Natalia Alianovna "Natasha Romanoff" Romanova (Russian: Наталья Альяновна "Наташа" Романова) is introduced as a spy for the Soviet Union until she defects to the United States.

Black Widow stories often explore her struggle to define her own identity as a spy and the trauma she endured from her life of training in the Red Room.

Black Widow's status as a leading female character and femme fatale has influenced her portrayal, which was often contradictory as comics grappled with the conflict between traditional gender roles and second-wave feminism.

[5] Her first costume took the form of a blue bodysuit made primarily of fishnet-style webbing, a cape, and a mask designed to resemble the one used by Hawkeye.

[8] At the end of the story, she reformed and allied with the Avengers, as her love for Hawkeye motivated her to switch sides after recovering from brainwashing by the Soviet government.

[16] Marvel's first series to feature stories led by a female superhero,[17] it portrayed Black Widow as a wealthy jet setter who doubled as a crime-fighter.

Writers Roy Thomas and then Gerry Conway moved it away from politics in favor of melodrama, developing the relationship between Black Widow and her father figure Ivan Petrovich.

[27] Originally intended to be a duo of Iceman and Angel, editor Len Wein mandated several changes to The Champions, including the requirement of a female character.

Isabella wanted to continue this story by revealing Ivan to be Black Widow's biological father, but he left Marvel Comics after completing the issue.

[33] Macchio made it explicit in this run that Black Widow killed adversaries when necessary and obtained information from another character by having sex with him, portraying things that were usually left ambiguous in comic books at the time.

[20] Black Widow then starred in a three-issue arc, "The Fire Next Time", by writer Scott Lobdell and penciller Randy Green, in Journey into Mystery #517–519 (1998).

This was the first time a comic book series featured Black Widow as its sole main character; the only other title to do this was her standalone 1990 graphic novel.

With the character's popularity came additional publications, such as Black Widow and the Marvel Girls (2010), which was created by Salvador Espin, Veronica Gandini, Takeshi Miyazawa, and Paul Tobin.

[71] She is trained in a Soviet spy facility, the Red Room, where she is augmented through biotechnology; the process brings her body to its physical peak and slows cellular degeneration, enabling her to remain young and in her prime for decades.

[78] The KGB forces Natasha to work for them again by creating a Life Model Decoy of her deceased husband, acting as if he had survived and was being held hostage.

This Nick Fury is discovered to be a Life Model Decoy created by Osborn, and Natasha escapes to help Maria Hill revive Tony Stark, who had previously wiped his own mind.

[82] As Black Widow regularly takes up alter egos and false personas as a spy, the character struggles to define her own identity.

[47] This identity crisis grew when Black Widow discovered that many of her memories, including the loss of her husband and her time as a professional ballerina, were faked by the Soviet Union.

[92] With her defection to the United States, Marvel reinforced its interpretation of Black Widow as an agent of good through her work with American superheroes, which stood in contrast to her villainous period with the Soviet Union.

[89] Femme fatale characters frequently have origins in Russia,[97] and Black Widow's rejection of American gender roles in the 1960s reflected the otherness that she represented as an agent of the Soviet Union.

[9][97] The character was created in a time of uncertainty around gender roles in the United States, as a growing feminist movement competed with traditional femininity.

[90] Despite this, other aspects of Black Widow remain in alignment with traditional gender roles, including her practice as a ballerina and her portrayal as a victim of trauma.

She was one of many female action heroes to follow a trend in the 1970s where strong women were portrayed as traditionally attractive, as writers tried to appease both the target male demographic and the feminist movement.

[111] Hawkeye was Black Widow's ally and love interest in her 1960s appearances, working with him to fight Iron Man and then reforming so she can be with him in the United States.

[18] He was initially portrayed as a father figure throughout her childhood, but newer accounts of Black Widow's history place her in training under the Soviet government for much of this time.

[126] Andrea Towers of Polygon cited Black Widow's grounded values of empathy and loyalty as keeping the character relevant amid her inconsistent publication.

[27] Psychologist and popular culture writer Sherry Ginn praised Black Widow as a strong female role model, though other commentators have challenged this based on her history as a villain and depictions of the character as a damsel in distress.

[87] This contrasts with her original costume from the 1960s, which Alan Kistler of The Mary Sue described as "a wee bit silly, even for the Silver Age of comics".

Her "Web of Intrigue" (1983) appearances in Marvel Fanfare and her Deadly Origin (2010) series received praise for their artwork, with the latter standing out for its contrasting art styles by Tom Raney and John Paul Leon in the flashback and present-day segments.

The script depicted Black Widow as a magazine publisher with a double-life as a crime-fighter, having her fight a crime syndicate called Octopus that killed her father.