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The Problem of the Scarlet Witch: When Bad Girls Go Good, But Not Really

EDITOR’S NOTE: This Week SBC reviewer Shawn Hill responds to the announcement of the upcoming Marvel mini-series House of M. At the conclusion of his column, he poses a question, and some of his fellow SBC reviewers respond.

Shawn Hill:

Wizard Magazine has been the source of great anxiety for me over the past half-year. First, it broke the news that yes, Wanda Maximoff, off-screen for most of the jerkily, abruptly apocalyptic “Avengers Chaos” storyline, was in fact the evil mastermind behind it all. My heart sank on reading that interview, my faith in a creator (Brian Michael Bendis) I had formerly enjoyed and thought highly of utterly shattered by the end of it.

You see, I’d picked up on the hints that Wanda might be the bad guy. It had to be someone on the team, after all. That was a given from the start. But I thought “no, that’s too obvious.” Bendis is too creative for that. He’ll pull someone else out at the last minute. What a surprise it’s going to be. Hank, crazy again, or Hawkeye, with some scheme spiraling out of his control. Or, you know, maybe even an actual villain, who’d somehow infiltrated the ranks, Dell Rusk possessing Cap or Loki running a ruse. Or maybe Space Phantoms! The Stranger?

But, then came Avengers #503, the worst comic of 2004, and it turned out every worst fear, every obvious conclusion, was true after all. More than underwhelming, this was devastating.

And thanks to Wizard, I knew that Bendis took as his inspiration a bad story (now paled in comparison) that sent Wanda and her husband spiraling off in the wrong directions for years: Byrne’s abortive West Coast Avengers run. Taking a bad concept and making it worse, that’s quite a skill.

Don’t worry, friends assured me. It’s just a story. They’ve broken Wanda down only to build her back up again. There is precedent for this behavior. She’s lost it before and recovered. Magneto is her dad, after all, and she was once a villainess. It’s a great direction to go in for the character. It makes her so powerful. There’s so much that can be done with healing her, with setting up a new status quo. She’s the most interesting she’s been in years. Think of how many stories await this now god-like being.

Or … maybe none at all.

More interesting? Only if you’re interested in a plethora of talking heads discussing her like a criminal or problem child. She’s catatonic and barely got a word in edge-wise before Dr. Strange pushed her “off” button.

Now, in the new Wizard, we learn that months have passed with no improvement, and that the situation with her is so precarious it may require a final solution. She’s so dangerous, so deadly, so out of control, she may need to be killed. Like a rabid animal, or an unsalvageable psychopath.

Well, that’s certainly a great use of the character. What will it signify if a long-term distaff Avenger, one of the few consistently popular mutants in the Marvel Universe, a woman who consciously chose (along with her brother) to extricate herself from an abusive tyrant (before she even knew he was her father) and switch to the right side of the fight … is executed by her allies, friends and family? Was her whole dream of a worthwhile life a lie? Is there no hope for change or improvement, because mutant genes will out? Was she always doomed to an unkind fate, because all that she is or tried to be (woman, witch, mother, Nexus being, leader, sister, wife, heroine) is an impossible mix of disparate elements?

Will her legacy be, finally, “this woman, this mutant, was too powerful to live. God love her, because we couldn’t”? Meanwhile, her father, who has actually literally tried to take over the world and laid waste to armies and cities, gets to live on?

What are they thinking?

Ray Tate:
Marvel is very interested in competing with DC. DC with Identity Crisis has once again demonstrated that by celebrating misogyny, you can simultaneously sell tons of comic books in the short term and eliminate that annoying hardcore audience that expects writers to actually research the history of the characters and their universe. They’re making enough money off of that faction with their Archive reprints and the occasional Grant Morrison and John Byrne visit anyway.

In response to this DC paradigm which began when they incorporated the crippled Batgirl into continuity-proper, Marvel decided to take the character that is the most recognizable icon to Marvel Zombies and completely destroy her in the eyes of her fans. This also gibes with Gwen Stacy in “Sins of the Past.” These moves have a two fold effect. They send the Marvel Zombies back to their graves, so to speak, and attract the audience that never grew up reading about Wanda’s and Vision’s romance as well as her battle against Cthon or even the team-ups with Spider-Man in Salem during the witch trials. This audience doesn’t give a damn about Wanda nor her history. They are simply interested in what’s hyped, what’s declared hot and what’s new. Marvel of course is interested in money. Now, it should be noted that this proposed scheme for Wanda is completely reversible. All it takes is Grant Morrison to switch over to Marvel and state “I want the Scarlet Witch a hero again” or an Avengers movie.

Michael Deeley:
I’d rather not speculate what Marvel might be thinking without reading the entire “House of M” story. At this point, Wanda’s fate, and any actions she and other characters might take, is pure speculation. I’ve heard rumors that “House of M” will drastically reduce the number of mutants in the Marvel U. Others say it will act as a continuity fix like “Zero Hour”, (not as widespread as “Crisis”).

But based on what’s been done to the Scarlet Witch in “Avengers Disassembled”, I’d wager Marvel is using her as the means to an end. They have a specific idea of what they want “House of M” to accomplish. They need a character with god-like powers and an unstable mind. Whether Marvel wanted a hero-turned-evil, or editorial forgot about the Shaper of Worlds, Mephisto, the Infinity Gauntlet, Michael Korvac, Beyonder/Maker, or any of the other half-dozen crazy omnipotent characters running free, may never be answered. I think Marvel ruined a character to fit the needs of a story.

Really, they could've used Dr. Strange.

Kelvin Green:
The Scarlet Witch is a mutant. This story showed her to be weak-willed and emotionally unstable as a result of her mutant abilities. She was shown to be a fundamentally bad person who tried to do good, but ultimately failed because of her genetics and upbringing. It showed how as a mutant, she needed to be looked after and controlled by normal people, because she couldn’t do it herself. And if that didn’t work, then she needed to be packed off to a community of her own kind and they would deal with the “problem.”

I know someone who has six fingers on one hand, and I can’t believe that Marvel is putting out publications that present her and people like her in such a way. What were they thinking?

NEXT WEEK: Loretta Ramirez‘s Response to the “House of M” Announcement!

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