Scarlet Witching

Tumblr dedicated to the Scarlet Witch.

[scarletwitching]

Returning from my extremely offline sabbatical in the Narnian wilderness to inform you all that the book series upon which the TV show Heated Rivalry is based began its life as a Steve/Bucky fanfiction, and in that original fanfic, the character who would become the Russian hockey player Ilya was, in fact, Pietro.

[burningfudge]

Captain America: the Ghost Army (2023)

[avengerscompound]

Wanda Maximoff & Jericho Drumm House of Harkness Infinity Comic (2024)

[scarletwitching]

Do you have a twitter acc?

I have an account, but I never tweet. I just use it to read the latest news about Hot Snape in the Harry Potter reboot I'm not going to watch and Donald Trump appointing Darth Vader to be the head of his maternal health and safety taskforce.

I really wish I could stop using it, but I don't feel like any of the alternatives work the same for me. I never check Google News, and the only things Tiktok wants to show me are videos of people playing platformers and discourse about niche internet celebrities I've never heard of. No, I don't want to hear more opinions about Nurse Hannah; I don't know who that is.

I have a bluesky account, and I'm going to have to switch eventually. I just don't want to. I haven't posted a single thing or even changed my profile picture. I followed, like, ten people and never looked at it again. I fear I'm simply not a poster unless my special interest is involved.

[scarletwitching]

Opinion on Wanda in Marvel Rivals? And specifically her design?

The design is fun. I like the art direction for the game overall. I don't understand why her skin is one color when her hair is dark and another when it's light.

I haven't played the game so I can't really speak on it in general. The only thing I heard about Wanda in it is that people are shipping her with Venom (and Eddie), and I think that's neat. I love when there's new character dynamics. It keeps things fresh. And Wanda is a very shippable character. She lends herself to these things.

[scarletwitching]

What would be your recommendations for someone trying to get into Wanda?

There is so much Lore™ with Wanda that they never stop bringing up that you're always going to have questions and be a little confused, no matter where I tell you to start. That said:

Scarlet Witch by James Robinson: The Complete Collection

Scarlet Witch by Steve Orlando Vol. 1: The Last Door

Scarlet Witch by Steve Orlando Vol. 2: Magnum Opus

Scarlet Witch by Steve Orlando Vol. 3: Scarlet Witch & Quicksilver

Vision & the Scarlet Witch: The Saga of Wanda and Vision

There was a time when the answer for where to start with Wanda was some very old, scattered issues of Avengers, and nowadays, I feel like the solo comics are a good place to start. The last one is a collection of comics from the 80's, but those stories are focused on her and Vision.

From there, you can try out Steve Englehart's run on Avengers. Busiek's too, I suppose. Various events, both recent and old. It's hard because sometimes, rather famously, Wanda, as a plot device, will be very important in a story, but then she's barely in the story. Like, she's comatose, she's off-screen, people are talking about her and she's not there. Which, I think, makes them weird to recommend for her, in spite of what it looks like on paper. If you want lore, you can just read a summary of the lore.

And also, those comics are not the best quality and contain many questionable writing decisions, far beyond the normal stuff you get in Marvel comics. I often have quibbles with the things I recommend, elements I have outdated and insensitive, but there's a big difference between that and Disassembled, which I would be hard-pressed to say anything positive about.

[scarletwitching]

i send this at risk of sounding horny but i'm looking for wanda/rogue propaganda for a friend and in a very old post of yours, you said, "And it involved a naked hug." i checked the comic cited and i was wondering what exactly you were referring to? both of them were in costume

https://www.tumblr.com/scarletwitching/113104094246/rogue-and-wanda?source=share

Not you roasting my poor eyesight from ten years ago lmao. She's not naked or in costume, technically. She wears a different costume during this run, and given that she was in bed (and just had sex in that scene), I guess she's wearing some kind of strapless lingerie bodysuit, which is like her earlier costume but not it. It does kind of look like strategically placed shadows on first glance though, so that's my defense of myself.

[scarletwitching]

Do you have a specific tag for all of your posts about Vision v2?

The Tom King tag should do. I had a lot of mixed feelings about that book while it was ongoing. Time has mellowed those feelings quite a bit, but I'm still not an evangelist, especially since my feelings about King have become less positive overall (as have many people's, my reasons are not unique). But also, I haven't reread it in years so how I would feel about its handling of gender, racial metaphor, and the characters in general, I could not definitively say. Do I stand by these decade old takes? Who knows!

[scarletwitching]

Wanda got possessed again……..

I just got out of urgent care because I have an ulcer, and in order to bolster my well-being during this difficult time, I am choosing not to find out what this is referring to.

Love and light to you, anon.

[scarletwitching]

This is a well-timed question since I recently saw someone say Wanda is a Virgo and had the most ?????? reaction of my life. (Fun fact: Vision is a Virgo in 616.)

How do you know Vision's zodiac sign? Is there an official date for his birthday? Creationday?

Avengers vol. 1 #135; story: Steve Englehart; art: George Tuska; inks: Frank Chiaramonte; lettering: John Costanza; coloring: George Roussos

Virgo Vision confirmed. Just ignore the sliding timescale of it all.

[scarletwitching]

Have you been keeping up with recent comics?

No, I have no idea what's going on lol. Do I feel like I should be keeping up with things? Yes, but at the same time, I'm feeling pretty down on Marvel due to decisions made of late. The fact that we're still doing this brand synergy with the adaptations while the movies are losing their cultural dominance is a bit Band Keeps Playing While the Titanic Sinks.

Speaking of which, I do still read Tom Brevoort's newsletter, and this was in the Father's Day edition:

Having done convoluted stories to separate Wanda and Pietro’s backstories from Magneto’s, I don’t know that it serves anybody to try to do another convoluted story to attempt to put that back the other way again. It is what it is, now we move on. The same goes for Lorna Dane being Magneto’s daughter, and Franklin Richards not being a mutant, or Cloak & Dagger. Wherever you go, there you are—so we’ll move ahead without a need to try to overturn the board again in an attempt to recapture something that wasn’t even all that important to the characters on a story-by-story basis in the first place for the most part.

It's goofy at this point. It's been a decade! We all know you answer to Disney. I realize this PR nonsense is part of Brevoort's job, but I've always found his bullshitting undignified.

I don't think the movies are going away or anything. Our modern culture is so reboot-obsessed that I assume, even if the current iteration implodes, they'll keep redoing it until the sun dies, and so long as the movies exist, they will eclipse the comics. It's just funny to watch them chase the franchise that, of late, is mired in such troubles as "rewrote and reshot a whole movie, removing a bunch of characters but not the one that people are mad about" and "spent five years failing to turn Cool Vampire Hunter into a viable script." They killed Krakoa for this?

[scarletwitching]

Scarlet Witch & Magneto hero profiles from Marvel Rivals [x]

[scarletwitching]

They’re releasing a heroclix(?) figure of certain avengers in their second hellfire get ups including Wanda (so Wanda in her current costume basically) and I feel like this is the first piece of official merch where she isn’t like, white passing (unless you count some recent prints of comic art as official merch). I hope this is a good sign for the future

I am not a merch person so I hadn't heard of this, but oh hey...

She has such intense eyebrows here. Good for her.

I'm extremely curious about the internal discussions that go on about this, but whatever they're saying, I can't imagine it's going to be adopted universally until there is an adaptation to tip the scales. Which would've seemed impossible two years ago, but now I'm like... Reboot soon? Well, this decade, at least.

[scarletwitching]

Has Wanda ever had short hair? Has she worn her tiara while having shorter hair?

Short Hair Wanda is a curséd artifact. Don't think I'm a short hair hater, but Wanda's short hair period was from Avengers West Coast vol. 2 #55-68, and that is truly one of the worst periods of her entire history. For reasons unrelated to hair. After that, her hair became long again overnight (was it a wig? I don't think they ever said) until it became short again in the last issue of AWC (#102). Then it was short in the first volume of Scarlet Witch, but went to a shoulder length in Force Works.

Did she wear the tiara with her short hair? Not really, mostly for plot-related reasons. The closest you get is issue #68 where you see in some panels that her hair is still short-ish, but in the ones where she is specifically wearing the tiara, it's short visually confusing and the hair length is unclear from those panels alone.

Avengers West Coast vol. 2 #68; writers: Roy & Dann Thomas; penciler: Paul Ryan; inker: Danny Bulanadi; colorist: Bob Sharen; letterer: Bill Oakley

I love when a crimson witch gestures at a robot and it topples over.

Without getitng into alternate universes, like Days of Future Past, the other notable (arguable) Short Hair Wanda is from X-Men vol. 2 #-1 where her hair is in a short bob style. Your mileage may vary as to whether or not that qualifies.

[scarletwitching]

What comics should I read for the twins pre-retcon backstory?

I assume you mean the mid-2010's retcon (technically, every backstory these characters have involves retcons; it's very confusing) so you are looking for Nights of Wundagore (Avengers vol. 1 #181 - 187). You might also want to read Vision and the Scarlet Witch vol. 1 #4, which is the issue where All Is Revealed.

[scarletwitching]

In What If…Wanda Maximoff and Peter Parker Were Siblings? A Scarlet Witch & Spider-Man Story, the fabric of reality is altered once more, and this time Wanda Maximoff, AKA the Scarlet Witch, hails from a distinct corner of the Multiverse where her origin story gets a unique twist. All Wanda has ever known is her friendly little neighborhood in Queens. As an infant, after her parents died, she was adopted into a family where her doting Aunt May and Uncle Ben will always be at the breakfast table. One that includes her idiot brother, Peter Parker, who thinks hiding a spider bite, joining a secret fight club, and becoming a super hero are somehow good ideas. When Wanda’s own powers emerge, blood, chaos, and suspicion follow in their wake. But as she harnesses her power under the guidance of Doctor Strange, Peter is standing beside her in the Sanctum Sanctorum. And as they try to protect New York City, the Parker siblings learn that with great powers, there must also come great responsibilities—and greater loss. Reeling from tragedy, Wanda finds herself truly alone for the first time in her life. Peter is lost to his own grief, and so she must strike out on her own. But on her first solo outing, she runs into a mysterious speedster—a man named Pietro. And everything she has ever known shatters like glass. Faced with unbelievable truths, Wanda is forced to choose between the life she knows and the life she could have… (x)

[scarletwitching]

how is Wanda's and Lorna's relationship portrayed in comics? Your thoughts on that?

Why did I get family questions right before it was implied that the solo book is probably relaunching as a family book? Is it an op? Are you Tom Brevoort??

The answer to your question is "inconsistently and not often." There has been so much retconning and inconsistency over the past 20 years, and Wanda was gone for years, and what even is either of their backstories that this hasn't been explored as much as you would think. I could list to you every issue where they have any significant interaction, and it wouldn't take you that long to read all of them. They've never shared a title together, and so it's always random when it pops up. It's disappointing for me because I wish there were more of it.

I'm hoping I get what I want soon, and we can have a clearer idea of what their actual dynamic is because currently, it's novel when a writer remembers they both exist. But I think it's coming. Dadneto is BACK, baby. My time is now!!