FOUR FIRST APPEARANCES. WHICH ONE DO YOU MEAN?

Black Widow — The Complete Comic King Guide

Natasha Romanova arrived in January 1964 as a disposable Soviet villain in somebody else's comic, sent to kill Tony Stark, wearing a cocktail dress. She had no costume for a year, no black suit for six, and no comic with her own name on it for thirty-five. In almost sixty years she has never held a long-running solo book. That history is why this page exists in the shape it does: more than any other Marvel character we stock, the question “what is her first appearance” has four different correct answers, and they are not worth remotely the same money.

Quick Facts

First appearance: Tales of Suspense #52 (cover date April 1964, on sale 10 January 1964) — an Iron Man comic, and she is the villain.
First cover: The same issue. She is on it, in civilian dress, under a banner introducing her by name.
First costume: Tales of Suspense #64 (1965) — the blue fishnet outfit, not the black one.
The costume you picture: Amazing Spider-Man #86 (1970), designed by John Romita Sr.
First solo strip: Amazing Adventures #1 (1970) — the first run of solo stories for any female Marvel character.
Created by: Stan Lee (plot), Don Rico (script, as “N. Korok”), Don Heck (pencils). Jack Kirby drew the cover only.
Ongoing solo titles: Very few, and none long-running. There is no ongoing Black Widow comic as of August 2026.
The 1940 trap: Timely's Mystic Comics #4 (August 1940) has a different Black Widow — Claire Voyant, no relation.
The reprint trap: Not facsimiles. Marvel's April 2020 True Believers dollar reprints copy nearly every key here.
Best value key: Tales of Suspense #64 — her costume's debut, and one of the cheapest first-costume books in the Silver Age.
In stock here: Back issues across all four firsts where we can get them, plus the Waid/Samnee and Thompson/Casagrande collections.

She Has Four First Appearances, Across Six Years and Three Comics — and None of Them Are Hers

Here is the thing to sort out before anything else, because getting it wrong is how people overpay and how they get lowballed. Black Widow has four separate firsts, spread across six years and three different comics, and not one of those comics is a Black Widow comic.

Tales of Suspense #52, in 1964, is her first appearance — in an Iron Man book, billed on the cover as a Crimson Dynamo story, with Natasha as the villain in civilian clothes. Tales of Suspense #64, a year later, is her first costume: a blue fishnet outfit, in an issue billed as a Hawkeye story. Amazing Spider-Man #86, in 1970, gives her the black catsuit and the red hair — the version every single person who has seen a film is picturing. And three weeks after that, Amazing Adventures #1 hands her a solo strip, the first run of solo stories any female Marvel character had ever been given.

Those four books do not sit anywhere near each other in price. The 1964 debut is a serious purchase and a genuinely scarce Silver Age book. The other three are the kind of comic you can decide to own in the morning and be holding in the afternoon. So when someone comes to the counter and says they want her first appearance, we ask which one: the first appearance, the first costume, the black suit, or the first solo. Most people who came to her through the films turn out to want the black suit, and most of them are delighted when they find out what it costs. That one question is the most useful thing on this page.

The Run, Era by Era

Sixty years, organized — including the twenty-two-year stretch in the middle where she had almost nothing. Each era gets the one issue that represents it, and those are the covers we hang on the wall for this section.

The Keys — Issues Everyone Hunts

TALES OF SUSPENSE #52 (1964) is the key, and it is the only book here that is genuinely hard to buy. It trades more often than you would expect for a book at that level — roughly every four or five days somewhere in the market — but the copies that trade are the well-loved ones, and that is not an accident. This book was read to death by children in 1964. The graded population sits at a much lower average grade than its neighbours, and high grade barely exists at all: CGC has never certified a 9.8 of it, and the census tops out at 9.6 with a handful of copies. A complete, honest, played-with copy is the sweet spot, and we will always buy one.

TALES OF SUSPENSE #64 (1965) is the value pick on the page and it is not close. It is the first appearance of a Black Widow costume, it puts her on the cover in that costume, and it costs a small fraction of what the debut does. It also has the cleanest sales data of anything we measured for this page — no contamination, steady turnover, no strange gaps. If you want one book that says Black Widow and does not require a conversation with your bank, this is it.

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #86 (1970) is the one we recommend most often, because it is the book people actually mean. It is the black catsuit's debut, it is one of the two most liquid books on this page, and its mid-grade graded market is the most solidly evidenced number in our whole file on this character. ⚠ One warning that costs people money: there is a SECOND Amazing Spider-Man #86, from the 2018 relaunch, cover-dated March 2022, with a Ben Reilly story and an Art Adams cover. It is a normal modern comic worth about what a new comic is worth. Check the cover date, always — a walk-in holding the 2022 issue is not holding a key.

AMAZING ADVENTURES #1 (1970) is the best history-per-dollar on this page. The first solo series of stories for any female character at Marvel, in a split book shared with the Inhumans, and it is the cheapest key here by a wide margin. Nothing else we sell gives you that much genuine history for that little money. Its low-grade pricing data is unreliable, so we price it off a clean look at the book rather than off a chart.

AVENGERS #43 (1967) is the first Red Guardian — Natasha's husband — and it is one of the two books the current films are actually pointing at, because Red Guardian is confirmed for the next Avengers picture and Natasha is not. It is a two-parter; #44 concludes it, carries the Red Guardian's death, and costs a fraction of what #43 does. Buy the pair, price them very differently, and be aware that online listings constantly credit #44 as the first appearance. It is not.

AVENGERS #196 (1980) is the first full Taskmaster, with his origin, and it is on this page because it is a Black Widow-adjacent book that has quietly become one of the most liquid things in our Bronze Age boxes — it sells every day and a half. The cameo is in #195; the money is in #196.

THE YELENA BOOKS matter more right now than Natasha's do, and we would rather say that plainly than sell you the wrong thing. Inhumans volume 2 #5 (1999) is Yelena Belova's debut. We will quote CGC's own label rather than paraphrase it, because the wording is disputed: they call it “first appearance of the new Black Widow (Yelena Belova, face not shown),” and notably they do NOT use the word cameo — she has real dialogue and real panel time, her face is simply obscured. If someone tells you it is only a cameo, that is an argument, not a fact. Black Widow #1 (June 1999) is her first full appearance and her first as Black Widow. ⚠ That 1999 issue exists as THREE separate products — the standard cover, the J.G. Jones variant and the Dynamic Forces edition — and they are not worth the same. Most online price data merges all three into one number. We price them separately, and so should you.

DAREDEVIL #81 (1971) is where she and Daredevil first meet and team up, and it is her first appearance in that title. It is also a fifty-two page giant at twenty-five cents. Note the correction that most sources get wrong: she is not the co-star from #81. The co-star billing and the retitle to Daredevil and the Black Widow begin at #92.

UNCANNY X-MEN #268 (1990) is the one nobody has on their Black Widow list, and it is the book on this page that is moving right now. It is Jim Lee's Captain America, Black Widow and Wolverine team-up cover, and the animated version of Natasha that turned up in X-Men '97 this summer looks a great deal like it — an observation a number of outlets made independently, though Marvel has not confirmed it as the reference. Whatever the cause, the market responded: the book has climbed hard since mid-July, in raw copies and in high grade both. We have stocked it accordingly. Ask at the counter.

Every Format You Can Buy

Screen & Series Status

Updated August 2026: the headline most people have wrong is the important one. SCARLETT JOHANSSON IS NOT IN AVENGERS: DOOMSDAY, which opens 18 December 2026. She is absent from Marvel's own published cast list and she has said publicly that she considers the character finished. What IS confirmed on that list is Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova and David Harbour as Red Guardian. So if you are buying ahead of the film, the books the film is pointing at are Yelena's and Alexei's — Inhumans volume 2 #5, Black Widow #1 from 1999, and Avengers #43 — not Natasha's keys.

Elsewhere: Spider-Man: Brand New Day opened on 31 July 2026 to the biggest opening weekend on record, and Yelena appears in it as a New Avenger; it is widely reported as the first time she is called Black Widow on screen, though outlets phrase it slightly differently, so we say widely reported rather than stating it flat. And Natasha herself did turn up in 2026 — in animation. X-Men '97 ran its second season from 1 July to 12 August 2026, and she appears in a post-credits scene in episode four, voiced by Lake Bell, alongside Captain America. Season three is already in animation and season four is in pre-production, so that engine keeps running.

On the comics side there is no ongoing solo title and none announced. Two one-shots featuring her arrive in October 2026: Punisher Showdowns: Black Widow, and an Iron Man one-shot built around a Formula One crossover in which she and Captain America appear. Both are worth pre-ordering and we are happy to add them to a pull list. The pattern to remember for this character is simply that her demand does not follow her own name — it follows whoever is on screen, and right now that is Yelena.

Collector's Corner — Grading, Care & We Buy

Three habits govern this character at our counter.

ASK WHICH FIRST THEY MEAN. It is the whole page, and it is worth repeating here because it is equally true when you are selling to us. If you tell us you have her first appearance, we will ask which of the four you have before either of us says a number, and that is us protecting you as much as protecting the till.

CHECK THE PRICE BOX — AND ON THIS CHARACTER THE PROBLEM IS NOT FACSIMILES. This is worth knowing because it runs against the advice you will read everywhere else. Marvel has never made a facsimile edition of Tales of Suspense #52, Tales of Suspense #64 or Amazing Spider-Man #86; the only Tales of Suspense facsimiles are #39 and #57. What DOES exist is the April 2020 True Believers wave, a run of one-dollar reprints published for the film that use the ORIGINAL COVER ART and cover very nearly every key on this page. The tell is the price box and it could not be simpler: the originals are 12 cents, 15 cents, 25 cents or 40 cents depending on the book, and the True Believers reprints say $1.00 and carry the True Believers logo. Tales of Suspense #64 is the one key here with no dollar look-alike. There is also a 2019 Marvel Tales anthology at $7.99 that reprints several of these — a fine reading copy and obviously not an original. Our How To Tell A First Printing guide has the rest.

TREAT SLABS ABOVE 9.2 ON THE SILVER AGE BOOKS WITH SUSPICION — the published ones, not the comics. This is the bit where we will not pretend. Several of the high-grade numbers printed on the big price-tracking sites for this character are stale by more than a decade, thin enough to rest on a single sale, or in one case describe a grade that does not exist. We check a live comparable before we write a cheque above that level, and if you are selling one, you should want us to. On the raw books, condition is doing most of the work: Tales of Suspense #52 in particular survived badly, so a clean copy is worth considerably more than a chart implies and a rough one considerably less.

We buy Black Widow keys, Tales of Suspense runs and Bronze Age Daredevil. If you are sending photographs, include the top-left corner and the indicia — between the price box and the date, we can usually tell you what you have before you drive over.