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.
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)
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!!
do you think Wanda's and pietro's relationship should be made more stronger? I always feel he takes a backseat in their relation and behaves ooc in many cases (tho he should be rebuked when he is wrong, which happens in most cases). I feel if magneto is shown as a ooc loving father who definitely didn't abuse the twins ToM, then pietro and wanda should should have natural interactions like what happened for a while in her and visions domestic period
I’m soft so my #1 request is always for characters to have stronger relationships. I’m fine with characters disagreeing or not getting alone (so long as it’s reasonable and natural), but I do just want to see them bond. There’s rarely enough relationship stuff for me in modern comics.
As you said, Pietro tends to get the short end of the stick in their interactions, which I hate. I want him to get more stuff to do! More importantly, I want him to have more of an understandable perspective and not be used to further others’ storylines. Hopefully, we will get more of that going forward.
Do you have any opinions/meta on the portrayal of Doctor Doom's dictatorship in Marvel comics? As someone who is somewhat knowledgeable on the horrors of dictatorship, it always makes my skin crawl when writers unironically portray Latveria as this "benevolent dictatorship utopia" without bothering to put in the two seconds of thought/research that would immediately lead to the conclusion of why that is a wildly offensive, irresponsible, nonsensical, and logically unattainable concept to promote
I have to preface this by saying that I prefer the nice, likeable version of every character. Even characters I have no particular interest in, whatever the softer version of them is, that’s how I think they should be written. I’m not saying this is a good thing or some kind of moral judgment. It’s a matter of taste. Like, I can’t handle Harry Potter because it’s so mean, both in terms of the books themselves and a lot of the characters. People are always like, “Give us a Marauders show,” and I’m like, why on Earth would anyone want to watch a television show about high school bullies? Are people okay?
Which is weird because I love Emma Frost. But I don’t want Emma to be a villain. I don’t know how to explain it. I guess I just prefer for characters to be well-intentioned. Characters can be prickly. They can have conflict, but when a character feels malicious, I lose interest in them.* I find it so much more compelling when characters are clashing but nobody is being cruel or monstrous, they just have their own viewpoint. So, on a purely character level, I do prefer for Doom to have good sides to him.
All that said, man, politics in superhero comics is tricky. It’s a minefield. To play Devil’s Advocate for the people writing these stories you dislike, what they’re trying to convey is that the superhero perspective is not the only one, which is a sentiment I appreciate. I like when we admit that other people in this world do not have the views or experiences of the average superhero. I think that, theoretically, that complexity is a positive, but I don’t think it’s handled with much nuance or consistency within the stories themselves.
Where does Latveria fit on a left-right spectrum? What countries are they allied with? Who do they trade with? What are the internal politics? What real life country, past or present, is the best comparison point? Whomst can say. This is part of why politics in superhero comics is tricky. Because they don’t really get into details. They just make broad gesturings at real life things and then the next writer contradicts that, and it all depends on what real world thing is trendy to reference. When you are Genosha, sometimes, you are South Africa, and sometimes, you are Yugoslavia. So it goes.
The flip side of all of this is, of course, that Doom is Roma, and the people who created him did not understand the sociopolitical implications of the character they created. What does it mean to be a “nationalist” when you are a Roma man from Eastern Europe? Sometimes, as a writer, you don’t know that much about other cultures, and you write something with weird implications that you aren’t aware of, and one day, it’s 60 years later and that shit’s still canon and we all just have to deal with it.
Like with a lot of dilemmas of superhero characterization, there’s really no perfect answer because, no matter what angle you come at it from, there is the possibility of finding something questionable about it. If you get too far into trying to depict Latveria as a realistic dictatorship, there is weirdness/uncomfortable stuff on that end too.
Part of why our (read: USian) culture’s current fixation on nostalgia is troublesome is that it is much more complicated to “fix” old canons than people think and often, it is impossible. We’re stuck with all our movies being about characters created 60+ years, and they come with that baggage. A lot of times, it is the concept of the character where the problems lie, and the degree to which you can ever remedy that is… Well, it doesn’t usually work 100%. And you can create other problems by trying to get rid of the old ones. Which is what you’re complaining about, right? So, my tl;dr Doom take is that there is always going to be this weirdness to the character because of the nature of superhero comics. I get where you’re coming from, but I also get the opposite argument. A true centrist, wow.
*Except, of course, for Zaladane, the only good supervillain ever created.
In the annual, Agatha refers to herself as Wanda’s aunt. That is sort of how I would conceptualize their relationship, but is that something she’s been called before?
(Kind of scared it’s literal and they’ll reveal the next maximoff dad is Agatha’s long lost evil brother or agatha is Chthon’s sister)
I am, once again, asking someone to create the Marvel equivalent of A Search of Ice and Fire and Potter Search. Like, I know that’s not possible because a comic is not a novel, but it would certainly make my life easier.
At any rate, this one, I fear, comes from the devil himself.
Wanda: Try to keep your voice down though, my aunt Agatha is asleep.
New Avengers vol. 1 #26; writer: Brian Michael Bendis; artist: Alex Maleev; letterers: Richard Starkings & Albert Deschesne
Franklin also calls Agatha “auntie Agatha.”
SCARLET WITCH #8
STEVE ORLANDO (W) • LORENZO TAMMETTA & SARA PICHELLI (A)
Cover by RUSSELL DAUTERMAN • VARIANT COVER BY W. SCOTT FORBES
VARIANT COVER BY OSCAR VEGA
GOD VS. WITCH!
When Loki’s mountain giant cousin comes through the Last Door desperate to secure the right to rule his people, the Scarlet Witch agrees to confront the King of Jotunheim. But things are never what they seem with Loki, God of Stories, and when the truth comes out, sparks just might fly! Meanwhile, Hexfinder’s plan is revealed…and those closest to Wanda can no longer be trusted.
32 PGS./Rated T+ …$3.99
AVENGERS #5
JED MACKAY (W) • C.F. VILLA (A) • Cover by STUART IMMONEN
AVENGERS CONNECTING VARIANT COVER BY ALEX ROSS
AVENGERS CONNECTING SKETCH VIRGIN VARIANT COVER BY ALEX ROSS
CORNER BOX VARIANT COVER BY MARK BROOKS
AVENGERS 60TH ANNIVERSARY VARIANT COVER BY AARON KUDER • VARIANT COVER BY BEN HARVEY
• Battle zone: Vatican City. God vs. living godhead as Thor battles Idol Alabaster.
• Battle zone: Sydney. Witch vs. revenant as the Scarlet Witch wages war upon the Dead.
• Battle zone: Toronto. Engineer vs. artist as Iron Man clashes with the Citysmith.
• Assembled, the Avengers are invincible. But separated, how can they triumph?
32 PGS./Rated T+ …$3.99
Scarlet Witch vol. 3 #8 cover by Russell Dauterman [x]