Quicksilver: Pietro Maximoff Appreciation 2021

[WinterCoyote]

It really was a great issue for Pietro! Been pretty dry for Pietro content since Quicksilver: No Surrender.

[Dcnewb]

Welcome to the 2021 Appreciation thread for Pietro Maximoff/Quicksilver. Here, we hold fast against the Axis heresy and await the return of the Son of M to mutantkind.

Attachment 103734

A suggested reading list

X-Men #4 (1964) - His first appearance as a member of his father’s brotherhood alongside his twin Wanda, the Scarlet Witch. Their familial relationship with Magneto was not known at this time. They leave by issue 11, after Magneto is abducted by the Stranger and deciding to reject the X-Men’s invitation to join.

Avengers #16 (1965) - The story of the twins joining the Avengers after the original team leaves. They return to Magneto’s side in issue #47 when Magneto tricks Pietro into believing human security at the UN shoot Wanda in the head, grazing her temple. Magneto was actually controlling the security guard’s guns, so as to convince the twins to return after escaping the Stranger. They rejoin the Avengers after this was revealed.

Fantastic Four Vol. 1 #131 (1973) - After being attacked and injured by Sentinels, Pietro is found by the Inhuman princess Crystal and nursed back to health in Attilan. By issue #150, they were getting married. Luna is born #240.

Vision and the Scarlet Witch (1983) - Crystal begins having an affair with the human real estate agent that sold Wanda and Vision their house in New Jersey, Magneto reveals his parentage of the twins and their longest standing origin, and everyone has a very awkward Thanksgiving.

West Coast Avengers (1986) - Thus begins Steve Englehart’s long crusade to turn Quicksilver into a full out villain complete with trying to frame the Avengers for espionage, running a Zodiac themed crime ring of duplicates, trying to kill Alicia Masters, trying to force Luna to undergo terrigenesis, and just being a pathetic and unpleasant man. Editors at Marvel had to step in to stop him by revealing Pietro was being mind controlled as part of a plot by Maximus the Mad to take control of the Inhuman throne.

X-Factor # 71 - 94 (1991) - Quicksilver joins the government-sponsored X-team, and issue 87 is the famous Peter David story that explains how Pietro experiences reality through the lens of his powers.

X-Men: Fatal Attractions (1993), X-Factor #92/X-Men #25 - Quicksilver is approached by Magneto’s Acolytes and offered leadership of their group as well as accepting his place as the ‘Magnusson’, Magneto’s heir. It’s what QS was called by the Acolytes before Marvel came up with the Son of M title. Quicksilver refuses, and in fact takes part in the X-Men operation to take Magneto down after he unleashes an electromagnetic attack on the earth after the UN tries to keep Magneto from coming back down from Asteroid M.

Avengers/X-Men: Blood Ties (1993) - A direct sequel to Fatal Attraction. Fabian Cortez doesn’t know about Magneto’s fate at the hands of Charles Xavier, and fearing for his life because of the treacherous bastard he is, kidnaps Luna as a shield against Magneto’s rage. Quicksilver and Crystal lead a team of Avengers and X-Mem to retrieve her in Cortez’s hideout on Genosha, while Exodus’ arrival further complicates matters. This and the previous story was part of Marvel celebrating both franchises’ 30th anniversary, and fittingly Pietro was seen as the tie between them.

Quicksilver (1997) - His first solo, which covered his marriage to Crystal degrading further, his first hint that his powers are actually time manipulation in meeting his future self Nestor, and being followed by the High Evolutionary and his animal men, his father’s Acolytes, and his own personal issues.

Magneto Rex (1999) - How Pietro was convinced by Magneto into staying in Genosha as a cabinet minister on his father’s government.

House of M (2005) - The infamous storyline following Disassembled which resulted in M-Day. This is where the idea of Magneto ruling with his family, the eponymous House of M, comes from. It also did terrible damage to the twins’s standing in comics as heroes, which are still felt today.

Son of M (2006) - The messy follow up that established terrigen as harmful to mutants, Pietro developing time travel abilities, forcing Luna to undergo terrigenesis after all, and starting a war all in the name of restoring mutantkind.

X-Factor: The Quick and the Dead (2008) - Peter David followed up with Pietro’s story from Son of M, which ultimately resulted in Pietro coming down from terrigen, coming to his senses, and regaining his original power set.

Avengers Academy (2010) - Quicksilver is an instructor at Hank Pym’s School for Wayward Youth as part of his rehabilitation and rejoining the Avengers.

X-Factor (2014) - Peter David has Pietro join X-Factor where he confessed to everything he did from Son of M and X-Factor at a press conference, and reconnected with Polaris and Luna.

Uncanny Avengers (2015) - Where the retcon that claims Magneto isn’t the Maximoff twin’s father because copyright reasons comes from. Ignore it. Just skip straight to the Gerry Duggan issues.

Quicksilver: No Surrender (2018) : A mini series following Avengers: No Surrender. In which Pietro gets stuck outside time by running too fast, gets a pet turtle he calls Mister Dibbles, and fights some kind of time duplicates of himself.

Empyre: Avengers (2020): Pietro briefly shows up and punches out a bunch of Skrull and Kree that were threatening to break the alliance. That’s it.


As we go into the new year, let’s hope Pietro is given a better showing.

Hey guys, it’s me again lol.
Wondering which 1986 West Coast Avengers issues cover the story mentioned up here?

Thank y’all

[teapartyofthedead]

Hey guys, it’s me again lol.
Wondering which 1986 West Coast Avengers issues cover the story mentioned up here?

Thank y’all

Hi there Dcnewb, in asking this question it has made me realize how much I need to edit the rec list. Not only to make the timeline more clear, but add context.

The issues you mentioned are West Coast Avengers #33-36 by Steve Englehart. The story begins with the sudden reappearance of Maria Pym (Hank’s first wife and mother of Nadia Pym/Van Dyne), and literally ends with him being unable to run due to Maria creating a device to inhibit his powers, and thus allow him to be defeated by the Avengers. But it is later resolved in Fantastic Four Annual #21 by Edward Norton with the explanation given that the device also broke Maximus’ hold on Pietro once again. I say once again due to this being one of a chain of stories Englehart wrote to prove that Quicksilver was evil no matter what anyone else wrote.

I’m now in the middle of adding more info to the rec list about the Englehart stories, so thank you for bringing this to my attention.

[Dcnewb]

Hi there Dcnewb, in asking this question it has made me realize how much I need to edit the rec list. Not only to make the timeline more clear, but add context.

The issues you mentioned are West Coast Avengers #33-36 by Steve Englehart. The story begins with the sudden reappearance of Maria Pym (Hank’s first wife and mother of Nadia Pym/Van Dyne), and literally ends with him being unable to run due to Maria creating a device to inhibit his powers, and thus allow him to be defeated by the Avengers. But it is later resolved in Fantastic Four Annual #21 by Edward Norton with the explanation given that the device also broke Maximus’ hold on Pietro once again. I say once again due to this being one of a chain of stories Englehart wrote to prove that Quicksilver was evil no matter what anyone else wrote.

I’m now in the middle of adding more info to the rec list about the Englehart stories, so thank you for bringing this to my attention.

Haha thanks for that. That story seems interesting so I thought I’d try to see if I can chase it up.

The entire plot seems to be scattered which makes it hard to find a graphic novel with all the collected issues. Would you recommend the quicksilver story in Vision and Scarlett witch titles? Or would it make not much of a difference if I just skipped it to the F4 issues and then to the WCA issues?

[teapartyofthedead]

Haha thanks for that. That story seems interesting so I thought I’d try to see if I can chase it up.

The entire plot seems to be scattered which makes it hard to find a graphic novel with all the collected issues. Would you recommend the quicksilver story in Vision and Scarlett witch titles? Or would it make not much of a difference if I just skipped it to the F4 issues and then to the WCA issues?

The way everything is scattered is why I got a Marvel unlimited subscription. So I could read the classics to my heart’s content without having to hunt all over the internet.

You can definitely skip the V&SW story and skip straight to the FF and WCA issues, where most of the conflict is. If you’re determined to follow the thread of Pietro being controlled by Maximus to the bitter end, I would recommend X-Factor Annual #2 followed by Son of M and Silent War. Finally, to get to the end of Pietro being a villain in the modern era, you would need to read the PAD X-Factor issues from the Madrox Investigations and Serval Industries era.

But these stories are where Pietro gets the image of being a cruel and weak man comes from. Often when they’re recounted, the fact that he was under mind control by Maximus is almost never brought up. It’s just assumed he did that of his own volition, and I find it quite sad. In many ways, Englehart ultimately won in making Pietro appear to be a villain to the public eye.

[Dcnewb]

The way everything is scattered is why I got a Marvel unlimited subscription. So I could read the classics to my heart’s content without having to hunt all over the internet.

You can definitely skip the V&SW story and skip straight to the FF and WCA issues, where most of the conflict is. If you’re determined to follow the thread of Pietro being controlled by Maximus to the bitter end, I would recommend X-Factor Annual #2 followed by Son of M and Silent War. Finally, to get to the end of Pietro being a villain in the modern era, you would need to read the PAD X-Factor issues from the Madrox Investigations and Serval Industries era.

But these stories are where Pietro gets the image of being a cruel and weak man comes from. Often when they’re recounted, the fact that he was under mind control by Maximus is almost never brought up. It’s just assumed he did that of his own volition, and I find it quite sad. In many ways, Englehart ultimately won in making Pietro appear to be a villain to the public eye.

Sweet, I might start with the F4 Family Matters epic collection then! I’m just not a fan of reading them digitally. I love the satisfaction of having a physical book with beautiful big pages of art and of course, the nostalgia from the scent of the old school comic paper (I know it’s kinda weird, haha)

So you’ve mentioned also reading Son of M & 2000s X Factor, are you saying that Pietro was still controlled by Maximus way after he returned to being a good guy in the 90s?

[ARkadelphia]

I’d say that it’s important to read the Avengers Annual #15 / West Coast Avengers Annual #1 crossover which has been collected as part of many a trade now I think. This is where Englehart first has Pietro betray The Avengers after Crystal’s affair in the second Vision & Scarlet Witch series.

[juan678]

[Dcnewb]

I’d say that it’s important to read the Avengers Annual #15 / West Coast Avengers Annual #1 crossover which has been collected as part of many a trade now I think. This is where Englehart first has Pietro betray The Avengers after Crystal’s affair in the second Vision & Scarlet Witch series.

Yeah! I’ve yet to look for Avengers annual 15 but I’ve also been searching for WCA annual 1 in a collected series but haven’t been able to find one :/

[Dcnewb]

Yeah! I’ve yet to look for Avengers annual 15 but I’ve also been searching for WCA annual 1 in a collected series but haven’t been able to find one :/

nvm, apparently WCA Lost in Space Time epic collection has these two comics, although I’m not too sure if it’s worth buying the entire collection just for 2 issues of Pietro lol

[teapartyofthedead]

Sweet, I might start with the F4 Family Matters epic collection then! I’m just not a fan of reading them digitally. I love the satisfaction of having a physical book with beautiful big pages of art and of course, the nostalgia from the scent of the old school comic paper (I know it’s kinda weird, haha)

So you’ve mentioned also reading Son of M & 2000s X Factor, are you saying that Pietro was still controlled by Maximus way after he returned to being a good guy in the 90s?

All this time I thought I pressed ‘submit’ and lo, no the hell I did not. Sorry about that.

In the last issue of Silent War, Maximus manipulates Luna in his plan to remove Black Bolt from power. Luna can see the telepathic virus Maximus uses to control his victims with her ability to read auras. She sees them in Medusa, Black Bolt, and Quicksilver. Maximus tells her he placed them long, long ago because he likes to plan ahead.

Earlier, the Royal family left Quicksilver in Mutant Town when they saw he had embedded the stolen Terrigen crystals in his chest and couldn’t be retrieved. X-Factor sees him under the delusion he has been chosen by God to undo M-Day by restoring mutant powers via the Terrigen crystals. Except it just makes mutant powers go horribly awry and making the mutant recipients suffer or even die. Rictor slapps the **** out of him to knock the crystals out.

That means Pietro still had Maximus’ telepathic virus in his head this entire time from all the way back to X-Factor Annual story. As far as I know, he still has the telepathic virus just waiting for Maximus to reactivate it. It would not be a stretch to say that Maximus controlled Pietro to use the gas on himself, Luna, and his fellow mutants as a dry run for when he would unleash the Terrigen bomb years later. I would even go one step further and say Maximus may have originally influenced Pietro to try to force Luna to undergo Terrigenesis as an experiment on how Terrigen would affect someone with partial Inhuman ancestry.

It just seems too much of a coincidence that Maximus would be controlling Pietro numerous times concerning Terrigen (the original Byrne story, his 90s solo, and Son of M) to not be a foreshadowing of his plan to unleash Terrigen into the atmosphere while knowing full well what it would do to mutants and many people who didn’t have enough Inhuman ancestry to survive Terrigenesis.

One day, I would like to see a friendly telepath notice Maximus’ virus in Pietro’s brain and extract it, and thus finding all this proof of Maximus’ long campaign against mutantkind. It’s unlikely to happen because it’s a dangling plot line from a 2007 event no one cared about for a franchise that is now being a studiously ignored. Maybe someone will write a fanfic one day when reading old, obscure comics becomes a popular trend.

[Dcnewb]

One day, I would like to see a friendly telepath notice Maximus’ virus in Pietro’s brain and extract it, and thus finding all this proof of Maximus’ long campaign against mutantkind. It’s unlikely to happen because it’s a dangling plot line from a 2007 event no one cared about for a franchise that is now being a studiously ignored. Maybe someone will write a fanfic one day when reading old, obscure comics becomes a popular trend.

At this rate I’d like it if any writer can bring Pietro back into an ongoing comic series. For a character with such a long and rich history he sure ends up getting shafted way too often

[juan678]

https://www.cbr.com/x-men-legends-qu...tor-doom-sick/

[teapartyofthedead]

https://www.cbr.com/x-men-legends-qu...tor-doom-sick/

As always, thanks Juan!

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This was a fun little story. Ultimately inconsequential, but it still serves as a comfort before whatever happens with the Trial of Magneto. It’s funny seeing Doom refer to Pietro as ‘Lehnsherr’s boy’ as if to confirm Pietro’s identity. They met for the first time in Avengers #25 when Doom tricked Pietro and Wanda into coming to Latveria by sending them a forged letter from a nonexistent family member.

Also, Doom really ate a lot of humble pie this month. I’m not surprised he had to take a moment to settle his stomach. XD

[Lucyinthesky]

This was a fun little story. Ultimately inconsequential, but it still serves as a comfort before whatever happens with the Trial of Magneto. It’s funny seeing Doom refer to Pietro as ‘Lehnsherr’s boy’ as if to confirm Pietro’s identity. They met for the first time in Avengers #25 when Doom tricked Pietro and Wanda into coming to Latveria by sending them a forged letter from a nonexistent family member.

Also, Doom really ate a lot of humble pie this month. I’m not surprised he had to take a moment to settle his stomach. XD

I loved their scenes too, now writers have something else to add to Pietro´s story with Doom, what I liked more from here is that this bassically was a Romani story between Pietro, Dr Doom and the mutants from Latveria who also were Romani from Doom´s tribe and Lehnsherr was the last name Magneto used to look for Magda and them both liking the same music was great

Some Pietro art by Lucas Werneck