Marvel’s New Opportunity With Scarlet Witch Ongoing Comic Series
While I’m not going to be regularly writing about comic book news, Marvel’s announcement of a new Scarlet Witch ongoing series seemed like something I wanted to discuss a bit more.
Given Wanda Maximoff’s soaring popularity mostly as a result of her appearances in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it was always a bit confusing to me why she’d had so little solo work to do in the comics — and why Marvel hadn’t also quickly rectified that fact once she was in the films.
Perhaps part of it has to do with the movie rights question that existed prior to Disney’s Fox purchase. But still, Wanda’s had just one ongoing solo title ever, running from 2015–17 and it’s an excellent one written by James Robinson and a rotating team of artists across its 15 issues. Other than that, it was a limited series in 1994 and the 1980s’ separate The Vision and the Scarlet Witch and Vision and the Scarlet Witch series.
Yes, Wanda’s also had a starring role in Avengers and West Coast Avengers series, and her actions were central to House of M. Yet, all of that occurred over 15 years ago. In the time since, Wanda’s found herself sidelined or reset for a variety of different reasons (Skrull, murdered, resurrected without memories, etc.) and you could argue she’s been fairly underutilized despite being an extremely formidable figure within the Marvel comics canon.
At the end of 2021’s The Trial of Magneto limited series, it seemed like the main continuity was once again at a loss for what to do with Wanda and decided to kill her off, only to resurrect a “mutant” Wanda through Cerebro without any knowledge of her more recent quests for self-fulfillment and self-actualization.
While I didn’t mind The Trial of Magneto by the end, the reset development created an audible groan from me when it occurred. A text to other comics-minded friends featured much hand-wringing around why they’d erase so much progress (particularly the 2015–17 series) from a strong female character that features so prominently in the movies at this point.
That was fixed quickly — thankfully — and Wanda even gets to redeem her past transgressions against mutants by the end of The Trial of Magneto run (via the convoluted act of staging a death so she could expand the scope of Krakoan resurrection to include all mutants with magic). And now, Marvel has its chance to truly step out on a Wanda arc that makes her a legitimate hero… without just being a token magic user, damsel in distress and/or stereotypical mentally unstable female character as she’s unfortunately been depicted for much of her existence.
On that front, I’m very curious to see how the “modern” (latest version) Scarlet Witch is approached as a core character to the ongoing Marvel Comics story now. Her recent appearances in Kelly Thompson’s Captain Marvel could hint at what’s next, giving Wanda a clear and unique point of view as a powerful magic-user. But Steve Orlando’s new Scarlet Witch series now (by its own description) will elevate her scope while also exploring just how powerful she can be.
Marvel can still do plenty more to keep stories around its female characters front and center, though.
The fact that Thompson’s Black Widow series didn’t last remains a disappointing and surprising development on my end. Yet this series does feel like part of a wider step in the right direction even if it doesn’t right every wrong. Between the Scarlet Witch’s book —debuting in January — and Clea Strange’s place as the current Sorcerer Supreme in Strange (Jed MacKay and Marcelo Ferreira), two of Marvel’s most powerful magic users are both women and both have solo series.
To that end, there’s a lot of expectations on Orlando to knock it out of the park with the Scarlet Witch. Wanda has several big stories in her history, but you could argue most haven’t truly belonged to her. With the character’s fan base at a fever pitch, and also serving as a potential on-boarding point for new readers (brought in from the movie audience), the series needs to be a lot of things to a lot of people.
- Long-time readers probably need to feel like this depiction is in line with Wanda’s history
- Frequent comics buyers — even if not regular Scarlet Witch readers — need to feel like the story is worth investing in
- New-to-comics consumers need to feel like they’re not walking into the middle of an ongoing conversation that’s too intimidating to jump into
That’s no easy feat. But I’m hopeful Orlando’s up to the task. And with luck, it both sets the stage for even more character development for Wanda AND eventually (not right away) sets up a bigger role for the Scarlet Witch in the next big cross-title event as well.
