Following Marvel's first Avengers movie, Black Widow's modest handguns and lack of powers became a source of ridicule. The logic was that a "normal" human is superfluous on a super-team filled with gods and armored heroes. However, Black Widow is actually quite a bit more than a normal human.

Over the years, Marvel Comics has bestowed Black Widow with a number of powers that set her well apart from normal humans. CBR has taken the liberty of presenting these powers in a simple, concise form in the hopes of permanently quelling the debate and proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that Natasha Romanoff deserves her place among Earth's Mightiest Heroes.

Black Widow Has a Drastically Increased Lifespan

A caption stating Black Widow’s powers is placed alongside an image of Natasha in Red Room training

Natasha Romanoff is best known as a highly trained assassin produced by Russia's secretive Red Room program. However, casual fans may not realize that her body was biochemically altered from an early age to make her into a perfect killing machine.

Born in 1928, Black Widow remains in peak physical condition into the modern day because she doesn't age. She heals faster than a normal human, and hardly ever gets sick. The Russian experimental process may not be as ideal as the Super Soldier Serum used to create Captain America, but it's practically the next-best thing.

RELATED: S.H.I.E.L.D’s New Magic Division Could Play a Prominent Role in the MCU

Natasha Romanoff Possesses Superhuman Endurance

During Marvel’s 2010 Black Widow series, surgeons operate on Natasha

Even characters in the comics describe Black Widow as powerless. However, those statements are almost always juxtaposed with her performing superhuman feats. This trope never gets repeated more often than when Black Widow endures excruciating pain, only to soldier through it, highlighting a superhuman ability.

Instances of Natasha enduring and escaping torture are a dime a dozen. But perhaps most notable is her hospital escape. In her 2010 miniseries, Widow was paralyzed, cut open, and had an object dug out of her, then remained conscious through a second surgery as doctors stitched her up. Despite the pain and the damage to her body, she not only fought her way out of the hospital, but battled the assassin Elektra to a stalemate in a duel the very next day.

RELATED: Two Powerful Avengers Share a Surprising (And Very Human) Weakness

Black Widow's Body is Enhanced Beyond Normal Human Levels

Black Widow grabs Madripoor’s Pirate King and throws him out of a car as he begs for mercy

The main factor allowing Black Widow to perform such superhuman feats lies in the fact that her body itself is enhanced. Natasha regularly performs showings of strength and speed no ordinary human could hope to match. Whether she's tossing hundreds of pounds with one arm or dodging bullets, Black Widow's physical prowess is nothing to scoff about, and should not be taken lightly.

Natasha Romanoff Can Heal Quickly - But There's a Cost

As Black Widow looks through a sniper scope, a caption notes Natasha’s infertility

There's no comic publisher that knows how to play up the way the same attribute can be a gift and a curse better than Marvel. Black Widow is no exception. While Natasha's enhanced healing may often help her to recover during or between assignments, it comes with a large drawback for her personal life: she is physically unable have children. Viewing a growing fetus as a foreign body to be purged, Natasha's enhanced immune system will quickly terminate any pregnancy

.While this element was retained in the MCU depiction, it suffered some changes along the way. Age of Ultron indicated that, in the MCU, Natasha underwent a surgery that left her sterile, while in the comics it's her own powers that rob her of the choice.

RELATED: X-Men: Kitty Pryde's Time as an Agent of SHIELD was Ridiculous, Fantastic - And Totally '90s

Black Widow is Extremely Intelligent

A pair of panels feature Taskmaster and Black Widow in her Madame Masque disguise

Even the uninitiated would assume Natasha must be insanely skilled to fight alongside her Avengers teammates, but few pay attention to just how superhuman her skills are. And, on top of the exemplary accuracy, weapons and combat knowledge that makes Natasha one of the deadliest fighters in the Marvel Universe, she also possesses an array of skills no human being could learn simultaneously.

In fact, there is so much knowledge that Black Widow retains and perfects that there is no way a normal human mind could hold it all. She speaks at least 11 languages, can hack the most advanced computer networks in the world, and possesses a mastery of body language so thorough she could even fool the savant Taskmaster into believing she was Madame Masque.

The true limits of what Black Widow is capable of are very rarely seen, and she frequently proves that she stands well above any typical human. So the next time someone scoffs at Natasha loading her handgun to take on an invasion of aliens, remind them that it's probably her way of taking it easy on the aliens.