During this era, the Widow normally operates as a seducer and femme fatale - in KGB slang a ласточка (“lastochka”, meaning “swallow” ; male agents doing the same job were also birds as “ravens”). Her assets are thus her intelligence, beauty and manipulative skill, and she has ample amounts of all of those. Romanova is often considered to be one of the world’s most beautiful women, and with her wiles has been known to have guys make really, really stupid things for her. Sometimes after she openly admitted that she was manipulating them.

Natalia was trained since childhood as a spy, actress, martial artist, athlete, acrobat, pilot, markswoman, assassin, special operations soldier, survival expert, etc. She was already an excellent actress and manipulator, and a proficient killer and shooter, by age 10 or 11. Her full skills roster as an agent during the 1940s and 1950s is not really documented - the numbers in the stats are reasonable guesses, but most are not backed by data.

After 1957 she forgets that she knows all these skills, but she is retrained as a manipulator, seducer and spy. She also was apparently retrained as a pilot and a gunwoman during the 1960s, but these skills were not used in her vintage appearances - only in flashbacks. The vintage appearances purely depict her as a clever and manipulative femme fatale.

The stats (in DC Heroes her DEX, MIN and SPI) are guesses based upon her retconned-in background. It is possible that they were lower during her time as a femme fatale, though it’s impossible to tell as she doesn’t take physical action during the vintage Tales of Suspense stories.

Kudrin enhancements

The girls in the Black Widow program, including Natalia, received extensive biochemical treatments designed by a Soviet genius, professor Kudrin. These bolster the subject’s constitution to peak human levels - endurance, pain resistance, temperature extremes tolerance, power of recovery, etc. They constantly repair the subject’s body - wounds close at a four times the human norm and heal without a trace, toxins and pathogens are attacked by a superhumanly efficient immune system, infection is much less likely to occur than it should, ageing is constantly erased, malady seldom if ever occurs and the subject effortlessly retains good looks - hair never falls out and always remains shiny, skin cannot be damaged by wind or sun and always remains healthy, etc. Pregnancies are also immediately miscarried.

Psychotechnical means were employed to make Widows unaware that they were slightly superhuman - until 2004 Natalia didn’t know, though by about 1975 it had become obvious that she wasn’t ageing normally (and even that could be normal in a super-heroes world - see our Leòn genetic sequence article).

Our hypothesis is that the superhuman abilities listed in the Powers section of the stats are only active when the Widow is unaware - either sleeping or unconscious. She cannot use them consciously, since she simply doesn’t know these exist. Her history does include several miraculous recoveries, all her wounds kept healing without a trace, etc. but it was within genre conventions for super-hero stories.

Kudrin was also forced to add a failsafe to her enhancements. All women who received the treatment have a Vulnerability (-2 CS OV/RV vs Persuasion attempts in DCH terms) toward persons wearing a specific chemical scent, and a compulsion not to attack them (CIA in DCH terms). This scent can credibly be worn as an aftershave. The Widow only encountered this scent twice - Nick Fury has been wearing it since the 1960s, and a Red Room enforcer later used it against her.

No equivalent enhancement program could be developed for males. It seems that those attempts that were made turned the agents into sociopathic killers.

Pchelintsov conditioning

All Black Widow agents also received extensive psychotechnical conditioning (designed by Professor Pchelintsov) giving them various false sets of memories so they could operate under very deep cover. The conditioning wasn’t perfect though, and conflicts and inconsistencies could be noticed by the smartest (and/or unluckiest) ones.

Thus, another subconscious programming was added. If a Black Widow tries to think logically, rationally about her past and determine contradictions and inconsistencies she feels unease, then confusion, then pain, then severe pain - even with her enhanced physiology. Usually, this functions at an undetectable level - some random idea association that, explored further, might make the agent realise that something about her past seems off will be associated with slight anxiety and the agent will change her train of thought without consciously realising what happened.

In a comic book world, one suspects that this conditioning might also overcome a telepath attempting to mind-probe the past of a Black Widow, through sympathetic pain.

Pchelintsov conditioning can also simulate training. For instance, Romanova is a very proficient ballerina, yet her memories of having studied ballet dancing for years are now thought to all have been implants.

History

The Widow’s biography is a borscht, and is likely to remain that way. The situation is very similar to Wolverine’s - she’s been around for quite a while, many of her memories are fabricated and much of the rest is suspect, her age is impossible to determine as she ages very slowly, and everything about her is wrapped in lies, manipulations and secrets from powerful conspiracies.

There are conflicting accounts about her life - even her likely date of birth ranges from the 1920s to the 1940s. The lines between continuity problems and in-universe disinformation blurs in an amusing way, and things that were thought true were later contradicted then revealed to have been deliberate manipulations of Natalia’s memories.

In this section, we’ll see how the various accounts can be reconciled. Speculation - which is inevitable given the information available - will as usual be clearly marked.

We serve an old man in a dry season

Natalia was reportedly born in Stalingrad (now Volgograd). An unidentified woman in a destroyed building handed the baby over to a Red Army soldier named Ivan Petrovitch. She asked him to take care of her and told him that she was a Romanova, with the implication that she was a relative to the Imperial family that ruled over Russia and some nearby countries until 1917. The building then collapsed, killing the woman and anyone else still alive inside.

The incident was generally thought to have taken place in late 1942, early during the Battle of Stalingrad. More recent accounts state that it took place in 1928, during some unspecified terrorist raid by “imperialists”. The chronology in this article uses the 1928 date.

Ivan was reportedly searching the ruins for his kid sister, whom he never found. Bereft of his little sister, he essentially adopted the baby he had been entrusted with. How old Natalia was when she was thrusted into Ivan’s hands depends on the account - which range from a baby to a girl looking about 5 or 6. We’ll assume that she was about one year old.

Government researchers stated that Natalia was an orphan. It seems likely that Ivan attempted to locate her parents early on, but nobody ever found them and the kid was declared an orphan in Ivan Petrovitch’s care.

Ivan Petrovitch Bezukov was some sort of two-fisted pulps adventurer - a strongman, a brawler, an engineer, an inventor, a soldier and a well-connected patriot. He also had many secrets, including which organisation he approached in the 1930s to raise and train little Natalia.

The Red Room ?

Based on later events, our interpretation is that Natalia had been training with some sort of espionage organisation since before she was ten - 1934 would be a credible recruitment date. It stands to reason that this organisation was the program called the Red Room.

Two 2007 flashbacks leave little doubt that the master of this organisation was the nebulous Romulus, who is known to have deep ties with Russia. However the nature, goals and assets of Romulus largely remain mysteries.

The Red Room program is best known for its use of memory implants and biochemical enhancements — as revealed by extensive investigation by the Black Widow in 2004. However, there’s no sign of either of these factors being in play during the 1930s - Natalia seemed to ’just‘ be trained as a child spy and assassin. We’ll thus assume that the fake memories and Kudrin treatments took place several years later.

According to one flashback, the Red Room was already using the black widow symbol - a red hourglass logo, like the marking on a black widow spider - when Natalia was a child.

The infiltration of the Romanoff network

Natalia’s first known mission started in early 1938 when she was about 11. She was to infiltrate the espionage network of Taras Romanoff, a redoubtable Russian spymaster. It was Ivan who approached Taras, saying that he was looking for a good place to raise his little Natalia. Taras was running some sort of espionage academy in Moscow, where young girls were trained to become spies and agents. As such, this institution resembled the Red Room - whether there was a connection is unknown. Ostensibly, it was where Ivan wanted Natalia to study.

Mr. Romanoff was reluctant to take the girl under his wing, but Joseph Stalin himself encouraged him, amused by the idea of a Soviet spy being a purported relative of Nikolai II. The Secretary General’s sudden appearance, conveniently forcing Romanoff’s hand, seemed rather suspect and may have been engineered - for instance using an impostor.

Natalia studied under Taras from 1938 to late 1939 or early 1940. She simulated growing attached to him as if he were her father, calling him ’dad‘ - though their identical family name was just a coincidence and they weren’t related by blood. She even claimed not to remember about Ivan Petrovitch.

(This statement of hers is the main hint behind the hypothesis that she’s already a Red Room agent infiltrating Romanoff’s assets. It seems very unlikely that Natalia would have forgotten about Ivan after mere weeks or months, which means that she’s deliberately manipulating Taras. Natalia also later states that she was sent to Taras to learn, though the sender might have been Ivan Petrovitch rather than the Red Room.)

Some months after taking Natalia in, Romanoff decided to fake his death and disappear, and took Natalia with him. At this point, he was calling her his daughter, and seemed to treat her as such. Taras took Natalia on a train, which was attacked by his men. They killed everyone aboard so Taras and Natalia would be presumed dead at the hand of merciless bandits.

As the attack took place Taras approached a Canadian traveller called Logan, and told him to join him and be given safe passage. Logan sensibly took the offer.

Dreams of sleepers and white treason

Logan was then quasi-amnesiac, and unknowingly an agent of Romulus. He had been sent to establish how much Taras knew about his master. Taras seemed to know this, but he nevertheless took Logan in and made him his apprentice. Apparently, Romanoff thought that he could turn Logan and make him a close ally of his - and he stated that Logan had been “sent to learn”. Perhaps Taras and Logan shared a past Logan couldn’t remember.

Furthermore, Logan and little Natalia did not know that they were both working for Romulus — and they had orders to kill each other. As far as Logan knew, Natalia was Taras’ little protégée and was to be eliminated if Taras was. As far as Natalia knew, eliminating Logan was a test she had to pass - presumably to graduate to the next step of her training program. It is possible that she knew from the very beginning that a man called Logan would be sent to approach Romanoff.

Both Natalia and Logan trained extensively under Taras, who trusted them both. He taught them his body of techniques, which Wolverine later described as one of the birthplaces of modern espionage. Logan and Natalia bonded during these two years, and he discreetly taught the girl hand-to-hand combat. That made Taras jealous, as Natalia took to calling Logan “little uncle” - while this is a common term of endearment, Romanoff felt that the Canadian was displacing him in his paternal role. 

It was Natalia who struck first - in 1939 or 1940, depending upon accounts. She killed Taras’ guards to simulate her own kidnapping, then laid in ambush in the woods nearby. Her strategy was to wait for Logan and Taras to discover the bodies and rush out to locate and rescue her, at which point she would snipe Logan. However, Logan realised what was going on and told Taras that it was a trap. As Taras hesitated Logan shot him dead. The exact reason is unclear - perhaps he had determined that Romanoff knew too much, or perhaps he realised that the trap was set for him rather than Taras.

Logan then searched for Natalia, but neither could bring themselves to pull the trigger. Logan found a way out by taking the medallion Taras had given Natalia, and bringing it back to his masters as a “proof” of her death. He then left.

(In 2007, Natalia and Logan reminisced about these events, and seemed to share the same recollections about what had happened.)

We dream of rain and the history of the gun

Natalia lived in the wilds close to the manor for three months, apparently waiting for Ivan. Ivan did find her, having learned of Taras’ death and located the manor. He obviously knew that Natalia had not died in the train attack, and seemed to know what her mission was.

Natalia told Ivan that Logan’s mission had been to kill Romanoff all along, and that she had let him go because she liked him better than Taras. Ivan immediately concluded that they had to flee, as “they” would blame Natalia and execute him. Apparently, he was referring to Taras Romanoff’s allies and network of informants, not the Red Room. Despite apparently failing her “test” Natalia continued to work for the Red Room - or at least Romulus, since one gets the impression that the answer to the question “who was running the Red Room” may have been very complicated.

What happened between 1939 and 1941 is unknown, but this is the least problematic span of time for Natalia to have been implanted with fake memories by the Red Room scientists in Moscow - though it is likely that the treatment was interrupted by the war and resumed by 1945.

For decades the Black Widow program was thought to have been a Cold War program to train the deadliest female agent in the world, but it was actually older and focused on brainwashing and false memories to create deep cover agents.

The Red Room enlisted 27 or 28 little girls to make them undetectable deep-cover agents to infiltrate China and the West. The core methodology was designed by Gregor Ivanovich Pchelintsov, professor of psychotechnics, and allowed for imprinting people with almost completely fabricated memories. Furthermore, the girls all received a special treatment designed by Lyudmila Antonovna Kudrin, a biochemist. The Kudrin treatment could make women stay young for many decades, as well as superhumanly healthy and resilient. It apparently was meant as an asset both for agent-type work and for seduction.

When encountered in 2004 Pchelintsov seemed to be in his 60s, and Kudrin in her 80s or more. Both should be centenarians if the Red Room was doing memory implantations during the 1940s - but in the Marvel Universe, the discrepancy may not be significant. 

Part of the original Red Room program survive nowadays as the research company 2R, developing cosmetics and drugs - chiefly for American firMs.

I’m living in films for the sake of Russia

One “track” of artificial memories seems to have been given to all the Black Widow agents. Apparently, they all remember having been little ballerinas selected to join the Bolshoi itself, and training under its instructors to become star dancers. They seemingly all remember studying under “Alex Sterelny”, who apparently never existed, and “Oksana Bolishinko”. Natalia would much later meet an Oksana Bolishinko who remembered her as a ballerina.

The ballerina memories were chosen as something most girls would like. They would find these slightly fairy-tale-ish childhood memories soothing, remain fond of them, and thus become reticent to consider they might be fakes even if presented with evidence or incongruencies. It was also meant for them to reflexively associate the Soviet Union with some of its most admirable features, such as the Bolshoi Ballet, to make them patriots.

For a gifted girl dancer, joining the Bolshoi as a trainee would likely take place circa age nine or ten, and performing with the troupe would start circa 16 or 17. Since Natalia remembers performing professionally with the troupe, it seems likely that the Bolshoi memory implants cover age 9 to 18 or so and are intended to “overwrite” the time spent training and working for the Red Room and serving in the Red Army during adolescence. Natalia genuinely thought that she had spent her teens as a ballerina until an investigation in 2004.

One suspects that the “Oksana Bolishinko” whom Romanova met was a Red Room deep cover control agent. The idea likely was that any Black Widow attempting to investigate her past would naturally look for Bolishinko, as she was the person with whom their fondest memories were associated.

“Oksana Bolishinko” did confirm the ballerina memories when Natalia Romanova encountered her, at a point when Natalia still thought that her ballerina childhood was real. Years later, the Widow reached the conclusion that almost all her pleasant childhood memories had been fabricated, all but confirming that “Oksana” was a fake. She also deduced what the Pchelintsov failsafes had previously prevented her from realising - that her body did not show the physical damage associated with intensive ballet training during childhood.

Madripoor 1941

In 1941, Natalia and Ivan were in Madripoor. Romulus’ long-standing alliance with the Hand had gone sour, and he wanted to kill their current leader (solely known as “the jonin”) to make his point. Romulus, who has been documented to psychically influence dreams, arranged for the jonin to mystically perceive that Natalia had an amazing talent for the martial arts — so he would attempt to kidnap her and get murdered in return.

Since the Hand wanted to capture Natalia then have her kill Ivan Petrovitch, they might have sought to use the process later employed to turn Drake and then Elektra into their deadliest female killer. 

Assassinating the jonin would also prevent an alliance of the Hand with the Nazis. Baron Wolfgang von Strucker had been developing his ties with Japanese occult sects, and was in talks with the Hand in Madripoor.

Romulus’ local agent, Seraph, had her main enforcer Logan keep an eye on von Strucker and Hand operatives, as backup. Captain America (then at the beginning of his career) was also present on Madripoor for unknown reasons.

The Hand and the Nazis kidnapped Natalia as planned, though Captain America came to help when he saw Ivan fighting the kidnappers. Ivan, Logan and Cap fought to rescue Natalia, the last two not suspecting that she was an assassin. Logan was successful but Natalia lashed out at him and stealthily shot him in the heart. Her motivation remains unknown, but apparently there had been some sort of mind games, and she now thought that she wasn’t actually a Romanova and resented Logan for having let her live.

Logan survived, and killed the jonin himself so Natalia wouldn’t have to. Seraph came to the rescue and exfiltrated Ivan and Natalia back to Russia as planned.

(In 1990, Natalia and Logan reminisced about these events, but it is unclear whether Natalia remembered having been sent as an assassin rather than having been a kidnapping victim. No mention was made of Natalia shooting Logan during their conversations.)

The Great Patriotic War

Ivan and Natalia’s return to the Soviet Union likely was tied to Operation Barbarossa and the war, Ivan being a Red Army serviceman. One assumes that whatever Ivan wanted to flee along with Natalia after Taras Romanoff’s death had been dealt with.

Natalia thus served during the Great Patriotic War. One incident is documented, presumably set in early 1944 or late 1943 as she was aged about 16. The men in the unit were obviously very fond and protective of her — perhaps the Red Room students had been deployed both to fight and to bolster morale. She seemed to be giving orders, and was wearing a efreitor insignia (a loose equivalent of a corporal - note that the art may not be accurate though, as they are anachronistically wielding AK47s).

Natalia feel in love with a young soldier named Nikolai, who was one year older than she was. Between adolescence and battlefield emotions, the couple declared itself married and Natalia became pregnant. Since she gave birth in Slovakia - back then the Slovak Republic - it seems that she kept fighting until water broke, and was part of the Red Army troops who drove German occupiers out of the Slovak Republic. Nikolai has been killed some weeks or months before the pregnancy’s end.

A kind Slovak midwife helped the teenaged Soviet soldier through her labour, but the baby was stillborn. The midwife and her family helped Natalia hold herself together, and the corpse was buried in the nearby Dobročsky forest.

For years Natalia Romanova would regularly return to the midwife’s house to grieve alone in the forest, and bury a rose near the grave - apparently she had planned to name her stillborn daughter Rose. When the midwife passed away during the 1950s, Romanova couldn’t find the strength to return to Dobročsky - though the midwife’s daughter kept mementos in case she’d return, such as the little ribbon Natalia and Nikolai had used as a make-do wedding ring.

Birth of the Cold War

What happened between 1945 and 1956 is unknown. However, the second half of the 1940s is the least problematic era for the rest of the Red Room memories implantation, biochemical modifications and special training to have taken place. The main reason to suspect that there was another round of Red Room treatment is Natasha’s pregnancy during the Great Patriotic War - this would have been impossible had the full Kudrin treatment been done. That her child was stillborn might be a clue that her physiology was already being modified, though of course it may have happened naturally.

The late 1940s are also the least problematic time span for Natalia and Ivan to have trained with Commissar Bruskin, a renowned KGB senior officer. Bruskin was apparently very close to his two students, and would contact them for help in 1976. He nicknamed the young Natalia “the Black Pearl”.

At some point between 1941 and 1956, Natalia and Ivan left the USSr. They apparently lived as international adventurers and no longer were on speaking terms with the government. The timing and nature of these events is unknown ; documentation restarts in 1956 with Ivan and Natalia in Berlin. At this point Natalia looked in her 20s, though the art style prevents a reliable assessment.

It is possible that their relationship with the Party went sour right after Stalin’s death (1953), based on a flashback about Ivan’s life - see his entry.

After Stalin’s death, Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev discovered the plots that had been running under his predecessor, and was horrified by the brainwashing of little Soviet girls by the Red Room. His intent was to peacefully retire the Black Widow agents, but Natalia and Ivan were either unreachable or did not agree to come back to USSR.

A white house in a red square

However, Ivan was fatally wounded by a gunshot in 1956 in Berlin, where he and Natalia had been fighting gangs. James “Bucky” Barnes, the Soviet super-agent code-named Winter Soldier, reached them as Natalia was attempting to save Ivan’s life. He made them a strange offer - a rare chemical that would save Ivan’s life and prolong the lifespan of both Ivan and Natalia if they agreed to come back. Ivan tried to warn Natalia about something but passed out, and Natalia took the offer to save him.

The nature of the chemical, and its relationship with the Kudrin treatment, is unclear. A likely hypothesis is that it was a complete lie, since Natalia unknowingly already had a potent anagathic factor. This leaves open the case of Ivan - whose ageing stopped or dramatically slowed down at an unknown point, and seems to be permanently in his late 40s. Perhaps Ivan passed out as he was trying to tell Natalia that it was a lie and that neither of them would age, since there are vague hints that Ivan was already unageing by the 1950s.

While these are complete hypotheticals on our part, taking the statement at face values - that there were Soviet agents in the 1950s running around with longevity/healing potions in order to offer them to soon-to-be-inactive operatives - is considerably harder on suspension of disbelief.

As she returned to Soviet service, Natalia had a clandestine relationship with the Winter Soldier, which lasted for a few months after the Berlin encounter in 1956. The two met during a training exercise, and later arranged to have the Soldier instruct Natalia in advanced hand-to-hand combat. Though this relationship was forced to a premature end, it was apparently intense enough for the couple to keep vivid memories of it for nearly 50 years and recover their chemistry when reunited.

The affair was conducted in secret as it was against all regulations and Karpov, the Winter Soldier’s boss, violently disapproved. The two lovers were discovered, and the Winter Soldier was disciplined and returned to cold storage for a few months since his conditioning had to be reinforced.

Turn the gold to chrome

Natalia’s life completely changed in 1957. The exact sequence of events is unclear, but our best bet is :

• Khrushchev wanted to locate and peacefully retire those Black Widows who could be found. It was apparently decided to re-use Red Room treatments or something similar to make them forget that they had been agents. 
• Natalia was very confused and simultaneously remembered her life and at least one fictional account of her life. She couldn’t even tell whether she was 17 or 29 (giving her dates of birth of either 1928 or 1940, which is coherent with her known biographies). Whether this was a consequence of trying to re-implant her with fabricated memories, or the reason why the government tried to give her new memories as she was breaking down, is unknown.
• It stands to reason that the retired Widows would remember having been ballerinas, then having an ordinary life. The conditioning would presumably cheat by making them think that they were much younger than they actually were. Thus Natalia now remembered having been born in 1940, having been a student and then a performer with the Bolshoi ballet, meeting her husband and retiring from dancing circa 1958, and becoming a housewife.

Said husband was a famous hero of the Soviet Union - the dashing test pilot Alexei Shostakov, apparently a personal friend of Khrushchev. Alexei and Natalia lived together for five years ; though the marriage was rocky, it seems that they genuinely loved each other and these years remain an important part of Natalia’s life. She wanted to be a housewife and a mother, and was hurt to discover that she was sterile - which her husband deduced was a result of the Kudrin treatment.

To have the Widow retired was, from context, a decision taken jointly by Nikita Khrushchev and Ivan Petrovitch - both men had clearly known each other for years if not decades, and were friends. This being the 1950s, it is entirely possibly that the creepiness of Khrushchev handing over to his buddy Shostakov a brainwashed (and stunningly beautiful) wife did not register with any of the three men, and that they thought they were doing a good thing by giving her such a prestigious husband for her new life.

Now you are truly a widow, comrade

In 1963, Shostakov’s death was faked during an accident at Baikonur so he could become the newest Red Guardian, a costumed patriotic hero of the Soviet Union. The shock of this death apparently weakened his wife’s conditioning, as she knew in a confused manner that she somehow had the skills to serve the State.

As the widow of a famous hero she demanded to see the Chairman. Natalia Shostakova blamed the Americans for the space race that had taken her husband from her, and demanded that Khrushchev make her a spy to strike back at the Westerners. Though she was unable to explain why she thought she’d be a deadly spy, she was determined to get her revenge.

The re-conditioning having obviously failed, Khrushchev agreed to her demands to be made a spy and unleashed against the West after consulting with Ivan Petrovitch. Both men hoped that the widow would eventually build a life for herself abroad.

This is likely at that point that Natalia was trained by Colonel Irma Klausvichnova, a highly proficient KGB operative - since she presumably couldn’t consciously remember her Red Room training. What Klausvichnova taught the Widow saved her life several times during the 1960s. The Colonel was assassinated by MI-6 during the 1970s.

The daughters of the Revolution

This is presumably circa 1963 that Soviet intelligence started a successful disinformation campaign about the Red Room program - perhaps directed by Colonel Klausvichnova. The goal was to make the West and China think that the Red Room was a Cold War program to train a single super-agent - the deadliest Soviet operative of them all.

This agent would be a woman, as the KGB considered that females had an edge operating as spies in male-dominated societies. The super-agent would thus be code-named “Black Widow” as a symbol of something female and particularly deadly. It was thought that the “Black Widow” they’d produce was intended from the start to become an espionage legend, a symbol of the KGB’s power and a reminder that the Soviet Union was the society of the future, free from sexism. The KGB’s Black Widow was often thought to be propaganda, a Cold War bogeywoman, and most modern Russians think that she was a myth from the waning Stalin years.

Further confusing the issue, the GRU developed another Red Room program in the late 1970s, intended to produce a Black Widow patterned after Natalia Romanova - a female super-agent. Basically, this new Black Widow program was making a reality out of the disinformation, thus helping hide what the real project had been. This Red Room program successfully trained their agent, Yelena Belova, though she soon left the service.

Flight of the swallow

By 1963, the widow Shostakova was thus a KGB agent under the code name Black Widow. She was trained as a “swallow” - a female seduction and manipulation expert - and started extensively travelling in Western Europe and Northern America. Using an anglicised version of her name as “Natasha Romanoff”, the gorgeous Natalia preyed on young technology brokers, having them killed off by KGB hitmen once she had stolen all their secrets for the Soviet Union.

(If you are using a by-date-of-publication timeline for the Marvel Universe, she is active in the US by the next year —Tales of Suspense #52 in 1964. If you are using the official ten-year sliding time scale, Deadly Origin #2 establishes that she was active in Europe for several decades, seducing and killing numerous technologists. Interestingly, people did notice what was going on and that Natasha Romanoff didn’t seem to age a day. She was coincidentally nicknamed “the Black Widow” as her lovers kept dying in troubling circumstances. As per usual writeups.org practice we’ll be using a date-of-publication timeline in our articles.)

One of Natalia’s first missions after Shostakov’s “’death” had her rendezvous with would-be revolutionary Danny French in the US. They investigated the shadowy Project Four, which would later be revealed to be the brainchild of millionaire Damon Dran, aka the Indestructible Man. However, French was unreliable and kept behaving inappropriately toward Shostakova. He accidentally killed the scientists at Project Four, then fled with the mysterious globe they had been building. Natalia had to leave empty-handed, though Dran and French would again cross her path in 1972.

Shostakova is known to have carried out two missions outside of her usual fare in during the 1960s. In 1964 or 1965, she was a KGB pilot operating in the Soviet Union, and nearly foiled a daring CIA plot to sabotage the Red Storm project. The CIA agents were Benjamin Grimm, Logan and Carol Danvers. Shostakova gained the upper hand, but was ordered not to fire at the last second - to her relief, as she respected Danvers’ piloting skills and did not wish to kill her. Logan thought that Shostakova looked weirdly familiar, but did not have access to the relevant memories at this point.

 

A lighthouse keeper in the desert sun

Natalia’s best-known work as a 1960s KGB femme fatale involved Tony Stark. Anton Vanko, the creator of the Soviet Crimson Dynamo armor, had defected to the US and was hired by Stark ; in 1964 the Widow was ordered to fix that. Back then, Shostakova was partnered with the engineer, strongman and killer Boris Turgenov. She charmed Stark to distract him and create an opening for Turgenov to steal the Crimson Dynamo suit and wreck Stark’s plants. However, Turgenov and Vanko killed each other.

Natalia chose to stay in the US, as she feared that the KGB would sanction her if she returned after this failure. Perhaps the switch from Khrushchev to Brezhnev had deprived of her allies within the KGB.

She decided to regain cred by stealing an anti-gravity device developed by Stark - since he didn’t know yet that she was KGB. Shostakova used the device for sabotage, lifting entire buildings in the air. The crowning moment of her campaign of mayhew was lifting a whole mountain in the air to expose the hiding place for the American gold reserve. However, Iron Man nullified her device. She narrowly escaped, but Stark now knew the truth about her.

Mother Russia, Mother Russia

Madame Natasha - as she was often called back then - soon stumbled upon Hawkeye, an adventurer mistaken for a criminal by the police. Telling him that she was an adventurer fighting for world peace by sabotaging weapons merchants, she convinced him to steal plans from Tony Stark. Hawkeye fought Iron Man, but Natalia was accidentally hurt by an explosion and Hawkeye fled so he could carry her to safety.

After she recovered, the KGB sent Natasha against a rival of Stark’s, Williams Innovations. Spider-Man opposed her and Hawkeye. Hawkeye realised that she was manipulating him, but could not leave her.

(If using a sliding ten-year timeline, Deadly Origin retcons her activities during the 1990s and [insert current year minus twelve] as private sector industrial espionage, and being hired to manipulate super-heroes and similar nuisances into fighting each other. In this version, Stark fully realised what she was up to and broke up before she’d make her move.)

Natasha later sent Hawkeye out on a second attempt to steal Stark’s plans. However, while Hawkeye was gone, she was kidnapped by the KGB and returned to Russia. Ironically, she was apparently starting to feel some genuine tenderness for Hawkeye, whereas he was getting disillusioned with both her and himself.

Description

In her vintage appearances Natalia has black hair in a 1960s do, whereas in flashbacks she’s often depicted with red hair and the same long hair and fringe cut she had in the 1970s.

Natasha Romanoff has been described on several occasions as one of the most beautiful women in the world.

Before 1990 Natalya usually seems to have black hair that she dyes red. By 1990 she seems to be a natural redhead, as flashbacks now consistently depict a red-haired little girl rather than a black-haired one. The most recent Marvel sourcebooks have her as a redhead who used to dye her hair black.

Some flashbacks depict Natalia as having pale skin as a child or teenager, but most of the time she has the same skin tone as people around her.

For what it’s worth the illustration depicting her training with a H&K MP5 slung on her back is as much as an anachronism as the AK-47s during the Great Patriotic War - this couldn’t have happened before 1966. Perhaps some small arms research program went faster in the Marvel Universe as a side effect of all the super-weapons research during World War Two.

Personality

During her femme fatale years, the Black Widow is a vamp who is incredibly cold inside. Despite her charms and ability to wrap men around her fingers, she is still devastated by the loss of her husband. As intended by the KGB, the “death” of Alexei made her fearless and fanatical in her devotion to Mother Russia. As she has nothing to lose, the Black Widow repeatedly proves herself a top spy.

She generally comes across as cold, haughty and proud of her reputation. In the original stories she had something of a criminal and vain streak, at one point stealing jewels just because she could (and found them pretty).

Her love for Hawkeye mollifies her, though, and she eventually decides to give up the Cold War and make a life for herself in America with her lover. This is exactly what Khrushchev hoped that she would do, and this is exactly what the Brezhnev era men nearly kill her for. Natalia appears to be very romantic and passionate - typical 1960s stuff for a Russian character.

In retcons, she appeared more as the straight-shooting, noble adversary respecting the prowess of her opponents and playing the espionage game as a sort of balls-to-the-wall competition.

Writeup reindoctrinated on the 17th of May, 2012.