to Natasha's chemical enhancements, she heals four to five times faster than a
normal human, doesn't ever get sick, and ages much, much slower than she should. In addition,
the Red Room developed a special pheromone spray that prevents its agents from attacking
anyone who's wearing it — a product that Nick Fury's used again and again to keep Natasha
in line.
While the Red Room remains a major part of the Black Widow's origin story, her superpowers
almost never come up, probably to keep the comics' Natasha in line with her big-screen
counterpart — although, we've gotta say, the idea that the Widow gets by on her skills
and wits alone is also just much, much cooler.
Four years before Tony Stark jump-started the Marvel Cinematic Universe, "Tomb Raider"
and "Kill Bill" proved that female action stars appealed to audiences just fine, and
Lionsgate wanted in.
The studio hired actor and screenwriter David Hayter, who'd just penned the scripts for
the first two X-Men movies, to bring the Black Widow to the big screen. Hayter's screenplay
followed the comics pretty closely, and the writer was all set to step into the director's
chair when Lionsgate pulled the plug.
As Hayter explained, in addition to all those female-led action movies that did well, there
were also movies in a similar vein like "BloodRayne" and "Ultraviolet"... which did not.
Lionsgate decided not to go forward with Black Widow. That's a bummer for Hayter, who loves
the character so much that he named his daughter Natasha, but it's even worse for the Widow's
fans. While Natasha finally made her feature film debut in 2010's Iron Man 2, Black Widow
stayed a sidekick for over a decade before finally getting that long-awaited solo feature.
Natasha wasn't the first Black Widow in Marvel Comics, and she wasn't the first Black Widow
in the company's cinematic universe, either, although you wouldn't know if you didn't watch
"Marvel's Agent Carter" — which, judging by the ratings, you probably didn't.
On the series, Hayley Atwell reprised her role from "Captain America: The First Avenger"
while offering fans a glimpse inside S.H.I.E.L.D.'s predecessor organization, the Strategic Scientific
Reserve. As one of the SSR's only female agents, Peggy Carter must battle sexism in the workplace
while also doing her best to topple Leviathan, a Soviet espionage agency with eyes for Howard
Stark's genius and deadly inventions. Throughout the show, Carter butts heads with a Leviathan
assassin known only as Dottie Underwood, who serves as Peggy's evil counterpart — and
who also happens to be the MCU's first Black Widow.
"This is my surprised face."
Agent Carter never actually uses the Black Widow codename for Dottie, but if you're paying
attention, it's clear. And even if you're not paying attention, the show's producers
later came out and confirmed the connection.
Like Natasha, Dottie is a product of the Red Room training program. They even fight like
one another: once actress Bridget Regan realized where "Agent Carter" was taking her character,
she studied Scarlett Johansson's fight scenes in order to make sure that both spies had
the same style.
At first, Joss Whedon and Black Widow seemed like a match made in heaven. Whedon rose to
fame as the steward of complex and compelling female action heroes on shows like Buffy the
Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly, and his geek cred is beyond question. If anyone in
show business could get Black Widow right, fans seemed to think, it'd be Joss. At the
time of the first "Avengers" movie, Scarlett Johansson seemed to think so too. Speaking
to CBS News, she said,
"Joss did not want the Black Widow to be the damsel in distress or just another pretty
face, or someone that was, you know, a woman that was incapable of holding her own. She
just throws down and sweeps the floor. And when I read it, it was just like, 'Oh, thank
you, Joss!'"
Things worked out pretty well for the first Avengers movie. The second? Not so much.
"How'd a nice girl like you wind up working in a dump like this?"
"Fella done me wrong."
In "Age of Ultron," Natasha gets a lengthy subplot dedicated to her budding romance with
Bruce Banner, and at one point she stops to explain why they'd make a great couple. He's
a monster, she says, because he's got the Hulk lurking inside of him. She's a monster,
meanwhile, because the Soviet scientists in the Red Room sterilized her while transforming
her into a super-spy, robbing her of the ability to do her motherly duties.
"You still think you're the only monster on the team?"
That's a story point that's straight out of the comics, in which the Red Room's super
soldier serum turns women's bodies against their own wombs, but fans still weren't thrilled
with how the scene seemed to reduce a fascinating character to the sum of her reproductive parts.
They let Whedon know about it, too.
In the aftermath, Whedon quit Twitter, and later tried to explain that the "monster"
line was referring more to Natasha's past as a cold-blooded killer than her infertility.
But it was too little, too late. The damage had already been done.
Throughout the Marvel Cinematic Universe, we've got only glimpses of Black Widow's past
life as a Russian assassin, but it's clear from those glimpses that her early years were
far from easy. She was recruited, trained, sterilized, and taught to kill without mercy,
and she eventually managed to overcome all of that to be a hero.
In Avengers: Endgame, Natasha must reckon with both sides of this existence. She notes
early on in the film that she had nothing before the Avengers. She thinks of the team
as her family, and as her reason to keep trying to be a better person even in a post-Thanos
world.
When Natasha and Clint Barton are dispatched to Vormir to get the Soul Stone, we learn
via the Stonekeeper, aka Red Skull, that her father's name was Ivan. This is significant
because it's information not even Natasha herself knew until then. She was so ignorant
of much of her family's history that her own father's name was a profound revelation, reminding
her of where she came from, and the redemption she was seeking to earn through her heroics.
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