#comicswanda

The fact that Vision isn’t a part of Wanda’s family in House of M is entirely representative of how little the story actually gaf about Wanda. It goes out of its way to depict him during the birth of the twins in the first issue, and he was present in in Disassembled, but he’s not in the actual House of M universe because it is not shaped by what Wanda wants at all. 

And the funny thing is, if it had been given a bit of thought, making Vision Wanda’s human husband and father of her children would have been more or less what he’s always wanted, especially at that point in his life. It wouldn’t have been hard to write in either. But no care is really paid to what would a perfect life for Wanda actually look like, so instead we get Vision...

...In the form of mass-produced mindless Sentinel robots under the control of Tony Stark!!!

Yes, truly, this is exactly what Vision always wanted! 

At the very least, Wanda is aware that she is in a reality bubble and reacts violently to anyone attempt to undo it. She is at least something of an antagonistic force.

But I still don’t want her to be the ultimate villain.

On paper I guess I don’t hate the idea, but it’s also impossible for me to separate how I feel about it from how I feel about what has happened to comics Wanda. Her character has never recovered from Disassembled/House of M. (Neither has Vision’s, for that matter.)

Despite multiple, sometimes years long, attempts to rehabilitate her character, including three separate event series and her own solo explaining it wasn’t exactly her fault/having her atone and fix what she’s done, her character has come back to madness and possession and reality warping repeatedly.

No, not her mentor at this point. There’s not enough time for that, and I don’t think there’s enough room in Multiverse of Madness to do it that way. If anyone is going to be her mentor, it would be Strange. 

I do think it’s possible that we’re not actually going to see Agatha Harkness as much as we’re going to see a new character that draws inspiration from her (be it Agnes or someone else). 

And I have very mixed feelings on the idea of Agatha as a villain. On the one hand, she’s one of the coolest characters associated with Wanda and a part of her limited supporting cast. 

On the other... while you’re right, Agatha has never been expressly evil, by dint of retcon upon retcon Agatha has been responsible to varying degrees for a lot of shitty things in Wanda’s life. 

Putting aside that teaching Wanda magic to start with may or may not have been a good idea, there’s of course Agatha encouraging Wanda to manifest her some twins:

Only to tell her later that those children weren’t real and Wanda never had the power to make real people from her powers (but never mentioning that it was she who told Wanda to in the first place):

And then be ultimately responsible for destroying the twins by telling Wanda to open her mind--without telling her what for--and using Wanda’s connection with the twins and the twins’ connection to Mephisto to destroy them both:

By erasing Wanda’s memories of the twins:

Which of course snowballed into Disassembled and House of M. Additionally, Agatha revealed in Wanda’s solo that she actually did in fact know Wanda was not Magneto’s daughter. 

And Agatha eating the Everbloom and seeing a vision of Vision destroying the Avengers (and killing Wanda) is what sets off the chain of events that lead him to doing nearly just that. 

Now, most of this is not intentional. It’s a combination of retcons, writers not being fully brushed up on character’s history, and the fact that Agatha is used as a convenient shorthand for “magical authority” in the way Strange often is. You don’t have to spend any time quibbling about how a character knows the magical history or nature of something if you’re using a character like Agatha to explain it. And of course Agatha has a personal connection to Wanda, which makes her all the better for stuff like this.

Like I said, Agatha is a cool character. I prefer for her to stay a part of Wanda’s supporting cast.

I think in the entire course of her character history, she was at her meekest in the early 70s when she was ‘the girl one’ in the Avengers, and her job was to get kidnapped and rescued a whole lot. 

But when modern writers talk about Wanda being meek they usually do mean the Lee-Kirby era, and she wasn’t weak or timid there. Both her and her brother feared Magneto, and were sometimes cowed by him, but that had more to do with showing why good people were working for The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. 

So why do modern comic book writers often refer to this early incarnation as meek and timid?

Well, nevermind the latent misogyny in having assuming a female character is weak because she is a female character, since they clearly never checked. Nevermind that the most sexist takes on her character occurred when she was at her most powerful.

It’s just important that Mr Writer lets everyone know that he is finally writing the feminist take on Wanda that her character desperately needed!

I think it’s less people have to find something wrong and more people are just assuming that any woman written in this time period is frail and submissive, regardless of how she was actually portrayed. They’re not actually reading the issues to check. 

Billy referencing Children’s Crusade, or That Time Doom Tried to Marry My Mom

Bonus: