Wanda's “unforgivable” crime?!

[maximoffimpact]

Wanda can still feel guilty even if she was manipulated, so far the Wanda in Hickman's current story does, let's see what happens next...[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Cruelrain;5113487]Yeah it seems like the writers did try to reedem Wanda, This scans are all after Children Crussade and unless a new writer denies all this it still canon.

Thank you CJ for pointing out those often missed facts about Wanda. Doom did indeed manipulate Wanda, despite having feelings (love) for her. I remember Wanda in UA berating herself over not being strong enough to resist Doom's influence. Wanda has accepted responsibility, and has done so to various degrees since Children's Crusade. It's just that it wasn't done in the form of how some posters would have liked to have seen it. Also, during UA (soon after CC & AvX), Wanda was still processing what she had done, what was done to her, and the shame, anger, guilt and remorse of her actions. A person may not get their ENTIRE memory back immediately. Wanda slowly reverted back to the Wanda we've always known in later issues of UA. She was still going through changes processing the trauma of what she had done and what was done to her. Anyone going through a traumatic event is not going to return their regular self soon after such trauma.

I'm just amazed that a rarely used ability of Doom's that is canon has not even been considered in how Wanda could've been manipulated. Does anyone remember Doom's ability to briefly take possession of another person's body from the pages of FF? That canon-based ability of Doom's has not been brought up, and it is a power that nobody but Doom is aware of. Did he use that power on Wanda???

[XPac]

Wanda's actions removing the powers of millions of mutants, and then actively halting the creation of more mutants amounts to A) Castration, B) Forced Sterilization.

Even if she didn't say "kill all mutants", her actions took away the personhood, dignity, consent of millions of mutants around the Marvel Universe, many of whom didn't want to lose their powers. All of whom had done nothing to her and do not deserve to be the target of her vicarious rage and grief. The other action, mass sterilization of mutants, is analogous to genocide. It's an action aimed to extinguish an entire group of people, and a specific group of people at that...mutants. It stops mutants from reproducing. Including the surviving mutants who still have their powers. Mass sterilization is the end goal of many projects of genocide historically, including Nazi Germany.

About the only positive development with Wanda that I've come to embrace since House of M is the retcon that Magneto isn't her father and that Wanda and Pietro are no longer mutants. Obviously this was driven by chicanery on the part of Fox-Disney dustoff, but it's a positive development in the sense that the Decimation is no longer a case of "mutant-on-mutant violence". It was accidental and unwitting on the part of Marvel, but it's a positive move. Of course the fact that Wanda is Romani, historical victims of the Holocaust, and also carried out this action...is still icky in terms of optics.

There's no getting around the fact that Wanda's actions are terrible, it was bad and she should feel bad. I still think there's a way to deal with this and allow her to land on her feet however. At the end of the day this is comic books, Scarlet Witch using magic to change continuity is fairly removed from reality in terms of actions. SO it's only genocide by means of analogy. Even in the X-Men continuity, Wanda is ranked below the Sentinels, and Genosha is considered the worst crime in the history of mutantkind with the Decimation ranking a second. The Decimation can be undone and repaired, albeit the emotional trauma and collateral damage inflicted will remain for a long time. But Genosha itself can't be undone and yeah I know the Five are working to resurrect the dead of Genosha...but I think it's fair to expect that even the most heartened X-Fans should consider that too optimistic as an endgoal to be fulfilled on pages, especially since the emotions over the loss of Genosha is far greater than what Genosha occupied when it was active, in terms of continuity-real estate.

I'm honestly surprised that any X-fans actually care about either the mutants who died in M Day or the mutants who died in Genosha, since they were largely nameless faceless mutants who essentionally only existed to be killed off in the first place. It's like caring about the billions Bishop murdered or the Broccolli people Dark Phoenix killed off... they're there in the story just to die.

Obviously the X writers could reverse any of that if they wanted too... but they probably won't bother because they frankly don't matter.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I'm honestly surprised that any X-fans actually care about either the mutants who died in M Day or the mutants who died in Genosha, since they were largely nameless faceless mutants who essentionally only existed to be killed off in the first place.

In the case of Wanda's decimation, the X-Men writers in the comics afterwards repeatedly dealt with the aftermath of Genosha and the M-Day. Emma Frost is a genocide survivor, she was in Genosha when the Sentinels made landfall, and she survived by means of secondary mutation, turning into diamond. Her students were not so lucky. Her conversion from amoral villain to amoral hero and X-Men traces itself to Genosha.

The comics repeatedly dealt with and individualized the stories of the people who lost powers on M-Day, most recently in Hickman's X-Men #7, where Melody Guthrie/Aero lost her powers thanks to Wanda is determined at all costs to get it back.

So the answer to your question is, no. The X-Men did many stories individualizing and dealing with the aftermath of these stories. They weren't treated as faceless masses in the stories by any means.

And furthermore, in real life people feel bad about the mass deaths of the Holocaust, or the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki even if most people do not personally or individually know any single person who died in those events, nor are most of them related or connected to them. I don't know anyone who died in 9/11, but I still feel pretty bad about it. The same with mass shootings across America, or with the far greater magnitude of mass deaths happening with the ongoing coronavirus deaths around us (many times greater already then the numbers who died in Vietnam, Korea, the Gulf Wars, Afghanistan, mass shootings, terrorist attacks on American soil).

This idea that one can't feel bad over massacres unless they individually know people is facetious, and insulting.

[Ichijinijisanji]

Wanda's actions removing the powers of millions of mutants, and then actively halting the creation of more mutants amounts to A) Castration, B) Forced Sterilization.

it's more like "forced conversion" or "forced assimilation"

I hesitate to call it sterilization, since the depowered mutants could still presumably have children, they'd just be human (unless I missed something).

It would fit the genocide definition under "imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group". It's still more of the equivalent of something removing angel's wings though maybe not as violently.

About the only positive development with Wanda that I've come to embrace since House of M is the retcon that Magneto isn't her father and that Wanda and Pietro are no longer mutants.

Does it matter if she identified as a mutant and had the cultural identity of one? If she had hate attacks and such? Someone like matthew malloy could've done it the same, right? (not going into the mutants who've done it)
There's also the issue where wanda could've warped reality to become human from the guilt, so maybe she's a "Pretender" in the sense she's pretending to be human.

I'm honestly surprised that any X-fans actually care about either the mutants who died in M Day or the mutants who died in Genosha, since they were largely nameless faceless mutants who essentionally only existed to be killed off in the first place. It's like caring about the billions Bishop murdered or the Broccolli people Dark Phoenix killed off... they're there in the story just to die.

Obviously the X writers could reverse any of that if they wanted too... but they probably won't bother because they frankly don't matter.

Many stories dealt with it, showing the harrowing effects of M-day from ex-mutants suffering from suicidal depression, getting killed in the streets, on buses. It dealt with a lot of anguish in a way that dark phoenix and bishop's storyline didn't.

[Iron Maiden]

Wanda can still feel guilty even if she was manipulated, so far the Wanda in Hickman's current story does, let's see what happens next...

Yeah it seems like the writers did try to reedem Wanda, This scans are all after Children Crussade and unless a new writer denies all this it still canon.

Thank you CJ for pointing out those often missed facts about Wanda. Doom did indeed manipulate Wanda, despite having feelings (love) for her. I remember Wanda in UA berating herself over not being strong enough to resist Doom's influence. Wanda has accepted responsibility, and has done so to various degrees since Children's Crusade. It's just that it wasn't done in the form of how some posters would have liked to have seen it. Also, during UA (soon after CC & AvX), Wanda was still processing what she had done, what was done to her, and the shame, anger, guilt and remorse of her actions. A person may not get their ENTIRE memory back immediately. Wanda slowly reverted back to the Wanda we've always known in later issues of UA. She was still going through changes processing the trauma of what she had done and what was done to her. Anyone going through a traumatic event is not going to return their regular self soon after such trauma.

I'm just amazed that a rarely used ability of Doom's that is canon has not even been considered in how Wanda could've been manipulated. Does anyone remember Doom's ability to briefly take possession of another person's body from the pages of FF? That canon-based ability of Doom's has not been brought up, and it is a power that nobody but Doom is aware of. Did he use that power on Wanda???

No, that's not how the Ovoid Mind Transfer works. He rarely uses it these days, the last time being during Mark Waid's run IIRC...and Waid depicted it incorrectly but that's not relevant.

Doom can't just pop into someone and take over their body. Secondly, the person that becomes the host of his mind then gets control over Doom's body so it is a double edged sword.

It takes a degree of prep and concentration for him to do it....and he has to be near the person who is the target. I always found it funny that if he were distracted or a bit off he could have been transferred into Aunt May's body






If he loses concentration/control, he can be forced out of the other person's body.

[Zelena]

it's more like "forced conversion" or "forced assimilation"

I hesitate to call it sterilization, since the depowered mutants could still presumably have children, they'd just be human (unless I missed something).

It would fit the genocide definition under "imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group". It's still more of the equivalent of something removing angel's wings though maybe not as violently.

Does it matter if she identified as a mutant and had the cultural identity of one? If she had hate attacks and such? Someone like matthew malloy could've done it the same, right? (not going into the mutants who've done it)
There's also the issue where wanda could've warped reality to become human from the guilt, so maybe she's a "Pretender" in the sense she's pretending to be human.

Such things are made to include the despicable minority into the majority. But there Wanda hated her own mutantness and excluded people from her own culture. And probably also excluded herself. It is rather original and doesn’t fit a lot of real narratives.

Many stories dealt with it, showing the harrowing effects of M-day from ex-mutants suffering from suicidal depression, getting killed in the streets, on buses. It dealt with a lot of anguish in a way that dark phoenix and bishop's storyline didn't.

No pain because no survivor? They have just disappeared.

[XPac]

In the case of Wanda's decimation, the X-Men writers in the comics afterwards repeatedly dealt with the aftermath of Genosha and the M-Day. Emma Frost is a genocide survivor, she was in Genosha when the Sentinels made landfall, and she survived by means of secondary mutation, turning into diamond. Her students were not so lucky. Her conversion from amoral villain to amoral hero and X-Men traces itself to Genosha.

The comics repeatedly dealt with and individualized the stories of the people who lost powers on M-Day, most recently in Hickman's X-Men #7, where Melody Guthrie/Aero lost her powers thanks to Wanda is determined at all costs to get it back.

So the answer to your question is, no. The X-Men did many stories individualizing and dealing with the aftermath of these stories. They weren't treated as faceless masses in the stories by any means.

And furthermore, in real life people feel bad about the mass deaths of the Holocaust, or the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki even if most people do not personally or individually know any single person who died in those events, nor are most of them related or connected to them. I don't know anyone who died in 9/11, but I still feel pretty bad about it. The same with mass shootings across America, or with the far greater magnitude of mass deaths happening with the ongoing coronavirus deaths around us (many times greater already then the numbers who died in Vietnam, Korea, the Gulf Wars, Afghanistan, mass shootings, terrorist attacks on American soil).

This idea that one can't feel bad over massacres unless they individually know people is facetious, and insulting.

THat's my point... these are self inflected wounds. A bunch of nameless faceless characters were created just to be killed because the x-writers wanted the drama.

Bendis ended it with people simply being depowered, but the X writers went on make the entire franchise completely revolve around that event for the nex decade and a half. And that's perfectly fine... it's well within their rights. There legitimately is a story to tell there. My point is simply that it's only an issue because the X writers are making it one. They can literally decide any day to reverse or completey ignore it, and move on. But they don't want to do that, because that's just how the x writers write their books.

[Ichijinijisanji]

Such things are made to include the despicable minority into the majority. But there Wanda hated her own mutantness and excluded people from her own culture. And probably also excluded herself. It is rather original and doesn’t fit a lot of real narratives.


No pain because no survivor? They have just disappeared.

Well, the shiar still exist, but they aren't given narrative focus.
Well, in bishop's case have they disappeared? Earth-80521 exists and we saw their stories of people affected by him like Emil, but still, alternate reality.

THat's my point... these are self inflected wounds. A bunch of nameless faceless characters were created just to be killed because the x-writers wanted the drama.

Bendis ended it with people simply being depowered, but the X writers went on make the entire franchise completely revolve around that event for the nex decade and a half. And that's perfectly fine... it's well within their rights. There legitimately is a story to tell there. My point is simply that it's only an issue because the X writers are making it one. They can literally decide any day to reverse or completey ignore it, and move on. But they don't want to do that, because that's just how the x writers write their books.

Well they can't ignore it now that they've made an issue about it.

And powers going away means something when your powers give you part of your identity. If your powers mean something to you, maybe you've developed pride in it just as any persecuted minority may develop pride in the color of their skin, they're sexual orientation, then having them ripped away would have its consequence. It's not an arbitrary trait.
And part o the reason was that qsada thought there were too many mutants to be a minority. So reducing them in number is..... well it has all these implications.

[XPac]

Well, the shiar still exist, but they aren't given narrative focus.
Well, in bishop's case have they disappeared? Earth-80521 exists and we saw their stories of people affected by him like Emil, but still, alternate reality.




Well they can't ignore it now that they've made an issue about it.

And powers going away means something when your powers give you part of your identity. If your powers mean something to you, maybe you've developed pride in it just as any persecuted minority may develop pride in the color of their skin, they're sexual orientation, then having them ripped away would have its consequence. It's not an arbitrary trait.
And part o the reason was that qsada thought there were too many mutants to be a minority. So reducing them in number is..... well it has all these implications.

Sure they can ignore it. They can come to the reasonable conclusion that Wanda, who they know was essentially a good person and hero, ended up getting possessed (something that happens to all of them from time to time) and did a terrible thing that really wasn't her fault. And they can move on, like they did with Bishop who murdered billions of innocent people even though he unlike Wanda had no excuse.

And obviously they can repower or even bring back to life anyone they want to IF they feel it's necessary... they just don't because they don't. These things are only issues because the x writers choose to make them issues. And obviously that's their right... they can insert as much doom and gloom in their books as they want.

[Havok83]

Mutant powers can be analagous to a limb. Removing them can be the equivalent to maiming someone and/or destroy one of their senses. Imagine waking up and not being able to hear or have an arm missing. Mutants had a part of them stripped which was a part of how they had come to function in the world.

[gurkle]

By the logic of the Marvel universe, turning nearly all mutants into non-mutants would be genocide. You don't have to kill people to wipe them out as a group, you can just forcibly convert them.

Which is all the more reason why writers should stop tying this around Wanda's neck. If she did it, if she chose to wipe out mutants, it's something that no heroic character can come back from, and I think the writers understood this and assumed the character would never be a hero again (it doesn't help that many people knew her more as Magneto's daughter/Brotherhood member than her 40 years of stories as an Avenger). It's a mild miracle that she came back as much as she did.

Again, if they shift the blame to Doom (and all the reasons why Doom couldn't have done it are nothing as compared to the reasons Wanda couldn't have done it) it doesn't hurt a villain as much as it hurts a hero. But it's also fine to say she was possessed by some force that made her do this against her will, or just drop the whole thing and proceed on the basis that she didn't do it but no one has explained who did.

But any version of the story that assumes Wanda did it is wrong, because she's a hero and heroes don't do that.

[Iron Maiden]

By the logic of the Marvel universe, turning nearly all mutants into non-mutants would be genocide. You don't have to kill people to wipe them out as a group, you can just forcibly convert them.

Which is all the more reason why writers should stop tying this around Wanda's neck. If she did it, if she chose to wipe out mutants, it's something that no heroic character can come back from, and I think the writers understood this and assumed the character would never be a hero again (it doesn't help that many people knew her more as Magneto's daughter/Brotherhood member than her 40 years of stories as an Avenger). It's a mild miracle that she came back as much as she did.

Again, if they shift the blame to Doom (and all the reasons why Doom couldn't have done it are nothing as compared to the reasons Wanda couldn't have done it) it doesn't hurt a villain as much as it hurts a hero. But it's also fine to say she was possessed by some force that made her do this against her will, or just drop the whole thing and proceed on the basis that she didn't do it but no one has explained who did.

But any version of the story that assumes Wanda did it is wrong, because she's a hero and heroes don't do that.

Well, IMO there are a lot more reasons to say Doom didn't do it since he was never in House of M or Disassembled in the first place. Show me a panel where he appears or is referred to? This was entirely her story. Bendis wanted to tell this grand tragedy involving Wanda and iMO shifting the blame to Doom derails that. Some here seems to be going through all sorts of contortions to shift things over on Doom, who's never had much of a history of conflict with the X-Men. It was Victor and Reed working together that cured Kitty's condition. And if Doom did have anything to do with it, it wouldn't be to depower mutants unless he was going to somehow tap into that power for himself like he did with the Silver Surfer. But he didn't do that either. IMO no one has come up with a motive for Doom to have done it. Why not carry it through all the way and depower Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four and any other heroes with powers that aren't mutants?

I find it interesting in this article on Marvel's site marks the 14th anniversary of House of M and there is no mention of Doom. It will be interesting to see if Hickman touches on any of this in his X-Men. He's very close to Bendis and he just may decide to clear things up once and for all.

[gurkle]

Well, IMO there are a lot more reasons to say Doom didn't do it since he was never in House of M or Disassembled in the first place. Show me a panel where he appears or is referred to? This was entirely her story. Bendis wanted to tell this grand tragedy involving Wanda and iMO shifting the blame to Doom derails that. Some here seems to be going through all sorts of contortions to shift things over on Doom, who's never had much of a history of conflict with the X-Men. It was Victor and Reed working together that cured Kitty's condition. And if Doom did have anything to do with it, it wouldn't be to depower mutants unless he was going to somehow tap into that power for himself like he did with the Silver Surfer. But he didn't do that either. IMO no one has come up with a motive for Doom to have done it. Why not carry it through all the way and depower Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four and any other heroes with powers that aren't mutants?

I find it interesting in this article on Marvel's site marks the 14th anniversary of House of M and there is no mention of Doom. It will be interesting to see if Hickman touches on any of this in his X-Men. He's very close to Bendis and he just may decide to clear things up once and for all.

I know that Doom being behind it makes no sense. But he's the only person it's been blamed on in-story, and so the choice is either "a villain did it" or "Wanda was an omnipotent crazy self-hating mutant all along who did something so terrible that she can never be a hero again."

I don't expect a Doom fan to go along with that explanation; it's just that you can't expect a Wanda fan to go along with the explanation that she did it. She couldn't have done it, because then she would be a completely different character. House of M is so out of character that saying Doom was mind-controlling her for some unrevealed master plan actually makes more sense, because that's such a low bar.

Again, my preference is just to dismiss the whole story, as it wasn't about her and she was written out of character. There's no rule that says a character needs to be "redeemed" for one writer writing them out of character in one story. Unfortunately, it seems that Marvel won't let it go, and has probably greenlit Hickman to dredge up the story again. Even if this ends in her being "redeemed" her fans won't be satisfied, because she did nothing to be redeemed from; she just needs a possession or mind-control excuse like every other hero gets.

They don't have to say it was Doom, but if Marvel tells us that Wanda would have done such a thing, they're wrong, just like they'd be wrong if they did a whole story about your favorite hero being an evil murderer. Shared characters are bigger than whoever's writing them right now.

[Username taken]

Honestly, creators should move on from this plot point.

It's been almost 20 years since this happened.

Forward ever, backward never and all that.

[XPac]

Honestly, creators should move on from this plot point.

It's been almost 20 years since this happened.

Forward ever, backward never and all that.

If not for Wanda Vision, I think they might have.

But I suspect that Wanda Vision will draw some elements from the Disassembled/House of M stuff (just a guess... could be 100% wrong about that), and the comics for the purposes of synergy will address those issues in the books. But we'll see.