Mystic Comics #4 (1940)
by George Kapitan & Harry Sahle
While the identity of the first superheroine is debatable, there is no question on who is the first Marvel superheroine: Black Widow.
Just not the one you’re thinking about.
I’ll quickly cover the “first superheroine” status before going into the actual story.
The problem arises from exactly HOW we define a superheroine!
If we go be “woman with superpowers”, there’s Fantomah from Fiction House Magazines (February 1940).
She had a dual identity and she fought crime by turning into a skull-faced monster… but she’s more of a horror character than a superhero, and I don’t have enough material on her for a full review.
Or you may consider The Woman In Red from Nedor Comics (March 1940).
She’s a much better candidate for “first superheroine”: no superpowers, but if we count Crimson Avenger at least she LOOKS slightly original.
Unfortunately I don’t have enough material on her either.
That’s just comic book heroines; an argument could be made for a couple of heroines from newspaper strips.
However none of the above had enough staying power to have more than a handful of appearances.
The Black Widow (June 1940), on the other hand… ALSO has very few Golden Age stories (just five!), but she DID manage to be relevant again.
But let’s move to the story itself. Our protagonist is a small-time medium, Claire Voyant.
Yes.
That is her actual name.
She has tough customers. I would joke about the idiocy of complaining about witchcraft when you’re already paying someone to talk to the dead, but… they’re paying a medium calling herself Claire Voyant, I don’t think these people are very smart.
This makes FREAKING SATAN force her to curse her customers.
Man, the Golden Age does not pull any punches!
Case in point: one of her customers murders Claire for cursing his family!!!
And then FREAKING SATAN shows up to take her to Hell. (!!!)
In Hell, Claire Voyant is reborn as the Black Widow.
He then gives her a tour of Hell…
…which is FAR more terrifying than what you’d expect from the Golden Age!
Black Widow agrees to become an agent of FREAKING SATAN, but she has to get revenge first.
Which she does, despite the fact that her murderer is also a victim.
The reason why she’s called Black Widow is that she murders people by branding a spider symbol into the victim’s skull.
All in a day’s work for an agent of FREAKING SATAN.
And that’s the premise of the character: even considering who she answers to, she’s supposedly only murdering evil people.
Then again, her first victim was driven insane by a curse by FREAKING SATAN, so is she really a hero? I’d say she’s an anti-hero at best.
Historical significance: 4 / 
This would’ve been a 0/10 for the longest time, but Claire has showed up again.
Silver Age-ness: 0 /
DEFINITELY NOT.
Does it stand the test of time? 6 /
As a horror story, it’s not bad! Its only shortcomings are the brevity of the story and the lack of acknowledgement that Satan played both Claire and her murderer.
The artwork, while stiff and outdated by today’s standards, definitely stands out in the Golden Age.
How close is this to the modern character? 8/10
Black Widow shows up in the following issue, where she murders a train robber.
You might notice her costume changes basically every time she shows up.
In issue 7, she murders two munitions salesmen who are selling weapons to both Allies and Nazis. I’m still not sure why FREAKING SATAN cares, but she’s now only killing evil people.
These are the only issues of Hit Comics where she appears, but she shows up again in 1942 on USA Comics #5. This time her target is a contract killer.
Her final Golden Age appearance is 1943’s All Select Comics #1. This time the target is a guy who fakes having magic powers to scam people, which… why would FREAKING SATAN care if he’s already employing a medium!?
This issue might have been her most popular appearance, where she’s in an anthology book that features all three Marvel Golden Age superstars (Captain America, Namor and Human Torch).
It’s also the only story where she has red hair. I assume she was kept a blonde in her modern appearances to avoid confusion with her FAR more famous successor.
It’s also the only story where she does something besides murdering people: she restores the amputated leg of the boy who was the victim of the fake mystic’s scam.
That was it for the longest time, as Black Widow was one of the VERY few characters that even Roy Thomas didn’t bother trying to use.
All she managed was a cameo in 1994’s Marvels, among the Golden Age heroes.
And that’s where she WOULD have stayed, if not J. Michael Straczynski and 2007’s miniseries “The Twelve”, where she was one of the Golden Age heroes brought into the present day.
That’s where she was given a different origin: her sister was murdered by a powerful man she couldn’t bring to justice…
…until she agrees to work for FREAKING SATAN, punishing the evil people who tricked the Devil.
As of 2024, her last appearance to date is “The Twelve: Spearhead” in 2010, a one-shot where we see her handiwork in slaughtering Nazis.
I fully expect to see her again, and not just because she’s immortal.
Where’s the story of her meeting the Avenger Black Widow or, even more interestingly, a team-up with Ghost Rider?