But now— the time has come for action! And I know just where to start! I’ll use my Widow’s Line to grab the phone… and get my career rolling again! Hello, Ivan? Get the Rolls ready! I’ll be downstairs momentarily.
Picking up the phone like a real action hero.
From Amazing Adventures #1, by Gary Friedrich and John Buscema.
Natasha: Very well, then! I’ll defeat you alone! This anti-grav ray makes me completely unbeatable!
Tony: She’s aiming the weapon at me again, with the control set at reverse!! I’m pinned down… can’t move!
Natasha: Farewell, Iron Man! This time my victory will be complete.
Racing outside, the Black Widow finds her cowardly co-spies, and then…
Henchman: You are raising the building! Why?
Natasha: Why? You blind fools! When I shut off the ray, the structure will fall, trapping Iron Man forever.
It’s typical to talk of Natasha’s early days in plainclothes honey-trap terms, but sex was so de-emphasized in those days of the Comics Code that it’s hard to see much seduction in her decoy dinner date with Tony Stark. When Natasha returned for her second appearance, the issue after her debut, she abandoned the womanly wiles routine entirely. Her leading trait in this issue is intelligence, not beauty— she outsmarts Tony Stark multiple times, by his own admission. In the end, she’s mainly undone by the incompetence of the bureaucracy that surrounds her, not because of Iron Man. Natasha gets away in the end, and Tony only gets a Pyrrhic victory.
It’s such an interesting portrayal, to me, especially given the gender politics of the times. The Black Widow of this early era was strangled by her glamour-girl disguise: she wouldn’t be shown entering the fray herself until several issues later, and women weren’t regularly shown to punch stuff until the early 1970s. (The first generation of Marvel superheroines— Jean Grey, Janet van Dyne, Sue Storm, Scarlet Witch— all had mental or utility powersets, nothing that demanded they wade into physical melee.) So, done up in lipstick and pearls, and not allowed to fight, Natasha had to go up against Iron Man using cunning alone. And she was successful— right up until the KGB saddled her with dudely accomplices half as clever and half as brave. Natasha was at her most formidable when she called her own shots, underestimated by friend and foe alike.
Which is so much more interesting to me than any retroactive seduction narrative. When you look at it like this, her defection from Russia becomes a clear metaphor for liberation, even before they realized it.
From Tales of Suspense #53, by Stan Lee, N. Korok, and Don Heck.
Clint: What’re you talkin’ about, ‘Tasha? You come in outta nowhere after all these weeks… and read me a dear John letter just like that? There’s gotta be some reason… something!
Natasha: Nothing that I can say! Nothing that won’t hurt even more than a simple goodbye!
Clint: Okay, lady. I’ll let you go, and I won’t try to stop you… and all you gotta say is that you never loved me!
Natasha: If that’s what it takes, then I’ll say it! I never loved you! Never!
And so their relationship ended as it began— melodramatically.
From Avengers #76, by Roy Thomas and John Buscema.
