10 Things Marvel Wants You To Forget About Black Widow

Nowadays, Marvel comics are always careful to try and make themselves seem like a respectable form of entertainment. However, back in the 90's, they were far more concerned with just making some money.

The Marvel Swimsuit Specials were a completely shameless attempt to sell comics to horny teenagers. Dropping all but the thinnest pretence of plots, each one was a series of splash pages depicting your favourite heroes engaging in some summer fun in scantily clad swimwear.

And note the lack of gendered pronouns. For a cheap bit of titillation, they were surprisingly progressive in appealing to both sexes. For every image of a bikini clad She-Hulk or Psylocke in what was basically her costume anyway there was one of Wolverine suggestively skewering a sausage or Namor with nothing but a shell to hide his modesty.

It was all in good fun, the obvious sex appeal made OK by the slightly tongue in cheek nature of the whole thing. Still, it's hardly the kind of thing you'd want to try and justify to your parents and the more modern Marvel would probably rather you forget about the picture of their ultra-serious super-spy looking like she's enjoying the sun just a little bit too much.