Today, we look at how Black Widow was weirdly good at avoiding the most dangerous Avengers missions. Like, REALLY weirdly good.
Knowledge Waits is a feature where I just share some bit of comic book history that interests me.
I talked about these two stories on my Twitter and Facebook recently, but then I thought I really should post them here, as well, so here we are.
As we all know by now, when the Avengers went on a dangerous mission through time in Avengers: Endgame to recover the various Infinity Stones, Black Widow died while recovering the Soul Stone. She was actually the only Avenger to die on that particular mission (although Nebula was captured). However, the Marvel Cinematic Universe version of Black Widow didn’t learn a lesson that the Marvel Universe version of Black Widow clearly learned, which was that the easiest way to avoid dying on these dangerous missions is just not go on them!
Black Widow was a stalwart member of the Avengers during the 1990s. When Bob Harras joined the book as the new writer, she took on the role as the deputy to Captain America in the book, like this scene from Avengers #336 (by Bob Harras, Steve Epting and Tom Palmer)…
When the Harras/Epting/Palmer run REALLY began in Avengers #343 (their first story together was sort of a fill-in event before their run officially began), Black Widow is now explicitly Captain America’s second-in-command…
She has this role during the rest of Captain America’s time on the book. She and Cap had a close relationship during this time…
Then Operation: Galactic Storm began. The early issues were setting up the concept, which is that the Kree and Shi’ar Empires are warring with each other and they’re using space warps that are powered by stars and one of the stars they’re using is Earth’s sun, which is destabilizing the sun.
So the Avengers have to get involved. Captain America gives a speech to the assembled Avengers (with Black Widow right by his side) in Avengers #345…
Then he announces that they have come up with a plan involving splitting all of the Avengers into three teams. Two teams will go on diplomatic missions to the two different alien empires and a third team will guard Earth. The two space missions are VERY dangerous as they are wandering into very dangerous situations in the middle of a war. Heck, they don’t even know if they will be ACCEPTED by the planets that they’re traveling to (as it turns out, they really weren’t, as the Kree arrest them right away and plan to kill them). Cap specifically notes that the teams were made up by him, Iron Man and Black Widow.
So he announces the teams…
Yep, you guessed it, she isn’t on any of the teams!
Hawkeye borrows some Pym particles to force Captain America to put him on the Kree team over USAgent, but Black Widow never says anything about NOT BEING ON A TEAM…
She then does not appear in the rest of the crossover. Think about it, there is a team that is specifically just “stay on Earth and guard prisoners and defend the planet if something comes up” and she isn’t even on THAT team! Clearly, it was just an error and the writers all forgot about her, but it’s still pretty funny that she just basically went on a vacation during this period.
When the Avengers return to Earth in Captain America #401 (by Mark Gruenwald, Rik Levins and Danny Bulanadi) (with Cap all irritated at the rest of the Avengers for killing the secret mastermind behind the war, Supreme Intelligence), Black Widow is right back there…
I love the bit where Cap gives a lecture on ethics, and Black Widow is one of the only people to show up and Cap is all, “You three don’t need it”…
Oh, the spy? She’s the only one who’s up on ethics? For serious? Captain America then left the Avengers and Black Widow took over as the leader of the team.
Okay, so a few years later, the Onslaught crossover took place. Onslaught was the manifestation of Professor Xavier’s psychic abilities tainted by having Magneto’s personality mixed with the Professor’s (after Xavier wiped Magneto’s mind out during the “Fatal Attractions” crossover). Magneto’s personality amped up all the worst parts of Xavier’s personality and the end result was a psychic being with its own personality – the malevolent being known as Onslaught. It encased itself in a special armor so it could hold physical form and then it started kicking some ass.
The final battle took place in Central Park in Onslaught: Marvel Universe #1 (by Scott Lobdell, Mark Waid, Adam Kubert, Joe Bennett, Dan Green, Art Thibert, Tim Townsend and Jesse Delperdang), where the X-Men are getting destroyed by Onslaught when suddenly, the other prominent superheroes of the Marvel Universe show up to help out…
So in the ensuing big fight, the Hulk is able to crack Onslaught’s armor and then the villain’s psychic energy was leaking out there, which was dangerous, as now there was no way of physically harming him. However, the heroes discovered that if humans entered the psychic energy, they could absorb some of his power (mutants couldn’t do it because he would just take over their bodies as a host, which is what he was planning to do with the kidnapped X-Man. Scarlet Witch being able to go in due to her hex), so the heroes all sacrificed themselves to suck away his power, even though it seemingly killed them doing so.
Once he was “anchored” by the humans, the mutants then destroyed the energy, but, again, in the process it seemed like the Fantastic Four, Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, Hawkeye, Black Panther, Crystal, Vision, Scarlet Witch, Namor, Doctor Doom, Giant-Man, Wasp and Falcon were all killed.
However, guess who WASN’T there? Yep, you guessed it, the Avengers leader of the time, Black Widow!
In Avengers #403 (by Mark Waid, Mike Deodato and Tom Palmer), the Avengers are about to head to Central Park when Black Widow, who was rattled by the situation, as the public were all freaking out over the terror caused by Onslaught (who hit New York City with an EMP and then some Sentinel attacks). So she decided to not go with them…
And they all, of course, all seemingly die and she then breaks up the Avengers (which, as I noted before, didn’t make any sense). Clearly, since Widow wasn’t going to be one of the heroes who were going to be part of the Heroes Reborn deal (where the “dead” heroes actually show up on an alternate Earth in comics done by Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld’s studios), she had to be written out of the final story, but the end result is pretty funny.
What a weird little set of stories for her, huh?
If anyone has suggestions about interesting pieces of comic book history, feel free to drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com.
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