Should Wanda Maximoff (Scarlet Witch stand trial for House of M ?

[Steel Inquisitor]

I don't know what to say at this point, SteelInquisitor. You're making a point of poor Wanda suffering enormous suffering and consequences for her actions and being innocent (even though she went to Doom and caused this mess, while the P5 were forced to get that power by Stark), but Emma and Scott being thrown out of their team, spending time in prison and being treated as outlawed is not to taken into consideration? Because they killed people directly (what does that mean)? What ill intentions did they have that was not influenced by the Phoenix Force? Was it bad that they eloped from prison for being incarcerated for something they had no control over? But at the same time Wanda is not supposed to be punished even though she started the whole mess?

Don't warp my posts to subvert my arguments, trying to make wanda look as bad as possible while letting off people who were in situations like she was, worse even. Had she had murdered Magneto in cold blood like Emma and Scott did with their victims would you feel so lenient? I don't think so. Wanda caused enormous suffering, nobody is denying that but so did the Phoenix Five yet only one of us thinks both are crimes which should be punished and that the severity of their punishment should be impacted by the circumstances which made them out of character. She did go to Doom, but that didn't make what she did intentional or that she wasn't remorseful of her actions. The fact she may not be completely evil is tossed aside, when we both know the circumstances which lead her down this road didn't put her in her right mind. She didn't intentionally kill people, Scott and Emma did. What they went though does show that they were punished for their actions yet you don't seem to care that they didn't fulfilling their sentences and are living it up on Krakoa better than Wanda ever has. They have money, power and influence. They got everything back and then some, the events of the Phoenix Five are long over Wanda's never stopped. Sympathy can be extended to more than one person, and want does deserve some compassion for what happened. She's not Mr Sinister. Why is it so hard to believe that the Phoenix Force and the Life Force both corrupt the personalities of those who wield them? And how Doom was a big part in how Wanda got to where she was, there are no threads about putting Doom on trial for M-Day. It was bad that they escaped from prison considering what they did, all Wanda did was depower people they took over the world and did things like put Avengers in hell and put X-men on faraway worlds with no way home for objecting to that (that's what Magik did, which is continuously ignored). Had Wanda done something like that she would never have ben forgiven by the X-fandom.

Directly, as in they both personally murdered people with their powers.



Your reaction to Wanda implies she did this sort of act with every person who died from her actions, when they were unintentional. Her anger was at Magneto and all he got was de powered.

It's not Wanda didn't have reprisals for what she did, and I agree she should have been put on trial for her crimes. It's not like her life hasn't been put through the ringer at times over that. The incidents where she "started" things were unintentional and she's been remorseful ever since. Starting things is not how we judge whether something is wrong, the entire context is required for that. You allow this for the Phoenix Five but not for Wanda. Doom is afterthought.

There's no logical sense behind this line of thought, it looks like you're just making excuses for Wanda now.

Don't be disingenuous by omitting how I have been open about Wanda paying for her crimes, I just don't think she should be under the prison. There's far more options than Capital E Evil and Innocent of all charges, which I've covered in my posts. Where is this condemnation when the "Wanda haters" attack her like she's the worst thing ever to happen to the X-men and is worse then all the X-villains put together? There is no nuance, unless you're an X-man.

Wanda did not a single day in prison, she was free in East Europe living her best life and when she came back she tried to look like a victim.

She has been victimised and tormented by the X-men. Rogue murdered her! Cyclops tried to lynch her on the spot. Every time she's in an X-man's presence there is no compassion, from people who should be able to sympathise with what she went through. But unless you're an X-man they simply don't care, then they have the nerve to ally themselves with people who have tortured and tried to kill them (and numerous other people) and act like they have the moral high ground. Wanda realised allying with Doom was a bad decision, they made a nation with theirs.

Scott and Emma never recovered their teammates trust up until Krakoa when you add IvX to the equation, and they were treated badly by the whole hero community. Goddess, the X-Men hated them so much that Beast broke time-space for teaching Scott a lesson lol.

But they did once they got to Krakoa, that's full recovering their trust. IvX was a disaster, but you're being too comfortable with the X-man as though they haven't been jerks over the years. No, they weren't treated badly by the whole hero community, they just happened to exist in a comic book universe where Marvel wanted to have more extreme storylines in their corner and the other heroes lived in their own designated corners. It's not like the X-men have been helping the Avengers when Kang takes over the Earth. In Avengers Forever they were nowhere to be found when humanity was being wiped out through space and time.



Beast bought teenage versions of the 05 to the present to teach Scott a lesson. The horror!

And still no word on the rest of the Phoenix Five, they weren't the the Phoenix Two.

[Journey]

You can't blame Doom for M-Day when their's no real foundation or reason to back it up. All we have is one throwaway line from Doom who had just lost god tier powers and was lashing out. Doom did it makes no sense we all read Wanda saying No More Mutants. The truth is Wanda was in a manic state, her kids were dead, her father supposedly killed her brother, and she blamed it on him and decided to attack the one thing she considered he loved more than her. Mutants end of story!

[Ferro]

Anyways she is to blame and doesnt deserve any compassion , kindness or forgiveness from any of the x-men, who had to deal with the consequences of her actions, not wanda herself, she was happy in eastern europe and she was just fine after since she has an entire team of white knights protecting her.
I hope next time she breaks she kills two more avengers, but no magneto this time to swoop in and save her anoying ass

[GenericUsername]

Doesn't matter if she'd kill more Avengers. They'll just bring them back. Because they aren't mostly unnamed and sometimes off page mutants.

[gurkle]

You can't blame Doom for M-Day when their's no real foundation or reason to back it up. All we have is one throwaway line from Doom who had just lost god tier powers and was lashing out. Doom did it makes no sense we all read Wanda saying No More Mutants. The truth is Wanda was in a manic state, her kids were dead, her father supposedly killed her brother, and she blamed it on him and decided to attack the one thing she considered he loved more than her. Mutants end of story!

And that brings us right back to the old problem: if Wanda decimated an entire race to get back at her father then she can never be a hero again. Hurting innocents to get revenge on one person is what a villain does.

Wanda's fans won't accept that, not only because it would make her unusable, but because it doesn't fit with anything the character ever was before. She was always portrayed as a good person even when she was technically on a villain team.

So while it would be nice to get a better explanation than "Doom did it," it's still a better explanation than "Wanda did it." The Decimation is something Doom would do; it's not something Wanda would do unless she was under mind control or one of the many other possible retcons.

It's a sign of how little Marvel editors/writers cared about Wanda pre-MCU that in the stories that followed Decimation (both Avengers and X-Men stories) no character ever stuck up for Wanda or pointed out that it didn't seem like something she would do. Billy in "Children's Crusade" was the first character to suggest that maybe she was possessed or mind-controlled because the actual Wanda is a hero and heroes don't do this.

But it's all based on a writing mistake, and readers of those stories were reading further mistakes based on that one writing mistake. Same with all the writers who still think she's omnipotent even though literally no story except House of M has ever shown this.

If Doom did it, it doesn't change the Decimation stories at all; they all happened the way they were shown, it's just that the mistake - a heroic character suddenly turning into a villain for no reason, using powers she doesn't have - is corrected.

I think what Wanda's fans gain that way - getting back the character they know and not having her be unusable forever - is more important because the Decimation stories aren't really about Wanda, so they work just as well with some other character blamed for the Decimation.

[Ferro]

And that brings us right back to the old problem: if Wanda decimated an entire race to get back at her father then she can never be a hero again. Hurting innocents to get revenge on one person is what a villain does.

Wanda's fans won't accept that, not only because it would make her unusable, but because it doesn't fit with anything the character ever was before. She was always portrayed as a good person even when she was technically on a villain team.

So while it would be nice to get a better explanation than "Doom did it," it's still a better explanation than "Wanda did it." The Decimation is something Doom would do; it's not something Wanda would do unless she was under mind control or one of the many other possible retcons.

It's a sign of how little Marvel editors/writers cared about Wanda pre-MCU that in the stories that followed Decimation (both Avengers and X-Men stories) no character ever stuck up for Wanda or pointed out that it didn't seem like something she would do. Billy in "Children's Crusade" was the first character to suggest that maybe she was possessed or mind-controlled because the actual Wanda is a hero and heroes don't do this.

But it's all based on a writing mistake, and readers of those stories were reading further mistakes based on that one writing mistake. Same with all the writers who still think she's omnipotent even though literally no story except House of M has ever shown this.

If Doom did it, it doesn't change the Decimation stories at all; they all happened the way they were shown, it's just that the mistake - a heroic character suddenly turning into a villain for no reason, using powers she doesn't have - is corrected.

I think what Wanda's fans gain that way - getting back the character they know and not having her be unusable forever - is more important because the Decimation stories aren't really about Wanda, so they work just as well with some other character blamed for the Decimation.

Wanda AND doom did the decimation, its time to accept it

[gurkle]

Wanda AND doom did the decimation, its time to accept it

That's why we need a definitive retcon, Children's Crusade leaves everything so open and creates so many timeline problems that Deniers like me can just shrug and say there's no definitive explanation.

If they did something definitive it would probably leave Wanda partly guilty, like the Children's Crusade retcon that leaves her partly to blame for going to Doom for help; lots of heroes have done it, but it's still not the thing to do.

But we need some kind of blow-by-blow thing: when did she stop remembering her kids existed? What was she doing in the run-up to Disassembled? When did she go to Doom? When did she get the Life Force and do Billy and Tommy's existence even have anything to do with it? etc. None of it makes sense to anybody as it stands.

[Ferro]

That's why we need a definitive retcon, Children's Crusade leaves everything so open and creates so many timeline problems that Deniers like me can just shrug and say there's no definitive explanation.

If they did something definitive it would probably leave Wanda partly guilty, like the Children's Crusade retcon that leaves her partly to blame for going to Doom for help; lots of heroes have done it, but it's still not the thing to do.

But we need some kind of blow-by-blow thing: when did she stop remembering her kids existed? What was she doing in the run-up to Disassembled? When did she go to Doom? When did she get the Life Force and do Billy and Tommy's existence even have anything to do with it? etc. None of it makes sense to anybody as it stands.

that will still leave her guilty and not the victim but the people she brutalized? sure!

[gurkle]

that will still leave her guilty and not the victim but the people she brutalized? sure!

I don't see anything wrong with that. Children's Crusade was vague about what happened but did include one point of guilt (going to Doom) and an ending where Wanda was acting like nothing could absolve her completely. (It wasn't until Uncanny Avengers #1 that she started to act like none of this was her fault at all.)

The key to a good retcon is that it would at least show someone else pulled the trigger on decimating mutants. Because if it was Wanda's idea then she destroyed millions to get petty revenge on her daddy, and if that's the case then she can never be a hero again.

If it's Doom who pulled the trigger for some reason then it's still her fault for going to him, but she's no longer the kind of person who would hurt millions of innocent people to get back at her father. Because there are a lot of things someone can do and not be a villain but that's not one of them.

[BroHomo]

Every page that gets added to this thread, New Mutants get pushed back by another week

Truly we are doing Gods work

Wanda isn't any less rational than Scott or Jean is. It's like calling Jean "crazy" after the Phoenix incident. Wiccan is one of Wanda's biggest supporters in the Marvel universe, he understands her more then her so-called friends in the X-men.

Dude What? Dark Phoenix Was. Not. Jean. By your ration you'll blame a child in Canada for a mass shooting in Tasmania.

Magik and Emma haven't been punished for their crimes in the Phoenix Five. If your problem is with these things why single Wanda out?

You know what EVERY Wanda defense have in common. Every single one of her defense entails someone throwing the blame on other heros "This hero did (something waaaay less worse) Why aren't they being punished?" Okay Damn, how about this....The Marvel universe is gonna punsish EVERY hero for anything wrong they've done.....starting with the WORSE.....guess who's first?

X-men have had issues with that long before Decimation. Wanda's got negative consequences inside and outside Marvel for M-Day, and to this day any time she tries to apologise it's thrown in her face as though she ran over people's pets when all she's doing is trying to fix things she regrets. Various X-men are huge hypocrites when she does that, like Rogue and Cyclops. You'd think none of them ever did something terrible under the influence of a powerful entity before or made massive mistakes hurting people.

lol She killed untold multitude of people...thats a lil bigger than running over someones pets

If you're an X-man you can drop Rogue on a planet when she disagrees with you sending Captain Marvel to hell and leave her there with no way home and get away clean. This is what Magik did in the Phoenix Five. Has that ever been bought up again?

ERrrr maybe because they were trying to stop them from bettering the world? Or the they were in a war fighting on different sides. By your logic soldiers killing opposing soldiers in battle should get arrested and punished. What Wanda did killed civillians, children. If you can't see the difference than trying to explain is like talking to a brick wall.

Her characterisation changes because that's what people do when they get the reactions she gets for trying to fix what she did. She's not a saint, you can't expect her to just be happy while Rogue tries to cut her off from the Avengers right in front of her, and when she did voluntarily try to surrender to the X-men the X-men immediately went into war mode when Magneto and the Avengers, including her son Wiccan (why doesn't what he say in Wanda's defense mean anything?), try to protect her. The X-men are worse then the Imperial Guard were with Jean Grey in the Dark Phoenix saga. My, how the table's have turned. She owns it, and has shown genuine guilt, which is more then you say for the X-men's friends like Apocalypse right now.

Errrr because He's a teenager, who is a relative newcomer to superheroics. There's a reason why Teenagers cant vote till they turn 18.
SWBS.jpg Oh look a wanda Defender callling out heros for doing faaar less worse....Why does that sound familiar

Wanda's got higher standards for redemption then stone cold mass murders on Krkaoa.

She's a superhero...she should

You may not like how they placed it on Doom, but that's comics for you. They had to do something because how she was written up to that point of going psycho and having powers she shouldn't have had short of tapping into Chthon had to be reckoned into making some sort of sense since all that was bad writing. You can't just have Cyclops act like the Phoenix and not have an explanation of why he's conquering the world like a god, that's what happened with Wanda.

You may not like that Wanda went to seek out help frm Doom and the power that killed countless people across all realities, or that the blame placed on Doom makes zero sense, but that's comics for you.

if Doom is responsible as shown in Children's Crusade then why are the X-men hassling Wanda?

Hmm yes why indeed? why aren't the Avengers going after Doom? or the FF? Or better question if you ignore everything else Answer this...why isn't Wanda? If someone committed Genocide and I was blamed You best believe there would be nothing short of Death that would stop me for bringing that person to justice and clearing my name....Wanda just moves on to the next team, and sleeeping with the next man thatll offer her some protection. smdh

[Havok83]

Where did you expect it go? You do raise a good point, if Doom is responsible as shown in Children's Crusade then why are the X-men hassling Wanda?

The X-men arent hassling Wanda. They left her alone after Children's Crusade. This entire thread is about what fans feel the X-men should do,not anything thats actually been done in the books yet

[gurkle]

Dude What? Dark Phoenix Was. Not. Jean. By your ration you'll blame a child in Canada for a mass shooting in Tasmania.

There have been so many writers confused about who or what Dark Phoenix was, and its relationship to Jean, that it's pretty much taken on a life of its own apart from the original retcon. I don't think Jean should be punished for what she did as Dark Phoenix but I don't think it's as simple as saying Dark Phoenix was not Jean. Maybe it was that simple in 1986, but not now.

Wanda gets this effect from two sides. People who mostly didn't read about the character before HoM/Decimation mostly know her as the evil witch who caused years of untold suffering for mutants, and it doesn't really matter if this was true to the character or not; that is the character now for many readers. And why not? Saying Wanda wasn't guilty cheapens the emotional impact of that story, just like saying Jean wasn't Phoenix cheapens the impact of that story and so many fans and writers don't accept that retcon.

And on the other side, Wanda fans don't accept any version of the story where she chose to decimate an entire race to spite Daddy, because that's not the character they know, and Marvel could publish an issue tomorrow where she says, "yes, I did it and I'm glad and no one was controlling me" and her fans still would dismiss it as a mistake, because it violates her character as they have come to know it, just like fans of Spider-Man wouldn't accept it if he said, "yes, I'm glad I sold my marriage to the devil."

I guess what I'm saying is that we all accept the canon that we think makes the best story and ignore or explain away the stuff that makes a bad story. That's the only way to enjoy these things. And I do accept that Wanda being guilty makes the Decimation a better story for some readers and that it cheapens the story if she gets away with it.

[Bunch of Coconuts]

If it's Doom who pulled the trigger for some reason then it's still her fault for going to him, but she's no longer the kind of person who would hurt millions of innocent people to get back at her father. Because there are a lot of things someone can do and not be a villain but that's not one of them.

I always thought Children’s Crusade was pretty clear:

Wanda goes to Doom for a way to bring her kids back. She has no specific knowledge of how or what.

Doom knows a way, and plans to give the Life Force to Wanda so he can attempt to control her. He misjudges the power, and Wanda gets possessed and flies off.

Everything after that is the Life Force’s doing. Could it have amplified some feelings Wanda was having, of self-hatred and loathing for daddy and missing her kids? Sure, don’t see anything wrong with that; they’re not feelings she normally would have acted so aggressively on.

The Life Force then remains dormant in Wanda while she’s amnesiac in Latveria with Doom, who’s keeping tabs on her because he knows she has the Life Force in her. When her memories are triggered, she loses control of the Life Force (amplified emotions and all that), till Wiccan helps her get a modicum of control. Then Doom summons the power into himself, this time with a better spell. And of course he tries to take credit for everything, because he’s Doom. But he only really planned to summon a power (that he initially misjudged) into Wanda to control her.

Hence, Decimation/M-Day weren’t specifically anyone’s “ideas”; they happened because the Life Force was acting on Wanda’s emotions. And of course Wanda feels guilty (depending who’s writing her, of course) because her body was used to do horrible things.

What’s not very clear is if Wanda went to Doom before talking to the Wasp or after. For continuity’s sake, I’d say before, because...how do you forget that you already dealt with the loss of your kids? Oooohhh Bendiiiiiiiis!

[Steel Inquisitor]

Dude What? Dark Phoenix Was. Not. Jean. By your ration you'll blame a child in Canada for a mass shooting in Tasmania.

You say that as if it mattered to people if they were reacting like they did to Wanda. Meanwhile, we have the PF who are defended fiercely, despite doing worse things than Wanda under possession.

You know what EVERY Wanda defense have in common. Every single one of her defense entails someone throwing the blame on other heros "This hero did (something waaaay less worse) Why aren't they being punished?" Okay Damn, how about this....The Marvel universe is gonna punsish EVERY hero for anything wrong they've done.....starting with the WORSE.....guess who's first?

It's common since it shows the hypocrisy. One standard for Wanda, something else for the X-men and their villains. The world has moved on from the PF, it hasn't for Wanda.

lol She killed untold multitude of people...thats a lil bigger than running over someones pets

Sinister and the High Evolutionary depowered mutants in the past, yet nobody is counting how many people they killed and unlike Wanda if Sinister knew he wouldn't care.

ERrrr maybe because they were trying to stop them from bettering the world? Or the they were in a war fighting on different sides. By your logic soldiers killing opposing soldiers in battle should get arrested and punished. What Wanda did killed civillians, children. If you can't see the difference than trying to explain is like talking to a brick wall.

They were acting like super-villains, including murdering people who they got angry. You're omitting the fact how the X-men teamed with up with the Avengers to stop them. They weren't soldiers, they were deities who got corrupted by a powerful force of nature that eats planets. This isn't a strong defense of the PF, put some effort into it. The PF did kill civilians, like Emma Frost.

Errrr because He's a teenager, who is a relative newcomer to superheroics. There's a reason why Teenagers cant vote till they turn 18.
SWBS.jpg Oh look a wanda Defender callling out heros for doing faaar less worse....Why does that sound familiar
She's a superhero...she should

Billy understands her more than you do. What about Hope, she's too young to disagree with the Phoenix Five but not to be the vessel for the Phoenix? And there was Rictor, as well.

You may not like that Wanda went to seek out help frm Doom and the power that killed countless people across all realities, or that the blame placed on Doom makes zero sense, but that's comics for you.

She went to Doom to get her children back, you say that like that was a crime unto itself. No, she didn't kill countless people across dimensions. It's telling how you'd rather ignore Doom's involvement then be angry with him but are fine being angry at Wanda despite the fact she was written badly to fulfil an editorial mandate. The stance that comics don't make sense only applies when you are emotionally invested in it, not whether the facts are right. In theory you should be on Wanda's side with that context, yet you aren't.

Hmm yes why indeed? why aren't the Avengers going after Doom? or the FF? Or better question if you ignore everything else Answer this...why isn't Wanda? If someone committed Genocide and I was blamed You best believe there would be nothing short of Death that would stop me for bringing that person to justice and clearing my name....Wanda just moves on to the next team, and sleeeping with the next man thatll offer her some protection. smdh

Moving the goal posts. Why aren't the X-men trying to bring Doom down for M-Day? Exodus puts it all on Wanda. This is only is a problem for you when other super-heroes do it. That's why the argument why the other heroes aren't in every struggle with the X-men. Slut shaming, of course. How dare a woman have more than one partner in her life time. Your attitude about genocide is hypocritical since you're not interested in punishing the X-villains for their crimes against mutants or humans.

[Steel Inquisitor]

The X-men arent hassling Wanda. They left her alone after Children's Crusade. This entire thread is about what fans feel the X-men should do,not anything thats actually been done in the books yet

They tried to lynch her in Children's Crusade and Rogue murdered her over it and she tried to alienate her from the Avengers over this - this occurred in Uncanny Avengers. This thread is about whether Wanda should be on trial, there are no limits on what comics we can discuss related to the events.