Skip to content Light View

Fuck Yeah, Black Widow

Fallaces sunt rerum species

Здравствуйте from FYBW, your one-stop tumblr shop for Black Widow news, no-prizing, and oversaturated .gifs. Some MCU, mostly comics. Often overwritten. Always overthinking.

Black Widow created by Lee, Rico and Heck & is © Marvel Entertainment.

image

Good question, anon! You’re correct that the red-hourglass belt buckle is a pretty recent addition to her costume; it wasn’t there when her current “look” was developed in the 1970s. But the hourglass being a part of her iconography goes back much further than the mid-2000s. It begins (~ominous tones~) with Frank Miller.

Daredevil 187
I swear, he used to be so much more than an internet punchline.

Miller cut off her hair and gave Natasha made her jumpsuit aerobicisable— she was a very modern gal, c. 1983. He also incorporated a spider decal into the design, in the front left corner, and more prominently, in the back. I think the move to give Natasha a symbol is smart, but this one loops a bit too close to Spider-man’s, a character seeped into Marvel’s branding that Natasha has no particular link to. It’s better than the previous attempt, at least!!

Read More

image

I see your “silly question” and raise you a whole tag dedicated to clothing critique— it’s just been a bit silent lately because they haven’t given me much new to work with. A lot of comics is costuming, so it’s somewhat unfortunate that no small number of comic book artists have no idea what women would actually, believably wear.

Read More

blackgoliath asked: you've probably got this question before, and I'm sorry that I am too lazy to go through your very convenient answered questions, but what is Natasha's natural hair color? In the origins I've read where they've shown her as a child, her hair is always black; but I just read your "super hero or spy" post (very nice by the way!) and you said that the black hair was dye. Is the red dye, or the black?

Short answer: it’s naturally red.

Longer answer: she was introduced with black hair which changed to red inexplicably when the new all-black costume came around. But per the letters column in Amazing Adventures #6, 1971:

As far as the color of her hair is concerned— you may not have known this, but Natasha’s natural color is auburn. She dyed her hair black when working for the Soviet government, so as not to look frivolous on such a serious mission. But now, in an attempt to forget the past and start anew, and particularly to keep in tune with the times, Natasha has returned her hair to its rightful hue. ‘Nuff said??

If that isn’t Word of God enough for ya, the only flashback instance I know of (offhand, anyway) that depicts her with black hair as a child is Marvel Fanfare #10:

But this was against established precedent even in the early 1980s. Natasha’s childhood was first touched on in Daredevil #88, which is what Marvel Fanfare #10 was largely drawing from. And see for yourself:

Pretty much any other comic that shows her as a young woman, from Black Widow: Deadly Origin to Uncanny X-men #268, confirms that her hair is naturally red and the black must have been a dye.

image

It doesn’t sound weird at all to me. I generally prefer the longer hair, but… In Iron Man 2 Natasha’s hair went corkscrew and ultra-styled when she put on the costume, and I wasn’t super fond of that, mostly because it looked kind of weird. In the Avengers, they laid off the hairgel and I approved.

The idea of “realism” in comic book costumes is a bit of a white whale to chase— if they were being realistic they wouldn’t wear star-spangled spandex at all. In comics the longer hair adds interest and movement to an otherwise pretty standard silhouette. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that when Frank Miller cut her hair short he also gave her a more complicated costume: one with a black spider symbol and an increasingly goofy collar. I like the long hair better than the big collar. But the movies are different and what works in one medium doesn’t always transfer smoothly. (Alas for Clint’s lack of miniskirt.)

Still, “long hair on superheroines” is one of those comic book fashion things that doesn’t wig me. Natasha’s Avengers hair is still too long for military regulation, still too long to never get in the way. (It sort of did in her fight scene with Clint, but I think that worked as a visual shorthand for how tired she was, how desperate the stakes were.) That didn’t bother me! It doesn’t bother me that Thor has godmode golden flowing locks— I’ve never seen anyone complain that they are impractical.

But it didn’t bother me when she chopped her hair ultra-short following Civil War, either. You’ve found the one (1) Natasha topic I only have a few paragraphs worth of thoughts about!! If anything, changing her hairstyle every now and then is more realistic than keeping the same one for forty years.

Let’s talk about Natasha’s shift in civilian costuming between Iron Man 2 and the Avengers. In IM2 it was all expensive looking dresses and button-up blouses, tailoring and sophistication. In the Avengers, she preferred jeans-and-leather-jacket ensembles. This change up makes sense when you remember that in Iron Man 2 Natasha was dressing a part, to fit into the rich and famous world of Stark Industries. The later stuff is probably more indicative of MCU Natasha’s personal sense of style.

There’s a real problem that extends across spandex universes where people look at the costume and then try to transfigure it into something not quite a costume, and that is what our heroes wear in their day to day life. The Black Widow outfit is tight and black, ergo Natasha is condemned to a lifetime of leather pants and weird hourglass corsets. Nevermind that for many characters costumes represent true alter-egos, ways to express personality traits that they must repress in their workaday lives, nevermind that I’m pretty sure Spider-man’s costume is also tight and he’s not dressed perpetually for jazzercise. But, you know, Captain America is always wearing a blue shirt with a white star on it, Clint Barton can’t say no to purple. It’s all very literal and it results in some laughably terrible hero fashion.

But if you go beyond “it’s tight! and it’s black!” you can get actual hints as to Natasha’s maybe aesthetic. Her costume, and the clothing she wears, are simple and no-frills and give her plenty of space to hang a weapon.