The Black Widow is the name of two fictional super-spy characters in the Marvel Comics universe. The first and best-known, Natalia Romanova, also known as Natasha Romanoff, was created by writers Stan Lee and Don Rico and artist Don Heck, and first appeared in Tales of Suspense #52 (April 1964). For a time in the 2000s, Romanova lost the title of Black Widow to a younger Russian spy, Yelena Belova.