[video]
“Unlike the heroines of the previous 20 years, Black Widow was a thrill seeker who chose the life of a crime fighter for the excitement it brought her. She didn’t do it to aid a boyfriend, she didn’t hide being a wallflower alter ego, and lived her life with a freedom usually reserved for men. In keeping with the issue-conscious 70’s, she descended from her penthouse to battle loan sharks and came to the aid of Puerto Rican youth groups… Black Widow was unquestionably sexy, but, as with everything else in her life, it was on her terms. Still, the liberated heroine had doubts. “Is there really a place for her in a world such as this?” Black Widow thinks in 1970, of the newly independent persona she has created for herself.” — Mike Madrid, The Supergirls: Fashion, feminism, fantasy, and the history of comic book heroines
Jan: Okay, it’s a biplane. Do you know how to fly a biplane? Wait… don’t answer. Of course you do. You speak every language. You fly every plane.
Natasha: It is all just information. Easy to control. Hold tightly, if you please. We are going to have trouble.
From Black Widow and the Marvel Girls #2, by Paul Tobin and Jacopo Camagni.
[video]
“But Natasha is the only one who mines her own vulnerability. She’s the only one who makes it into a performance. And there’s something radical in acknowledging that feminine vulnerability as a performative, as something fake we are taught to expect and to mimic. That can be our superpower. We can be strong in ways men never will be because we face bullshit they will never have to face. That’s not justice, but it is power. It is strength. It’s control.” —
this super great essay about black widow and feminism (via helio-phile)
(It’s really funny to me when excerpts from things I write get more notes than actual things I write. I’m real bad at the micro part of microblogging.)