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The Black Widow first appeared in comics in Tales of Suspense #52 way back in April of 1964. She was just your average communist spy who wore regular clothes and worked with Crimson Dynamo to try and defeat Iron Man. She continued battling Iron Man in the pages of Tales and even met Hawkeye and turned him into an early villain. She eventually became heroic and was an early member of the Avengers before the stories in this collection take place. These stories collect four major Black Widow highlights. The first is her first appearance in the aforementioned Tales of Suspense #52 which I reviewed in my Iron Man Omnibus Review. Like I said earlier, she was just your standard Commie spy and didn’t have much of a personality or character in those early days.
The other three tales changed the Black Widow into more or less the character we know today. We see her appearance in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man #86 from July of 1970 where she first donned the black outfit and slipped on the widow stings. She battled Spider-Man to prove her mettle but still was defeated by a weakened Peter Parker. The real meat of this collection is from her Amazing Adventure run that spanned 8 issues starting with the titles debut in August of 1970. This was a bi-monthly title that co-starred the Widow and the Inhumans. Black Widow started out saving a young kid who was taken prisoner by a wealthy, crooked politician. The kid then takes over the politician’s base of operations to run a free kitchen pantry type thing but he’s run afoul of the law and again Widow must come to his rescue after escaping her own imprisonment. She later battles a lame villain named the Astrologer who is planning crimes based on the stars. She quickly defeats this guy but not after he and a few others are killed leading Widow to wonder if she’s causing all these people to die thanks to her Widow’s touch. The final issue is just a stand alone story of Widow fighting another lame villain who is killed. This collection concludes with Daredevil #81 from November of 1971 where Widow saves Daredevil from the Owl and this started her co-starring role in the pages of DD.
-The Bottom Line- Black Widow really hit her character highs around this time, from the genesis of her new costume and widow’s sting to the curse of her Widow’s sting and how those around her ended up dying, starting with her husband. It wraps up nicely with the other defining arc of Widow; he joining up with Daredevil. The stories here are all very good. The Amazing Adventures stories are very short (only 10 pages each) and you could fly through her 8-issue run. The Spidey story is a classic Lee/Romita team-up and my favorite book of the bunch. There’s a veritable who’s who of creator’s in this collection. We start with a N. Korok/Don Heck story in Tales of Suspense #52. I mentioned that Spidey was a Lee/Romita collaboration. Amazing Adventures saw a few greats. Gary Friedrich started off the stories (#’s 1- 3) before he gave way to Mimi Gold (#4), Roy Thomas (#’s 5-6, 8) and Gerry Conway (#7). The art duties were handled by John Buscema (#’s 1-2), Gene Colan (#’s 3-6), Don Heck (#6-8), Sal Buscema (#6) and Bill Everett (#8). To sum things up, Conway and Colan worked on the Daredevil issue. It’s just a great cast of creator’s to work on these Black Widow stories. I usually talk about pricing for these collections due to the usual low page count and the price you pay (usually about $20) and for this I’d say it is a great value considering how much you’d have to pay to get these individual issues. I really enjoyed reading this and you’ll breeze right through these seminal Black Widow tales. Recommended.
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