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Today, we look at the disturbing retcon that Marvel used to reveal how Nick Fury actually recruited Black Widow to go work for S.H.I.E.L.D.
In every installment of Abandoned Love we will be examining comic book stories, plots and ideas that were abandoned by a later writer without actively contradicting an earlier story (so the more passive definition of retcons as being anything that is retroactively added to continuity, even if there is no specific conflict with a past story). Feel free to e-mail me at brianc@cbr.com if you have any suggestions for future editions of this feature.
Obviously, as you are all aware by now, Black Widow debuted in the 1960s as a Soviet operative, basically a riff on Boris and Natasha from Rocky and Bullwinkle. Just an over-the-top Russian spy. You really couldn’t get more generic of a villain, really. The first sort of twist for the character was when she seduced the American archer known as Hawkeye and manipulated him into becoming a super-villain and trying to kill Iron Man. That failed a few times and so the Soviets forced her to become an ACTIVE operative rather than just someone who sent other people on missions and in Tales of Suspense #64 (by Stan Lee, Don Heck and Chic Stone), she teamed up with Hawkeye (it is pretty funny how he’s all, “Come on, I really don’t like being a traitor,” but she’s all, “But you looooove me,” and he’s all, “Yeah, okay, fuck America”) once more to take Iron Man down, but ol’ Shellhead figured out that Black Widow was Hawkeye’s Achilles heel and blasted at her, forcing Hawkeye to help her and call off his attack on Iron Man…
I love her dialogue here. “STUPID LOVE!”
Well, Jack Kirby and Stan Lee decided to make Hawkeye a superhero after that and so, in Avengers #16 (by Kirby, Lee and Dick Ayers), despite there being no indication that Black Widow was thinking about defecting at all in her last appearance (it literally ends with her chastising Hawkeye for messing up their mission), Black Widow tries to defect and is instead gunned down, leading Hawkeye to join the Avengers in her memory…
You just have to adore Hawkeye’s position here. “She was shot. She was still alive when they took her away, but eh, who wants to follow up on that? I’ll just assume she’s dead for…reasons.” Wouldn’t it have made a whole lot more sense if she was just outright killed? As I write this, I realize that it very well could have been the case that Kirby intended her FOR to be outright dead and then Stan threw in the “Well, she wasn’t dead when they took her away” in case he still wanted to use her later on, and that’s why it ends up with Hawkeye sounding bizarrely callous. Ah…the Marvel Method.
Anyhow, Black Widow turns out to be alive in Avengers #29 (by Don Heck, Stan Lee and Frank Giacoia), just brainwashed and teams up with Power Man and the Swordsman to destroy the Avengers, starting with Hawkeye.
You have to love how much random villains were willing to work for the Communists back in the 1960s. I get that they’re supervillains, but you’d think there’d be a LITTLE patriotism mixed in there.
Luckily for Hawkeye, her love for him causes her to break free of the brainwashing in the following issue and she was back to the side of the angels…
Once she was free of the programming, she wanted to try to show that she could be an asset to the good guys, so she brings the Sons of the Serpent to the Avengers’ attention (amusingly, they never quite explain how she found out about the Sons of the Serpent. They just show her at one of their meetings and she’s all, “Oh man, I better tell the Avengers about this.” So, does she just wander into random meetings?). She then helps them take the Serpents down.
Roy Thomas then took over as writer of the series and he toys with the idea of her joining the Avengers (I’ll be doing a bit about her odd Avengers journey later on today), but the other Avengers are wary about her because she is still willing to kill. However, she is all set to argue her way on to the team in Avengers #38 (by Roy Thomas, Don Heck and George Roussos) when she is waylaid by Nick Fury while on the way to Avengers Mansion and Fury makes a pretty convincing argument that she should join S.H.I.E.L.D. instead and she does so…
She then tells the Avengers she is defecting back to the Communists rather than trusting them to let her do her mission. On the one hand, this is very much a classic Silver Age plotline (superheroes never trust each other), but on the other hand, I’ll admit, Hawkeye IS dumb enough to try to mess her mission up.
Her being a S.H.I.E.L.D agent was her status quo for years. Well, in the final issue of the first Richard K. Morgan Black Widow miniseries (art by Goran Parlov and Bill Seinkiewicz), we learn that the people behind the Black Widow program were worried about how they could control their agents. It is then revealed that they came up with a pheromone that could force her to obey them and, well, Nick Fury stole said pheromone and used it to recruit Natasha and still used it to this day…
Fury didn’t even bother denying it. Now, my pal Tom A. suggested this one and he thinks that this might be more of a If I Pass This Way Again, as no one really talk about this anymore, but I think we just don’t hear about her start with SHIELD period, so I think it is still part of her continuity and boy, it is MESSED UP. But I’m open to this being an “If I Pass This Way Again,” instead (I’d sure love it if it were).
Thanks to Tom for the suggestion! If anyone has a suggestion for a future edition of Abandoned Love, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!
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