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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.

Anonymous asked: This isn't a baiting question; but these for some reason people assume that Natasha, and Clint, both sleep around. That's easily disproven, but I was wondering if whether or not YOU believe they have ever been ~intimate~ with one another. If they have, whatever; it's not really our business, is it? I wonder though, because if you look back at the period where they WERE involved it almost reads like Natasha seduced him, promising her goodies once they killed Iron Man. That never happened, so...

Yeah, I assume they’ve slept together, given they were involved for, idk, five years our time. I’m not sure where this comes from, other than the totally understandable “comics are hard”, but I see a lot of people assuming that Clint and Natasha’s romance only lasted for those four Tales of Suspense issues. But the plotline carried on into the Avengers, which, for me, is where things actually got interesting, and they didn’t break up until Avengers #76. (For some context, Clint joins the team in Avengers #16.)

I mean, all the usual caveats apply: as Silver Age characters, Clint and Natasha went from zero to true love in the space of like, five panels, and that true love was mostly comprised of chaste touching, melodramatic glances, and monologuing. Clint’s out-of-costume persona also wasn’t particularly developed— he didn’t have a first name until Avengers #63! But given the length and depth of their relationship, the fact that they were talking about marriage at one point, and what we’ve learned about the characters since 1968, I think it’s pretty reasonable to assume they’ve slept together, regardless of whether or not they “sleep around.”

FWIW, in Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes II, sort of a modern retelling of that era of Avengers comics, Clint and Natasha are share a room with a single bed and fight in their underwear:

Scene from Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes II

I don’t really take this series as continuity gospel but it’s a corollary at the least!

Anonymous asked: What do you think of how Marvel keeps referring to Natasha as Hawkeye's 'Work Wife' in both Hawkeye and Avengers Assemble? I know Fraction and Deconnick are fan favorites, but it seems rather forced; despite their history.

It’s not a particularly accurate description, no, since while Clint and Natasha were partners (in literal crime), that working relationship died before their actual romance. And, yeah, they’ve been teamed up pretty rarely since the Silver Age— since 1972 Natasha’s lived in the Daredevil sphere of things at least as much as the Avengers and neither Natasha nor Clint has been able to leg a solo series past issue eight. When they have teamed up (see, oh, the Nicieza Hawkeye series, Thunderbolts #43, or Avengers #400) they have had a pretty easy, familiar relationship. But the team-ups were infrequent; I’d call them old friends more than constant co-workers.

That said, now that they are on five different Avengers teams that inexplicably share the same six characters, idk, I think it makes sense to focus on that more. I don’t think it’s any more forced than five different Avengers teams that inexplicably share the same six characters. “Hawkeye and Black Widow working together a lot” is not a movieconsequence I’m afraid of, I guess. It always seemed like they would work together a lot if their schedules and comics were set up to permit that. And I guess I’m just too tumblr to blink at silly catch phrases. Pairing names have forever inocculated me. (A week ago I found out “Stucky” was a thing, guys. Stucky!!)

TL;DR, I don’t think it’s the most accrate description of what they’ve been in the past but it doesn’t really bother me as a character direction. There are so many things Marvel’s screwed up with Natasha since the Avengers film (not even trying to give her a starring role someplace in the ongoing Marvel universe, all the brainwashing, that whole Maxim thing, artists constantly forgetting to draw her costume all the way on) that like, I don’t think I could like comics at all if I got bothered about more stuff. Nitpicky continuity rage is one of the specific joys of being a comic fan and I would never try to take that away from anyone. But DeConnick just wrote the sort of Black Widow story I’ve been whining for months that no one was writing. So if I don’t want to give up on this genre, I have to focus on that.

Natasha: Clint is so frustrated. I know how personally he takes failure. And I know how stubborn he is about finishing what he starts. My plan was to sneak in and sneak out. But…
Perhaps I could help you with at least one of your problems? Clint: Tasha? We didn’t do nothin’— I swear!
Natasha: Actually, I came because I needed the Thunderbolts’ help!
Clint: Yeah? Whatever we can do, pretty lady!
Bert: Uhm… Exuse me— isn’t anyone concened how she got past our security systems?
Abe: Dude, she’s the Black Widow!

Damn right.

From Thunderbolts #43, by Fabian Nicieza & Kurt Busiek and Mark Bagley.