BLACK WIDOW

Natasha was born in Stalingrad (now Volgograd), Russia. The first and best-known Black Widow is a Soviet agent trained as a spy, martial artist, and sniper, and outfitted with an arsenal of high-tech weaponry, including a pair of wrist-mounted energy weapons dubbed her "Widow's Bite". She wears no costume during her first few appearances but simply evening wear and a veil. Romanova eventually defects to the U.S. for reasons that include her love for the reluctant-criminal turned superhero archer Hawkeye.

Romanova's parents were killed in a fire when Romanova was a child. She was saved from death herself by Ivan Petrovitch, who raised her as a surrogate father. He first appears in Marvel continuity in the Widow's 1970s Amazing Adventures feature, in which he is introduced as her chauffeur and confidant, without this back-story revealed. Romanova as a child appears in a flashback to 1941, in which Petrovitch, the superhero Captain America, and the mutant Logan who would become the superhero Wolverine, rescue her from Nazis on the fictional island principality of Madripoor.

A revised, retconned origin establishes her as being raised from early childhood by the U.S.S.R.'s "Black Widow Ops" program, rather than solely by Ivan Petrovitch. With other young female orphans, she is trained in combat and espionage at the covert "Red Room" facility. There, she is biotechnologically and psycho-technologically enhanced—an accounting that provides a rationale for her unusually long and youthful lifespan. While there, she was trained by, and a lover of, the Winter Soldier. Each Black Widow is deployed with false memories to help ensure her loyalty. Romanova eventually discovers this, including the fact that she had never, as she had believed, been a ballerina. She further discovers that the Red Room is still active as "2R".

Natasha married the renowned Soviet test pilot Alexi Shostakov. When the Soviet government decided to make Alexi into their new operative, the Red Guardian, he is told that he can have no further contact with his wife. Natasha is told that he had died and is trained as a secret agent separately.
The Avengers

Romanova grows up to serve as a femme fatale who attempts to seduce American defense contractor Tony Stark and inevitably confronts his superhero alter ego, Iron Man. On her first mission in the United States, she and her partner Boris Turgenov are sent to America to assassinate Prof. Anton Vanko. The pair battle Iron Man, and Turgenev steals and wears the Crimson Dynamo suit. Vanko sacrifices himself to save Iron Man, killing Turgenev in the process, using an unstable experimental laser light pistol. Romanova later meets the criminal archer Hawkeye and sets him against Iron Man, and later helped Hawkeye battle Iron Man.

Romanova later attempts to defect from the Soviet Union, but is wounded by a KGB agent. The KGB brainwashes her, and with the Swordsman and the first Power Man, she battles the Avengers, a superhero team she joins as a costumed heroine herself when she eventually does successfully defect.

The Black Widow is a world class athlete and gymnast, expert martial artist (including karate, judo, aikido, savate, various styles of kung fu, and boxing), marksman, and weapons specialist as well as having extensive espionage training. She is also an accomplished ballerina.

The Black Widow uses a variety of equipment invented by Soviet scientists and technicians, with later improvements by S.H.I.E.L.D. scientists and technicians. She usually wears distinctively shaped bracelets which fire the "Widow's Bite" electro-static energy blasts that can deliver charges up to 30,000 volts, as well as "Widow's line" grappling hooks, tear gas pellets, along with a new element introduced during her ongoing series during the "Kiss or Kill" arc called the "Widow's Kiss"; an aerosol instant knock-out gas she has modified. She wears a belt of metallic discs, some with disc-charges containing plastic explosives, others have been shown to be compartments to house other equipment. Her costume consists of synthetic stretch fabric equipped with micro-suction cups on fingers and feet, enabling her to adhere to walls and ceilings. In the 2006 "Homecoming" mini-series, she commented that she did not wish to use weaponry belonging to her traditional costume any more and was seen using knives, unarmed combat, and various firearms, but she has since began using her bracelets again. While in disguise as Yelena Bolova when infiltrating the then Osborn-sanctioned Thunderbolts during "Dark Reign" she used a specialed multi-lense goggle/head-carapace that demonstrated various technical abilities enhancing vision and communication. Later, she has used a modified gun based on her Widow's Bite wrist cartridge, during her adventures alongside the new Captain America.

The Black Widow has been enhanced by biotechnology that makes her body resistant to aging and disease and heals at an above human rate as well as psychological conditioning that suppresses her memory of true events as opposed to implanted ones of the past without the aid of specially designed system suppressant drugs, attempts to do so result in extreme biological reactions, indicated as vomiting and black-outs.