2020-04-01_Total_Film

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immune system and healing abilities,

aided by the effects of the super-soldier

serum. On graduating, she also earned

the Black Widow codename.

Romanoff was married to the pilot

Alexei Shostakov for a while, though

his apparent murder crystallised her

dedication to her country. Beginning

with his re-emergence as the Red

Guardian, Alexei’s subsequent and

repeated refusals to stay dead proved

variably traumatic for Natasha. In

other comics treatments, she has been

trained by Bucky ‘Winter Soldier’

Barnes and Wolverine: Bucky was her

lover, Logan a protector.

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A major self-reinvention arrived in

1970. Vowing to “erase every last
      vestige” of her “haunted past”,
      Natasha donned her black costume,
      perhaps inspired by a different Avenger,
      TV’s Emma Peel. The new suit featured
      the Widow’s Bite stinger and a
      Widow’s Line wire for swinging,
      among other gizmos. As recent
      Widow writer Nathan
      Edmondson noted, “At the
      time, I think this elevated
      Black Widow to the level of
      icon.” Alongside the Inhumans,
      she achieved co-headlining
      status in 1971’s Amazing
      Adventures, battling
      costumed villains for eight
      issues before new romantic
      entanglements beckoned.
      Romanoff’s connections
      with blind crime-fighter Matt

Murdock – Daredevil – began when she

turned vigilante in New York. At various

points, the Widow and the Devil of

Hell’s Kitchen helped the Avengers and

broke off from the Avengers; Widow

was no team-player. The duo eventually

moved to San Francisco after Matt split

up with his lover Karen Page, uniting to

battle baddies such as El Jaguar – and

one another.

You can almost hear the comics

creak as Marvel strained to

accommodate feminism. Who knew

Murdock could be such a caveman?

When he slaps her butt, she calls him

a “male chauvinist”; elsewhere, he

asks her to “slip into something barely

legal” for a party. In a sense, Black

Widow became a record of Marvel’s

wobbly struggle to evolve. She soon

went solo again, happily. Less happily,

she turned fashion designer for a while.

Although it would be some time

before she banked another cover title

for Marvel, Natasha later rejoined the

Avengers, suffered from the effects of

torture by HYDRA, and re-adopted the

old identity of a teacher named Nancy

Rushman. She also became head of the

Champions of Los Angeles, namely

Iceman, Angel, Darkstar, Ghost Rider

and Hercules – Black Widow’s short-

lived lover.

Further run-ins with superpowered

characters later, Romanoff freelanced

for the Avengers and espionage group

S.H.I.E.L.D. before writer Frank Miller

engineered a troubled reunion with

Daredevil. Together, they

battled evil ninja posse

The Hand; Natasha died,

though she was revived by

sensei Stick’s pupil Stone, of

the good ninja clan The Chaste.

Romantic tensions emerged

between Natasha and Matt’s

lovers, Karen Page and

Heather Glenn. Later, she

had to save a baby from Matt,

who believed the girl was the

Antichrist. Easy mistake.

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In other divergent freelance gigs, she

foiled an attempt to assassinate Nick

Fury; destroyed a Life-Model Decoy

(robot double, essentially) of Alexei,

created by Russian agents; did battle

with KGB psychological programming;

and co-fronted the Avengers. In one

crucial storyline, Natasha fought and

traded faces with Yelena Belova,

another Black Widow. After a period of

retirement, writer Richard K. Morgan’s

Widow’s Hunt storyline returned

Romanoff to action, uncovering various

aspects – memory implants, bio-tech

enhancements – of her Red Room

history along the way. In another blast

from her past, she battled Vindiktor:

her brother, long thought dead.

As an Avenger, she battled Ultron

and the Skrulls, and supported the

Superhuman Registration Act. She

also received a Bourne-style espionage-

thriller upgrade in Richard K. Morgan’s

Homecoming. But the Black Widow

we know on-screen was best

established on-page in Paul Cornell’s

Deadly Origin (2009), which interrogated

Romanoff’s splintered past. “When

will you find someone whole to be?”

Ivan asks her, pointedly.

She’s not in any hurry, apparently.

Romanoff’s history is again retconned

in the Secret Wars event arc, where she

revisits a mission to kill a family. In the

Secret Empire arc, she dies when an evil

Captain America’s shield breaks her

neck. (Thank heavens for hush-hush

cloning initiatives...) Elsewhere,

alt-universe Widows include the

monstrous, child-murdering Earth-1610

Ultimate Universe version. In Neil

Gaiman’s Marvel 1602 (superheroes

before their time), she is the “most

dangerous woman in Europe”, until

she’s killed by Count Doom.

After time as a zombie, Romanoff

was recently seen as a hyper-violent,

back-from-the-dead clone in No

Restraints Play, a brutal, boundary-

pushing twist on Widow lore from

horror film’s twisted twins, Jen and

Sylvia Soska. What are the chances

of the MCU adapting a tale in which

Romanoff kills those involved in a child

torture streaming business? Pretty slim,

surely. But one thing is sure: even after

death, Black Widow’s story needn’t be

closed for business.

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APRIL 2020 | TOTAL FILM

BLACK WIDOW