The Black Widow

Beauty is in eye of the beholder: Marvel Comic’s “The Black Widow”, Super-empowered woman or Super-exploited sex object in the movies and comic books.

The Black Widow (Natasha Romanova) is a superhero character who first appeared Marvel Comics Tales of Suspens No. 52 (April 1964). She was created by editor and plotter Stan Lee who is responsible for a great number of the heroes we recognize from the Marvel Universe. She was introduced as a Russian spy who sometime later defects to the United states and becomes an agent for S.H.I.E.L.D. and a member of the Avengers. The character is an expert tactician, martial artist and is stronger than most men though not really super-strong. Unlike some other super heroes that get their powers by

Her origin story, describes her being biologically enhanced and psychologically but does not quantify the extent of this. Important to her story is that she was trained in the Black Widow Ops Program. This program was designed to make the ultimate femme fatale assassin. A women who was mysterious, seductive, competent and deadly. As this character was written in the turbulent 60s, the second wave of Women’s Movement was in full swing. The Women’s Movement is defined as the “social movement, largely based in the United States, seeking equal rights and opportunities for women in their economic activities, their personal lives, and politics. It is recognized as the “second wave” of the larger feminist movement. While the first-wave feminism of the 19th and early 20th centuries focused on women’s legal rights, such as the right to vote, the second-wave feminism of the “women’s movement” peaked in the 1960s and ’70s and touched on every area of women’s experience—including family, sexuality, and work. There is little doubt that Stan Lee had to be influenced in some ways by this when he wrote the Black Widow character. It seems he catered to how men may be attracted to and simultaneously frightened by the

Other problem that started coming on the scene around that time was with the comic book industry. The comic book industry was having a hard time with being on the same page with women and their new wishes. It seemed like the comic book industry was more anti-feminist than actually in support of women. The comic books had to really think on this issue and didn’t want to start a huge problem that would lose sales and interest of both the male and female population. They decided to come up with another strategy. During the golden age era, the comic book industry would have funny animal storylines that resembled the gender characteristics. They would have small voice roles for the females to play the mother, daughter and lover of these animals. This made a small start with women in comics. Around the 1940’s the comic book was on to something when they started to collaborate with more progressive minds like DC comics who thought woman should start to make an appearance instead of just hearing their voices. The comic book industry decided to create storylines of heroism including the women as female heroes. This was done to only pacify the women and not to make it seem like the women were making a threat to the male power.