Today, we look at how Black Widow was briefly the guardian of the space Stone (of Infinity Stone fame) courtesy of Wolverine.

This is "Can't Cross Over," a feature where I look at instances when comic book writers had to adjust their stories to deal with crossovers.

In the last installment of Can't Cross Over, I spotlighted the sort of destructive nature of crossovers, in the sense that modern crossovers now often feel like they only "count" if at least one notable superhero is killed (and often more than just one) and specifically, I wrote about how Black Widow was the casualty of the Secret Empire crossover event, as when the other superheroes realized that Captain America had turned evil and conquered the United States for Hydra because he had fell victim to a Cosmic Cube, the other heroes were all willing to seek out the pieces of the Cosmic Cube so that they could reverse the process and bring the heroic Cap back. Black Widow, however, felt that it was more appropriate for her to just kill Cap. She didn't want to mess around with cosmic stuff that was beyond her reach like Cosmic Cubes. She knew Captain America had gone bad and she wanted to end him. He, of course, ended up killing her instead. And that, ironically, led to her into just the sort of cosmic stuff that she was trying to avoid in Secret Empire.

So if that last installment was a statement on the destructive aspects of crossovers, I think that this time around, we are looking at a statement about the ephemeral nature of crossovers. You know, the sense that for so many of the characters in a given crossover, the crossover itself has almost no meaning to them. For instance, there was a whole pile of superheroes who teamed up to fight Thanos and were murdered by him in the Infinity Gauntlet. While it is a beloved Captain America fight scene, the fight obviously had no impact for the other heroes in the fight. I think most of them literally never remembered the fight as even occurring once Adam Warlock got control of the Infinity Gauntlet and fixed things. That's really the sort of thing that Black Widow dealt with when she got caught up in the events of Infinity Countdown/Infinity Wars, which stood out especially since it was right in the middle of another story starring Black Widow.

RELATED: Secret Empire: How the Corrupted Captain America Killed Black Widow

To set the scene, it really goes back to Marvel Legacy #1 (by Jason Aaron, Esad Ribic and Matthew Wilson), where the seemingly dead Wolverine officially came back to life, and with the Space Stone (of the various Infinity Stones that make up the Infinity Gauntlet).

Wolverine used the teleporation powers of the stone to zap around the Marvel Universe for a little bit, but ultimately, Wolverine did not like being in charge of an Infinity Stone, so in Infinity Countdown #1 (by Gerry Duggan, Aaron Kuder and Jordie Bellaire), Logan finds a way to pawn the stone off on a friend of his, someone who had been just as dead as Wolverine recently.

Yesterday, I explained how Black Widow came back from the dead after Secret Empire in a storyline in Tales of Suspense by Matthew Rosenberg, Travel Foreman and Rachelle Rosenberg. But here's the weird thing, just a week or so after Natasha finally shows herself in that the middle of that story arc, she then shows up in Madripoor in Infinity Countdown #1 to discover that Wolverine has pawned the Space Stone off on her...

So she has received an Infinity Stone while we still didn't even know how she came back to life yet!

Soon enough, though, we learned that she was cloned by the Red Room, who have kept clones of various high-level operatives and they used a telepath to keep hold of her memories and transplant them into the clone's body. Meanwhile, she isn't even a PART of the Infinity Countdown crossover for most of the series once she gets the Space Stone at the end of the first issue.

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She IS given her own one-shot, Infinity Countdown: Black Widow #1 (by Duggan, Nik Virella, Brent Schoonover and Cris Peter), but the whole one-shot is pretty much devoid of any characterization, in part, I assume because Duggan knew that the story of her ACTUAL return from death was running in a whole other series in a story that wrapped up a little bit before this story.

The one-shot pits Black Widow against the mad Jamie Braddock (brother of Captain Britain and Psylocke) and she defeats him...

She then finally makes another appearance in Infinity Countdown trying to get Doctor Strange to take control of her Space Stone, but he reveals that he has the Time Stone and thus cannot be in charge of two of the Stones.

So Black Widow must basically form a new Infinity Watch, as Strange warns them all about the dangers of Thanos collecting the Stones again. In a fun bit in Infinity Wars #1 (by Duggan, Mike Deodato and Frank Martin), when the various wielders of the Stones meet together (including the villain, Turk Barrett), Natasha uses her teleportation abilities to stay apart from the others, where she can also mess with Bullseye (who brags about wanting to kill another one of Daredevil's ex-girlfriends)....

But the collected group learn that their fear of Thanos was misplaced, as he had just been killed by a mysterious being known as Requiem, but we VERY soon after learn that Requiem is Gamora in disguise, who wants to put the Infinity Gauntlet together for herself.

In Infinity Wars #2, Gamora steals all of the Stones, including the Space Stone...

And then that is pretty much it for Black Widow as a major character in the rest of the crossover. Harsh.

Okay, folks, feel free to suggest ideas for a future Can't Crossover to brianc@cbr.com!

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