Who do you blame for the mutant wipeout at the end of House of M?

[Michael Watkins]

I take the view of the author over yours. The interview has been removed from the Marvel Site during some of the updates but here is a link to a post from 2014 where I quote Heinberg


Marvel.com: Why did you want Doom in this series playing such a prominent role?

Allan Heinberg: To my mind, Doctor Doom was the only sorcerer powerful enough—and invested enough—to have been able to successfully engineer the Scarlet Witch's prolonged disappearance. And I also loved the idea that Doom's obsession with finding his own mother paralleled Wiccan's quest to find the Scarlet Witch.

Marvel.com: Do Doom and Wanda share any sort of history from past stories you’re tapping into here or are you creating this whole?


Allan Heinberg: If Wanda and Doom share a romantic history in the Marvel Universe, I'm unaware of it. I just loved the idea of Doom's initially having sought out Wanda to exploit her reality-altering power only to then fall in love with her. And I thought perhaps Wanda might remind Doom of his sorceress mother.

Marvel.com: What can you say about Doom’s motivations for his actions here? Are the Young Avengers right to view him as an out and out bad guy or is there some altruism at work?

Allan Heinberg: Doom's motivations are going to become very clear in CRUSADE #7. But I have to say that, where Wanda is concerned, I think Doom believes his motives are altruistic. He is still a psychopathic narcissist, but he's also a man in love. Or at least he's behaving like a man in love.

And don't forget the follow up to Doom's departure from the scene where Heinberg is clearly explaining that Doom is definitely providing some cover for Wanda as he leaves her behind knowing that their time together is over and he lost.

"Allan Heinberg: If Wanda and Doom share a romantic history in the Marvel Universe, I'm unaware of it. I just loved the idea of Doom's initially having sought out Wanda to exploit her reality-altering power only to then fall in love with her. And I thought perhaps Wanda might remind Doom of his sorceress mother."

Thanks for posting this. Doom started all of this by trying to exploit Wanda's power. Then she started reminding him of his mother.

[Wiccan]

"Allan Heinberg: If Wanda and Doom share a romantic history in the Marvel Universe, I'm unaware of it. I just loved the idea of Doom's initially having sought out Wanda to exploit her reality-altering power only to then fall in love with her. And I thought perhaps Wanda might remind Doom of his sorceress mother."

Thanks for posting this. Doom started all of this by trying to exploit Wanda's power. Then she started reminding him of his mother.

Yeah, all this confirms is that he did wrote the story with Doom really being the mastermind behind it all in mind.

[Iron Maiden]

Yeah, all this confirms is that he did wrote the story with Doom really being the mastermind behind it all in mind.

He's not the "mastermind" behind House of M. It's obvious that things changed in Chidren's Crusade because in the final version, Doom does not seek out Wanda. She goes to Latveria to ask for his help about her people (see earlier page posted).

It is very unlikely he had anything to do with Disassembled either because of his whereabouts going back to his prior appearance in Fantastic Four. It all still lies in Bendis's version.....Wanda's memories are triggered by a chance remark by Jan. He paints Wanda as being troubled person for quite a while, whether one agrees with that or not. He completely ignores the ending to Darker than Scarlet for example, which brings in Immortus as the one responsible.




Agatha Harkness thought she was helping by tinkering around with Wanda's memories but we know how that ended up.

[Iron Maiden]

You don't get to play the defensive card when you're the villain. Blaming Cassie would be blaming the victim.

She was in over her head and should not even have gotten involved. A father should also keep his child out of danger. Legally, Doom is guilty of involuntary manslaughter because he was the one that was attacked. He underestimated his new power levels because he says I can do the same to you so back off.

[Wiccan]

He's not the "mastermind" behind House of M. It's obvious that things changed in Chidren's Crusade because in the final version, Doom does not seek out Wanda. She goes to Latveria to ask for his help about her people (see earlier page posted).

It is very unlikely he had anything to do with Disassembled either because of his whereabouts going back to his prior appearance in Fantastic Four. It all still lies in Bendis's version.....Wanda's memories are triggered by a chance remark by Jan. He paints Wanda as being troubled person for quite a while, whether one agrees with that or not. He completely ignores the ending to Darker than Scarlet for example, which brings in Immortus as the one responsible. [/URL]

Why are you posting panels? You think I didn't read that? No, it doesn't "all lies in Bendis's version". Heinberg's version of the events it's the most recent one of those and so what counts. It's a retcon, but that's what retcon means: Whether you like it or not, they change what was written before.

Which, you know, it's also what Bendis tried to do with the "Chaos magic doesn't exist"(that it's now bullshit because other writers ignored it and wrote chaos magic as being a thing again) on the page you posted.

[Iron Maiden]

sounds like it's you who need to reread. was it her "own family" that traumatized her? what did they do that she needed to turn to Doctor Doom? and I'm pretty sure that it was all of the people trying to kill her prior to and during House of M that set her off. I remember her unconsciously summoning her then-father for protection before the event. and don't even pretend that Doom wouldn't take advantage of a woman. do you think Amara even remembers being impregnated (or him saying that she was now obligated to help him)? or how about the skin armor or the hypnotism he used back in Morgan Lefey's time period.

RE: Amara's pregnancy you're obviously making an assumption about a development that happened off panel. Bendis has once again dumped something on the next guy to deal with. We were never shown the scene were they were intimate but that doesn't mean that it didn't happen. At no point does Amara make any accusations about being taken advantage of and she even admits to herself at their last meeting in Invincible Iron Man #599 that she has fallen in love.

As for the hypnosis in the Camelot story, King Arthur acts like some kind of brothel keeper and offers up two women to keep Tony and Victor company during the night. Tony takes advantage of the freebie but Victor merely gets information on the locations of Margan LeFey's castle and then leaves. In that scenario, King Arthur and Tony come across as a bit sleazy if you ask me.

As for what happened to Wanda and how her family played a role, you already got your answer here. Go back and read House of M's conclusion again.

You definitely will not get any flak from me on your point! Adding to your point, 2 points of my own:

1) Wanda was already in a fragile mental and emotional state when Magneto brutally killed Pietro out of anger (in front of Wanda), after finding out what Pietro set in motion involving Magneto. She was already on the edge emotionally, but slowly recovering. Magneto killing Pietro, even though she soon resurrected him, pushed her over that edge.

2) Pietro is not just Wanda''s brother, which is reason enough, but her TWIN brother. The importance of their relationship is magnified immensely by them being twin siblings. One should not ever mess with a twin!

[Iron Maiden]

Why are you posting panels? You think I didn't read that? No, it doesn't "all lies in Bendis's version". Heinberg's version of the events it's the most recent one of those and so what counts. It's a retcon, but that's what retcon means: Whether you like it or not, they change what was written before.

Which, you know, it's also what Bendis tried to do with the "Chaos magic doesn't exist"(that it's now bullshit because other writers ignored it and wrote chaos magic as being a thing again) on the page you posted.

The only thing that Heinberg is doing is giving a different source of power for Wanda's actions in Disassembled. There's no way you can insert Doom in any of those incidents that lead up to it all, which is why I posted them. Show me where Doom fits in there.

[Wiccan]

The only thing that Heinberg is doing is giving a different source of power for Wanda's actions in Disassembled. There's no way you can insert Doom in any of those incidents that lead up to it all, which is why I posted them. Show me where Doom fits in there.

Those incidents that lead up to it don't contradict Doom's participation, which is a hidden/indirect one. He gave Wanda the lifeforce exactly because he knew it would mess up her mind and cause a mess like Disassembled, that's all. No one is saying he went there and said No More Mutants himself or whatever.

[autbey]

Wanda is obviously lying and used her power to force Doom to take the blame.

Editorial just needed to sanitize the character because she was going to appear in movies.

[gurkle]

Even more confusingly, Heinberg rewrote a lot of the dialogue in Children's Crusade for the trade, mostly to cut down the wordier pages, but in the flashback in the floppy version, Wanda says she doesn't remember anything that happened after she went to Doom and Doom narrates almost the whole story, while in the trade version, Wanda does remember and co-narrates the "Life Force" story with Doom.

Really most of this is on Tom Brevoort. He should have established an "official" explanation for how and why Disassembled and House of M happened and told writers to stick to it. But instead there's no agreed-upon version of what happened and different writers seem to be working with completely different ideas of what exactly Wanda did and why. Rick Remender had dibs on Wanda for years and he implied a couple of times that she was Doom's puppet. Other writers imply otherwise and most just ignore the whole thing.

This is the kind of thing that really needs an Avengers Forever type of thing sifting through all the contradictory stories and coming out of it with a simple explanation that everyone can refer to. I guess Al Ewing would do it if they asked him, but I doubt they'll ask him.

Because until then all the arguments about what happened seem pointless. Wanda's fans won't accept that she wiped out mutantkind in a fit of insane rage against daddy, because that's not the character they know from any other story. That all this was part of Doom's master plan also seems hard to swallow from other stories, but that's the point, there is no version of the story that makes sense and the editors have made it clear that they don't want to provide one.

[brettc1]

She was in over her head and should not even have gotten involved. A father should also keep his child out of danger. Legally, Doom is guilty of involuntary manslaughter because he was the one that was attacked. He underestimated his new power levels because he says I can do the same to you so back off.

Rubbish. Peter Parker was the same age fighting Dr Octopus.

[brettc1]

Wanda is obviously lying and used her power to force Doom to take the blame.

Editorial just needed to sanitize the character because she was going to appear in movies.

I think what you mean here is Editorial used its power to fix a godawful mess.

[Drops Of Venus]

I take the view of the author over yours. The interview has been removed from the Marvel Site during some of the updates but here is a link to a post from 2014 where I quote Heinberg


Marvel.com: Why did you want Doom in this series playing such a prominent role?

Allan Heinberg: To my mind, Doctor Doom was the only sorcerer powerful enough—and invested enough—to have been able to successfully engineer the Scarlet Witch's prolonged disappearance. And I also loved the idea that Doom's obsession with finding his own mother paralleled Wiccan's quest to find the Scarlet Witch.

Marvel.com: Do Doom and Wanda share any sort of history from past stories you’re tapping into here or are you creating this whole?


Allan Heinberg: If Wanda and Doom share a romantic history in the Marvel Universe, I'm unaware of it. I just loved the idea of Doom's initially having sought out Wanda to exploit her reality-altering power only to then fall in love with her. And I thought perhaps Wanda might remind Doom of his sorceress mother.

Marvel.com: What can you say about Doom’s motivations for his actions here? Are the Young Avengers right to view him as an out and out bad guy or is there some altruism at work?

Allan Heinberg: Doom's motivations are going to become very clear in CRUSADE #7. But I have to say that, where Wanda is concerned, I think Doom believes his motives are altruistic. He is still a psychopathic narcissist, but he's also a man in love. Or at least he's behaving like a man in love.

"Allan Heinberg: If Wanda and Doom share a romantic history in the Marvel Universe, I'm unaware of it. I just loved the idea of Doom's initially having sought out Wanda to exploit her reality-altering power only to then fall in love with her. And I thought perhaps Wanda might remind Doom of his sorceress mother."

Thanks for posting this. Doom started all of this by trying to exploit Wanda's power. Then she started reminding him of his mother.

Yeah, it's actually worse than I thought: he caused that whole mess to exploit her, and then along the way that developed into a relationship by deception. It's like the worse of both worlds. And even then you could argue how much of that was genuine and how much was just him pulling a Norman Bates and projecting his feelings for his mother. After all, he did end up the story choosing power over Wanda, and then leaving her behind once he didn't have that power anymore. Like Cap. said: that doesn't sound like true love to me. Heinberg himself questions the legitimacy of his love when he says ''or at least he's behaving like a man in love'' right after claiming he's a man in love. And right before that, he refers to Doom as a psycopathic narcissist who believes his motives are altruistic, which seems pretty self-explanatory to me. If that interview is supposed to make me see Doom as the good guy, it's failing miserably, 'cause I only see a bunch of red flags about his behavior. Unless Heinberg had more plans for this story that had to be cut or cancelled, I find it hard to interpret the outcome any other way.

Wanda is obviously lying and used her power to force Doom to take the blame.

Editorial just needed to sanitize the character because she was going to appear in movies.

You're no Mr. Fanstatic but that's a long stretch, dear.

1. When Doom's true intentions started to become clear in the story, she didn't have her god-like powers anymore, precisely because she had lost them to him. And literally nowhere in the story it was ''clear'' that she was using her regular powers to affect him in any way. If anything, the story ended up suggesting he was the one using her, as he straight up called her ''naive and easily led''.

2. Not everything is about the MCU. As a matter of fact, this story was published YEARS before Wanda even made her debut in the MCU. It was published before the first Avengers movie had even come out. And considering the book was actually delayed, it's likely the writer already had ideas for it from an even earlier time. It's non-sense to suggest synergy had anything to do with this. I believe they wanted to clean Wanda's image, yes, but not because of this.

This is the kind of thing that really needs an Avengers Forever type of thing sifting through all the contradictory stories and coming out of it with a simple explanation that everyone can refer to. I guess Al Ewing would do it if they asked him, but I doubt they'll ask him.

It's not a bad idea, but then again, what's stopping some other writer from coming along in the future and just retconing it again? That's what Bendis did to Wanda's story, after all. I think we're all better off just accepting that this is comics and contradicting narratives will always exist.

[Tony Stark]

RE: Amara's pregnancy you're obviously making an assumption about a development that happened off panel. Bendis has once again dumped something on the next guy to deal with. We were never shown the scene were they were intimate but that doesn't mean that it didn't happen. At no point does Amara make any accusations about being taken advantage of and she even admits to herself at their last meeting in Invincible Iron Man #599 that she has fallen in love.

As for the hypnosis in the Camelot story, King Arthur acts like some kind of brothel keeper and offers up two women to keep Tony and Victor company during the night. Tony takes advantage of the freebie but Victor merely gets information on the locations of Margan LeFey's castle and then leaves. In that scenario, King Arthur and Tony come across as a bit sleazy if you ask me.

As for what happened to Wanda and how her family played a role, you already got your answer here. Go back and read House of M's conclusion again.

Were in that in that issue does Tony take advantage of the women that was in his room? All he did was admire her beauty. That's all that is shown.

[brettc1]

RE: Amara's pregnancy you're obviously making an assumption about a development that happened off panel. Bendis has once again dumped something on the next guy to deal with. We were never shown the scene were they were intimate but that doesn't mean that it didn't happen. At no point does Amara make any accusations about being taken advantage of and she even admits to herself at their last meeting in Invincible Iron Man #599 that she has fallen in love.

As for the hypnosis in the Camelot story, King Arthur acts like some kind of brothel keeper and offers up two women to keep Tony and Victor company during the night. Tony takes advantage of the freebie but Victor merely gets information on the locations of Margan LeFey's castle and then leaves. In that scenario, King Arthur and Tony come across as a bit sleazy if you ask me.

As for what happened to Wanda and how her family played a role, you already got your answer here. Go back and read House of M's conclusion again.

If you actually went back to that issue of Iron Man and kept reading, you might recall that Doom used his power to turn his source of information into a will-less vegetable and left her like that with. Sidebar that he couldn't be bothered to take the minute or so to undo the damage. When Stark and Arthur see her next morning, she remains vacant eyed and unresponsive.

As far as the lady with Stak is concerned, (Eleanor I believe) is anything happened it was between two consenting adults.