I believe that idea was introduced by Chris Claremont. Something about Cap and Wolverine rescuing the child who would become Black Widow back in the 1940s.. This was published in 1990, making the adult Widow 50ish!!!!!?????

With the Soviet Union having collapsed 20 years ago most of the Commie villains are gonna have to get long in the tooth to retain their Red credentials.

I just saw the ending of the new Catwoman#1.

Yuck. Pure fanwank. That is NOT in-character behavior for Batman.

(I won't explicitly say what's happening. -SPOILERS- , you know. But they just posted the final four pages on Bleeding Cool).

Less than a month into the new DCU and they've already screwed up Batman, in somebody else's title. There's no hope for this reboot.

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Which was why, when I retold the Hulk's origin during my second brief tenure with the character, I turned "Igor", the Soviet spy, into a Skrull, tying in with LOST GENERATION and other established Marvel lore.

"I think the best solution to Communist villains is to make them Nazis, which are timeless."

But they also lose definition and a sense of what they're about. Like "Demons" or "Monsters" or "Vampires". Before you know it you'll have teen romances filled with sulking, sparkling Nazis. Half the time, when some politician, journalist or opinionmaker (People who SHOULD take the time to know this stuff) brings up Nazis, they get the facts wrong. They have no clue what Nazi ideology was, they just know it was BAD, so they label "BAD" things as Nazi.

Communist villains can easily be rewritten as national heroes with legitimate foreign policy conflicts with the US (for writers up to the challenge) or as stooges of Russian/Chinese mobs (for the lazy ones). Some might still be genuinely portrayed as communist (seeking to restore communism or lamenting its demise).

There are many ways to update villains (or heroes) if necessary. Some are lazy and some are clever and well thought out, but there is no "one-size-fits-all" solution.