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Didn't Black Widow and Nick Fury both end up dosed with a super soldier variant that made them very, very long-lived?

Though Richard Morgan's two (very good) Black Widow miniseries may have changed that for Widow.

That was an awesome issue, though. Jim Lee on art, I believe.

The problem is: That was Black Widow's original origin as
revealed in a comic LONG ago, she was a little kid during
WWII. At the time it was published, she could have been
brn during the war and still be on its 30s.

The problem is that Claremont did his story (referencing
that event) many years after that. And even twisted the
knife by making the CHARACTERS wonder why she didn't get
old, which he shouldn't have done at all. And, as is
usual in Claremont's writing, he didn't bother to explain
anything.

I would say that, like Reed Richards and Ben Grimm's WWII
exploits, this thing has been "stealth retconned" away.
There is no reason why Black Widow SHOULD have been at
the war, after all.

Best,
Hunter (Pedro Bouça)

There's a very good 3 part explanation for that story:

1) Claremont

2) Jim Lee

3) The 90s

All the perfect ingredients for a story that makes no sense.

It was at last explained in the first BW mini by Richard morgan. The widow assumed a serum similar to the Nick Fury one, if I remember well.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure she took some version of the infinity formula to keep her young.

I thought the first Richard K. Morgan Black Widow mini-series was pretty much declared "not-in-continuity" from day 1. I remembered reading an interview at some poine with Morgan where he said so. It was supposed to be like Matt Wagner's "Trinity" or "DC: The New Frontier" in that regard.

Besides, didn't the 2nd Morgan Black Widow story leave things in a state totally incompatible with anything else that was happening in the Marvel universe at the time?

Whenever something like that happens, just know that a wizard did it.

A wizard? I thought it was Superboy punching the glass...

Can we please just toss continuity out the window, finally? I can guarantee you that even if Marvel and DC wanted to keep track of everything that was ever mentioned over the last seventy years' worth of comic books, they simply couldn't. So let's accept that stories should be internally consistent, but won't be, and can't be, consistent with every damn throwaway comic published over the last umpteen zillion years.

Problem with that story was that it had NO consistency internal or otherwise.

The Morgan miniseries explains it, but I have always considered that as appearing in the three-to-six month (depending on how Bendis is remembering things) gap in continuity...

...but given the ending of the first mini, I prefer that out of continuity myself.

I'm not defending the story, but Uncanny X-Men was going through a very weak period when that issue was published. The X-Men team has been broken up around UXM #248, and no longer existed as an official team. For more than two years aftr that, the UXM book consisted of stories feeaturing one, or at most two or three, former members (or supporting characters like Forge) in various adventures across the globe. But there was no "X-Men" as a team of mutants anymore. The "mutant theme" itself (prejudice, genetic evolution, blah blah) practically disappeared from the stories as well.

The Cap/Wolverine/Widow story was a fill-in issue published just before that era ended; with the (very lame) X-Tinction Agenda, the X-Men came together again, then Professor Xavier returned to Earth, etc. Not a period of the book I like very much (the "teamless book" era, I mean).

Yeah, but James, as Pedro mentioned above, it wasn't a case of someone accidentally making Black Widow a kid during World War II.

It was a specific decision by Claremont, so I wonder if anyone ever addressed it.

And I guess Morgan's mini-series did, in a way!

one very funny throw-away line from that issue was jubilee: "did anyone else notice that every chick wolvie knows is a knockout babe?"

James, that's too bad you don't like that era of X-Men. Starting with Marc Silvestri, the art on that book was truly unbelievable, and every issue seemed like a slow burn towards something big. Of course, you could argue that nothing really big came out of it (I happened to really like X-Tinction Agenda), but the issues remain the same regardless of what came later.

Silv - yeah, that's a good line. Wolverine hanging out with Psylocke and then hugging Natasha. Funny stuff.

And I'm glad someone else defended that era. Highly underrated comics, with a few clunkers thrown in (the introduction of Gambit, anyone?), but a really interesting time period that was a lot riskier than it sounds - the X-Men were a huge seller back then too, remember.

That era was definitely building up to something big. Unfortunately it was something big and crappy. Claremont finally cleared up all the dangling plotlines and loose ends, he had a great roster with a great chemistry and status quo (except for Longshot, who sucked)...I thought the post-Inferno era was going to be great and instead it was a flaming bag of poo.

Yeah the post-Inferno era was painful. I remember reading that Forge story where Jean has tentacles for arms(!?) and thinking "wait, is this an X-Men comic?"

I really loved that one issue as a kid, though. Re-read it constantly. It's probably the only reason I was ever a fan of Jim Lee's art. I can still remember that opening splash page with Captain America jumping in to battle. Sure, it might not be "good", or "make sense", but... I really liked it when I was 8? That's all I've got.

I can still remember that opening splash page with Captain America jumping in to battle.

Along with Art Adams' Wolverine and Todd McFarlane's crouching Spider-Man, probably the most recognizable piece of art from Marvel in the 90s (even though Adams' Wolverine was from the 80s, I believe, but for some reason, Marvel reprinted the hell out of it during the 90s).