We recently reblogged a post announcing the upcoming Painkiller Jane movie where the OP expressed glee at a bisexual female protagonist from a different comic company than DC/Marvel getting a movie before the larger studios. One respondent took the OP to task for erasing Black Widow’s bisexuality. I dislike the idea that we would attack each other as a community, especially when there is no reason to believe that Black Widow is bisexual based on her portrayal in the movies. Or in the comics for that matter.

Let me be the first to say: I would love for Black Widow to be bisexual. But as someone who has been a massive reader of comics for 35 years, and counting, I’m struggling to come up with any basis for this claim. I spent the next day scouring the internet for proof that she’s been written bisexual. I found a few message board posts and random “best LGBT comic character” lists, but when any of them provided any source for her bisexuality (which was rare), they all pointed directly to an entry on bisexual Marvel characters on the Marvel Comics Database.

The problem with the Marvel Comics Database is that, like Wikipedia, it is user curated and edited. Unlike Wikipedia, it has no requirements for source citations on anything anyone adds to an entry. While the LGBT characters list shows “Black Widow (Earth 616)” and an image of the Natalia Romanova/Natasha Romanoff Widow, it doesn’t show any source for the claim. This, plus the absence of any other verifiable source online, reinforced my pause.

My next step then was to read every Black Widow comic one-shot, mini series and ongoing series printed to date. In the fifth Black Widow mini, titled Deadly Origin, I came across the following sequence of panels:

For some story context, Black Widow has discovered that someone from her past had “infected” her skin with nanites that she would then spread to her lovers. Her lovers would then pass them on to their lovers. Once activated, the twice-passed along nanites would induce rage in their hosts, causing them to kill Natasha’s past lovers. The majority of the series then follows Black Widow running through her dance card of exes and currents (Hawkeye, IronMan, Hercules, Dare-Devil, Wolverine, and Winter Soldier. Notice the one thing they have in common?) in order to try and save them. She’s had an antitoxin created that she can spread, again through skin-to-skin contact, to neutralize the first nanites.

Put aside for a moment the creepy moral judgment suggested in this plot as it regards her sexuality, and go back to the above panels. Black Widow, whose costume covers all of her body save for her cleavage and her head arrives at Hawkeye’s too late to stop the rage nanite activation, so she passes the cure by kissing Bobbi Morse aka Mockingbird. This is for expediency, not desire. But then it gets even more problematic when she flat out tells Hawkeye that she only did it to titillate him. This isn’t bisexuality, it’s overt wank fodder for boys.

Later we find out from Winter Soldier, that Bobbi has sent him with a message for Natasha to “call her if [she was] still curious.” If anything,this suggests that, up to this point, Black Widow is known by her contemporaries to be straight (note Mockingbird is a spook for SHIELD too so she would have a lot more info than the average Joe), and that if anyone in this series were likely to be bi, it would be Mockingbird. By the way, I’m a fan of that too. I think she, Clint, and Natasha would make a lovely poly relationship.

Later, she also saves Hercules from the orgy of women he’s with (She and he dated during their time in the Champions of LA). She jokes around with him about all the girls he’s slept with. I would totally expect him to follow up with a retort about her own girl-girl dalliances if there had been any, because that’s the sort of dudebro Herc is. This issue also has Tony Stark tease Pepper Potts that she has a crush on Black Widow.

In the minis Homecoming and The Things They Say About Her, Black Widow throws down against a lesbian spy named Kestrel. There is a scene in the latter mini where Natasha has been captured and is being beaten by Kestrel. Natasha begins to egg Kestrel on over her sexuality, and is slapped before she can finish her statement but the logical subtext was that Natasha was proclaiming herself not into other ladies.

Through seven mini series, a cancelled ongoing series and her current ongoing series, these are the only times sexuality comes up in regards to Natasha where it isn’t about her and some dude. I’m not about to read decades of minor appearances in other books and sometime memberships in the Avengers to take this research any further. I feel as if there really were evidence of Black Widow being bi, someone somewhere would have provided it by now. It’s just too impossible to completely erase this sort of thing from the internet.

What “evidence” we’ve been given is circumspect at best. Natasha’s sexuality as a straight person is given a slut shaming subtext and any even remote nods at bisexuality (the kiss, the curiosity comment, Tony’s teasing of Pepper) are all very frat boyish and not meant to be taken seriously.

I would love a canon bi Natasha. If any of you can find anything to substantiate it, please send it my way so we can put this to rest.

–Evan