Tales of Suspense #52 (1964)
plot by Stan Lee
script by Don Rico
pencils by Don Heck
cover by Jack Kirby
It’s a safe bet that nobody saw Black Widow’s popularity coming, considering that Crimson Dynamo gets most of the cover’s attention.
The story is credited to “N. Korok”, a pseudonym of Don Rico.
He had been a Golden Age artist, but in the 60s he was writing novels; reportedly the reason why he used a pseudonym for comics is that he didn’t want his publisher to know that he worked for the definitely lower-paying comics industry.
Considering that in the 70s he would be the co-founder (with Mark Evanier) of the Comic Art Professional Society, he definitely still loved comics.
This is not the first appearance of Crimson Dynamo: by this point he had already reformed.
Considering Black Widow’s development, I find it interesting that Marvel had a surprisingly high number of Soviet villains who reformed… we’re deep in the Cold War propaganda, but things can be relatively nuanced at Marvel.
Crimson Dynamo is working on a laser project for Tony Stark, and when it proves too dangerous Tony THROWS HIMSELF in order to save him!!!
Who does he think he is, Spider-Man!? Also, how light is the Crimson Dynamo’s armor if Tony can just lift him like that!?
The Russians are, understandably, quite upset that their top operative / super-scientist has defected to work for an American industrialist.
Also the comic has to take time to point out that the Russian leader (probably intented to be Nikita Khrushchev, given the era) is short and pudgy.
Hey I said Marvel could be RELATIVELY nuanced.
And it’s here that we are introduced to Madame Natasha.
As well as her assistant, the borderline super-strong Boris.
Yes, the villains of the story are Natasha and Boris.
Which means that Black Widow owes her origins to Rocky and Bullwinkle.
Natasha and Boris… the Marvel ones… are brought to New York on a nuclear submarine.
This is far from the first time I come across a Silver Age story where a submarine shows up right next to the shore and nobody notices!
Little known fact: in the 60s you could just drop by a weapons manufacturer, claim you are a scientist, and be given a tour.
It helps if the owner is eager for you to Rocky his Bullwinkle.
But how will Boris get past the airtight Stark security?
With absurd ease! I know this is way too early for the place to have CCTVs, but it should be a little harder to sneak in to a WEAPONS MANUFACTURER facility DURING THE COLD WAR.
You cannot convince me that Boris doesn’t have super-strength.
When Professor Vanko… the original Crimson Dynamo… refuses to sabotage Stark’s technology, Boris uses one of his old inventions against him.
After immobilizing Vanko, Boris resumes his little-known career as a DJ.
People are always coming and going at Stark Industries! Does that place even HAVE security???
Seriously: Boris is able to carry Vanko all the way to the submarine (!!!), then he goes BACK to Stark Industries to put on the Crimson Dynamo armor!!!
It’s at this point that Natasha is first referred to as the Black Widow.
The Crimson Dynamo armor is no joke. At this point in the series, it’s on par with Iron Man’s.
Black Widow’s whole purpose was just to keep Stark distracted.
Leaving aside the ridiculousness of Boris being able to do all that during Stark’s dinner, this wasn’t a bad plan at all.
Finally we have a hero kidnapped by the villains where I don’t have to complain that they don’t just shoot him, because what good would that make?
Is this the most hilarious way with which Iron Man has ever recharged his armor?
It’s not, but close!
Now that he’s powered, Iron Man can just rescue Vanko and return home.
Like I said, the Crimson Dynamo armor is on par with the Iron Man armor.
The man inside it, not as much.
Most of the time.
Black Widow isn’t done with her mission… SOMEHOW, Iron Man doesn’t find it weird that she’s inside the lab during the battle.
Despite the fact that he left her outside and the lab is surrounded by a raging fire.
Maybe he didn’t notice because all the background have disappeared during the fight.
Iron Man’s greatest weakness… horniness water hoses.
Iron Man has an ally in this fight: Vanko and his trusty Laser Light Pistol™, whose patent was recently granted by the United States Redundancy Trademark Office Of American Trademarks.
Seriously, did Stan Lee not know what “laser” means as much as he didn’t know what transistors were?
Both Vanko and Boris perish in the struggle.
I’m sure we won’t ever hear about the Black Widow again.
Well, until THE NEXT PANEL confirms that she’ll return in the following issue.
Historical significance: 9/10
In addition to introducing Black Widow, this is important for the Crimson Dynamo.
Because while both the original and the second die here, they give rise to a remarkably varied legacy. As of 2026 there been FIFTEEN people serving as Crimson Dynamo!!!
Some of them have been villains, some of them have been heroes; besides the main eight (Ivan Vanko, Alexander Nevsky, Yuri Petrovich, Dimitri Bukharin, Valentin Shatalov, Gregar Valski, Gennady Gavrilov and Galina Nemirovskaya), we don’t even know the names of the others.
Silver Age-ness: 6/10
There is no security whatsoever at Stark Industries.
Does it stand the test of time? 7/10
Despite some of the tropes of the era, most of it still works. Boris is just a cartoon villain, but Vanko and to a far lesser extent Black Widow are slightly more complex.
And all things considered the Cold War propaganda is not as bad as it could have been, if you have seen other series with Communist villains that Marvel was doing at the time.
The artwork does absolutely no favors to the story though. I’m not the biggest Don Heck fan and I don’t think he’s a good match for Iron Man… he’s fine with the civilian scenes, but when we move to superhero action everyone is way too stiff.
Generally representative of the early Iron Man stories, as the series hasn’t truly kicked off yet.
How close is this to the modern character? 2/10
Natasha is kind of interchangeable with any generic “enemy spy who falls for the hero” woman, and she plays no real part beyond being a distraction.
As promised by the ending, she does return the following issue.
The Natasha that had to deal with a moose and a squirrel is the one with the smarter opponents.
Iron Man eventually recovers the device she stole, but the story does no favors to Stark’s reputation.
Black Widow becomes a more traditional supervillain in issue 65, gaining an actual costume.
At this point she’s in a relationship with Hawkeye, who ALSO starts as a supervillain.
Interestingly, this story shows that her parents are alive. You could say they’ll be retconned away… but in this scene Black Widow is telling Hawkeye what happened to her between appearances, so she’s just lying.
This is where the I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-the-webshooters are established.
Her ability to stick to walls will slowly disappear, likely in an attempt to avoid making her feel derivative of Spider-Man.
After being the villain for half a dozen Iron Man stories, she gets involved with the Avengers (now that Hawkeye is a member).
And in 1967 she would have joined the team, if a Nick Fury mission didn’t require her to spy on the team. Rather than doing so, she refuses to join.
But she hangs around for more issues, and in Avengers #43 we discover that “widow” is not only her codename: she was recruited as a Soviet agent after the death of her husband Alexi.
Who was actually the original Red Guardian.
Yeah in the movies Red Guardian is her adoptive father, but in the comics he was her husband… you never know what an adaptation is going to do with a character!
Red Guardian dies for good in the Avengers book, where Black Widow hangs around a little more without actively joining the team.
But unless you’re knowledgeable about Marvel history, up to this point you might have had trouble even recognizing Black Widow. She wasn’t even a redhead for most of the 60s!
But in 1970, she’s given a COMPLETE redesign courtesy of John Romita in Spider-Man #86.
Weird as it may sound, it’s only from THIS story that Natasha is consistently shown to be a redhead, and it’s the debut of her trademark black skinsuit.
This design was reportedly heavily inspired both Miss Fury, as well as the Avengers… just not the ones she hangs out with.
This story, where Black Widow fights Spider-Man just to prove her gadgets, seems to come out of absolutely nowhere in-universe… because it’s essentially a huge advertisement for the Black Widow’s upcoming serial on Amazing Tales.
That was the FIRST regular series at Marvel starring a woman!
I’ve talked about it before; it’s pretty solid, especially in the artwork department, and while the writing is good… there’s little doubt about what was intended to be the selling point.
After the end of that series, Black Widow found herself on Daredevil… mostly because Gerry Conway really liked the character.
It’s only at this point that Natasha is given the last name Romanoff (we didn’t know her full name before!), and Gene Colan is particularly fond of drawing her.
Seriously, if I ran a counter of how many times we see Black Widow in her underwear in this series, it would seriously challenge Dazzler’s record.
Adding to her complex history of retcons, here Natasha is said to have been rescued as a child in Stalingrad in 1942.
This is from a 1972 story, so at the time this would have made Black Widow around 30 years old.
Black Widow had been a bit of a damsel in distress in her earlier Daredevil appearances, but there is a noticeable push to make her more independent.
It’s from the 70s, so it’s not exactly subtle about it.
The book is even officially retitled “Daredevil and the Black Widow” from #91 to #107.
She finally joins the Avengers in 1973: awkwardly, during a team-up with Daredevil.
That doesn’t last long: she quits THE FOLLOWING ISSUE because she likes Daredevil better.
You don’t have to be a dick about it, Black Panther.
Black Widow would eventually leave Daredevil in issue 124 of his series, in 1975.
By that point, she had been a constant presence on the book for three years.
It’s interesting to see that, with the partial exception of her solo series, she had been defined by her struggle to be a more independent woman since her debut.
After having been the first female character to star in a Marvel series, she became the first woman to lead a Marvel superhero team (trailing Saturn Girl at DC by several years) with the Champions.
She also had a relationship with Hercules, because of course why wouldn’t they?
She would bounce between books between the rest of the 70s and the 80s, getting an atrocious new look during the Frank Miller run of Daredevil.
For as much love as the Miller run deservedly gets, I don’t think a lot of people prefer this look for the Black Widow.
A look that she would unfortunately carry into the 90s.
Despite her association with the Avengers and their occasional team-ups, it’s noteworthy how long it took for Black Widow to return to the team after her initial 2 issue membership.
She doesn’t rejoin until 1992 on Avengers #343. She even got to be the leader in this period…
… and in fact she was the leader up until Onslaught and Heroes Reborn.
She didn’t take the team’s dissolution well.
Backing up a bit, in the 90s she’s the unexpected guest star in a story that will make Black Widow’s origin unnecessarily complicated.
It’s the fault of Chris Claremont, who in Uncanny X-Men #268 showed Black Widow’s origin was STILL linked to World War II, as she remembers meeting Wolverine when he was teaming up with Captain America during the war.
That was completely ignored for years, but it eventually snuck back into continuity. In fact Black Widow was made even OLDER by the 2010 series “Black Widow: Deadly Origin”, pushing back her rescue to 1928.
At this point Black Widow probably doesn’t even remember WHO she is: between the various memory implants, as well as the effects of a super-soldier serum she’s confirm to have received, her memories are untrustworthy.
Since Black Widow is now a super-soldier older than she looks, with a tragic backstory that she doesn’t remember completely, as well as remaining a superhero who is still comfortable with morally questionable actions… is it any wonder that her latest love interest is the Winter Soldier?
Most of the current lore surrounding Black Widow, from the infamous Red Room where she was trained to the existence of multiple Black Widows, is relatively recent compared to the character and can be traced back to the 2000s at most.
In fact I believe that her prominence in the 2000s… as well as the fact that she’s an easy character to introduce… is the main reason why the MCU used Black Widow as its first female member.
She was technically killed in 2017, but because of cloning shenanigans they brought her back.
Black Widow occupies a unique position in the Marvel Universe: she’s not quite a traditional hero, but she rarely goes full anti-hero.
There aren’t a lot of characters that would fit equally with the Avengers, Daredevil, Wolverine, the Punisher or S.H.I.E.L.D.
I think she should be used sparingly both on Daredevil and Avengers, for opposite reasons: she can either make a street hero involved with more crazy stuff, or she can make a traditional team involved with more down-to-earth threats.
But if she does get involved… expect something awesome from the sexiest badass of the Marvel Universe.
