Solo Avengers #7
Hijacked!
At France’s Orly International Airport, members of the Bartovian Liberation Front have pulled out weapons and announced that everyone in the terminal are now their political prisoners. Unfortunately for the BLF, they made the mistake of pulling this move while Clint Barton (aka Hawkeye) is arriving to take a flight home to America. Accompanying him are Silver Sable and the Sandman. While Clint wants to deal with this as Hawkeye, Sable refuses to get involved since this is not a paying gig. When everyone is ordered to lay on the ground, Clint offers Sable all the money he has — one American dollar — to get involved.
This is enough to get Sable and the Sandman to act. While they are busy dealing with the immediate threat, Clint leaps down the luggage check in to find his suitcase and recover his costume, bow, and arrows. However, he only has time to slip on his mask and tunic before racing back out to deal with the remaining terrorists. In the ensuing clash, the leader of the group grabs a woman to be his hostage and makes his way out onto the tarmac. There, Hawkeye tries to stop him but can’t risk harming the woman. When Silver Sable and the Sandman catch up, Sable tells the BLF leader that she has no issue letting him kill the hostage since she is hired to deal with terrorists like him and with the hostage dead, capturing him would be much easier. As the BLF leader tries to figure out what to do next, his hostage stomps on his foot, allowing her to escape. He’s then taken down by a barrage of Hawkeye’s knock out arrows and Sable’s throwing sais.
In the aftermath of the battle, Hawkeye asks Sable if she was bluffing when she said she would be willing to sacrifice the hostage, but she says nothing. Soon, Clint Barton is on his flight back home to America. Clint is worrying about what sort of grief he’ll get from his wife, Mockingbird, after he prevented her from coming with his to Paris.[1] That’s when he notices that Silver Sable slipped an envelope into the pocket of his sports coat. Opening it up he is amused to discover that it is a bill for one American dollar for services rendered.
Recurring Characters
Hawkeye, Silver Sable, Sandman
Continuity Notes
Hawkeye went to Paris to face off against his former mentor, Trickshot. Mockingbird wanted to go with him but he worried that she might get hurt and used knock out gas to prevent her from coming along. See Solo Avengers #1-5.
The Token
Natasha Romanov, the Black Widow, is doing some stretches at home as she watches the evening news. The top story is regarding Oksana Bolisdhinko, one of the most famous Russian citizens, being allowed to come to America in order to received advanced optical surgery. This comes as a shock to Natasha who was trained by Bolisdhinko to become a prima ballerina before she was recruited into the KGB. Oksana loved her young student, and Natasha recalls the day when her teacher gave her a gold medallion that Oksana gifted to her premiere students.[1] She wonders what her former teacher would think about her defecting from Russia and decides to visit her to make amends.[2]
She changes into her Black Widow costume just as her aid, Ivan Petrovich, is returning home. Having heard the news himself, he warns Natasha not to go see Oksana because it is an obvious trap by the Russian government set up to capture her. She ignores his warnings and goes to the Russian embassy anyway. Sneaking inside, she takes out the security camera in the parking garage. When two guards go down to investigate she knocks them out and gets inside the building. Going up to the security room, she takes out the man at the monitors. After determining where Oksana is being kept, the Widow shorts out the security monitors and heads to her room. After knocking out the guard on the patio, Natasha makes her presence known to Oksana. Romanov tearfully explains how she was forced to leave the school to join Russian intelligence and that she has come to return the gold medallion as she does not feel she deserves to wear it after betraying her country.
Oksana surprises her by revealing she knew the truth all along and that Natasha should keep the medallion as she is following her true calling. Their conversation is interrupted when another guard enters the room and orders the Black Widow to surrender or he will shoot them both dead. However, Natasha calls his bluff and sure enough he allows Natasha to go free. That’s because this guard was another one of Oksana’s students — owning an identical medallion. Oksana is proud that he let Natasha go and he admits that he knows exactly how Natasha feels.
Recurring Characters
Black Widow, Ivan Petrovich
Continuity Notes
It’s later revealed that the Black Widow was almost always a Russian operative. A subject to their Red Room program many of her memories were either implanted or false so some of her memories of the past might not be real. For example in Black Widow (vol. 3) #4-6, it was stated that ‘Tasha never trained in the Bolshoi Theater. While Black Widow: Deadly Origin #1-4, (particularly issue #2) goes a step further to say that these are memory implants. How this impacts the facts to this story are, as yet, unexplained as of this writing (March, 2022) See below for more details.
Natasha defected from Russia back in Avengers #30.
Topical References
The Black Widow is depicted as having a CRT television in her apartment. This should be considered a topical reference as these types of TVs are now obsolete.
Likewise, all present day references to Russia being the Soviet Union as the USSR dissolved in 1991. References to Russian intelligence being the KGB should also be considered topical as it had since been replaced by the Federal Security Service. However, when they are made in the past tense, these dated references should be considered factual in a historical sense.
Natasha makes a quip about going to 7-11 to buy some caviar. This reference is topical as 7-11 is a real world business.
The Black Widow’s Time as a Ballerina
The focus on the Black Widow story in this issue is on how she was once training to become a prima ballerina in the Bolshoi Theater, a prestigious school in Russia. Oksana Bolishinko is identified as her teacher, and Oksana recognizes Natasha as her student. More over, Natasha has a gold medallion given to her as a gift when she was part of the dance school. Another Russian operative — the one that lets Natasha go — is also a student of the same school, is recognized by Oksana and has a similar medallion.
The revelations of Black Widow (vol. 3) #4-6 and Black Widow: Deadly Origin #1-4 states that Natasha’s time in the ballet was a fabrication and that all her memories of such were implanted by the Red Room’s Black Widow Program.
If these were all lies, this story is in complete contradiction of those later revelations. Marvel has yet to provide an explanation as of this writing (March, 2022). I think the simplest explanation is that since the Russian government worked so hard to support these lies that they made steps to ensure that there was evidence to support these falsehoods as truth. As such, the medallion was planted by the Red Room, and Oksana was a government operative that was enlisted to sell the lie as well.
