Medium Claire Voyant is holding a seance for the Wagler family, where she promises that in the next hour Mother Wagler's late husband will appear. Upon that fateful tick of the clock, Claire is transformed into the Black Widow and warns of impending doom for them all.
This development upsets Mother Wagler, as does the fact that Claire, now transformed back to her normal self, hasn't produced her dead husband as promised. Claire curses the Wagler family for their insults, but later muses to herself on what "possessed" her to do and say such things. Heading down a lonely highway, the Wagler's car is blown off the road, causing it to crash. Mother Wagler is killed instantly, and sister Wagler lies dying in her brother James's arms, carrying on about the mediums' curse. She dies as well, and the enraged James goes back to Claire's place and guns her down in cold blood. After James Wagler departs, Satan arrives from Hell and, picking up the just-dead body of Claire Voyant from her own pool of blood, carries her down to Hell. Once there, Satan lays her down on an altar and commands her to arise as the Black Widow! And so she does, garbed now in the same costume she had worn before. Obviously, Satan has been behind all this from the start. Now he beckons her to seek revenge upon the one who slew her. The Black Widow ventures forth from Hell, and, finding the distraught James Wagler on a dock, touches him with the "flames of death." James expires in a most gruesome manner. Returning to Hades, Satan informs the Black Widow that there are more evil souls that she will bring to him.
Over the course of a few adventures, the Black Widow does exactly that. The Black Widow has features that could be described as skull-like but still very beautiful, except for those skulls in her eyes. With her touch of death, she is indeed a force to be reckoned with as she brings the souls of evil men and woman to suffer for eternity in Satan's realm.
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For once the hype was close to the truth. The Black Widow was billed on her first appearance “the strangest, most terrifying character in action picture magazines.” Significantly, the author never said whether she was a hero or a villain. She appeared four times in Daring Mystery and Mystic Comics over a span of two years. George Kapitan wrote and Harry Sahle drew the first story, while Stan Drake did another one.
Like DC’s Spectre, Claire Voyant was brought back from the afterlife to fight evil by a supernatural agency. But in the Spectre’s case, the agency was God, with the Widow it was Satan. This might seem strange and blasphemous. But in some religious traditions, Satan is not God’s enemy and the father of evil. Sometimes, he is God’s harsh avenger meting out justice to those who deserve it. Golden Age heroes who had diabolical names include the Devil’s Dagger, Mister Satan, Lady Satan, and Black Satan. But it’s best to chalk the Widow’s origin up to Timely’s indebtedness to the weird tale tradition.
The Black Widow may be the comics’ first super-powered heroine. was sinister and sexy in a way that few heroines of that day were. She seems closer to the many Golden Age femme fatale villains like Catwoman or the Spirit’s many female foes. The “black widow” theme may come from the black widow spider’s habit of killing its mate after making love. Similarly the Widow would entice her victims to the fate that they deserve. She didn’t have any recurring enemies (no one was going to survive an encounter with her). The stories focussed on the wretches whose souls she was after rather than the Widow herself.
Despite modern fascination with the occult and with morally ambiguous heroes, Claire Voyant has not appeared since the Golden Age. But perhaps she will rise again.
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