Is there anything Scarlet Witch could do to redeem herself?

[Coin Biter]

It seems unfair to eternally hold an innocent fictional character responsible for the actions of her writer (who was only following Quesada's orders anyway).

It's not as if it was even a good story, worthy of remembering. It was barely a story at all. It was an editorial fiat to cut down on the number of mutants in the Marvel Universe.

I don't know. Divorcing it from its consequences from the X-titles, and ignoring Bendis' fairly forgiveable crimes against continuity, I found it pretty readable myself. Let's put it this way, in terms of Marvel events it was a lot better than, to choose three at random:

• Fear Itself (tedious and nonsensical story linked to one of the worst Thor runs of all time, although on the other hand, it was also linked to Gillen's amazing run on Journey into Mystery).
• AvX (mystifyingly dull-witted artificial conflict which has divided fanbases and prompted more circular arguments than the debates over the Filioque clause).
• Infinity (liked by many, but IMO a pallid reprise of Annihilation, only without the interesting character development for classic cosmic characters but a great many more scenes highlighting that pharmaceutically enhanced squaddie, Captain America, as some kind of invincible space commander).

Now alright, most events suck. Such is the way of things. Still. For what it was, House of M had some excellent art, some nice character moments, didn't outstay its welcome, and importantly managed to get its story out without portraying too many characters as inconceivable imbeciles.

Except Wanda and Pietro, obviously

Oh, and the Captain America tie-in issue was truly excellent. In a concise 20 pages or so it highlighted exactly what IMO that character should be about - and it didn't even involve him punching any Nazis!

EDIT: It's also a bit tricky not to hold an innocent fictional character responsible for her imaginary actions - when you're emotionally involved in a franchise.

[idiyona]

It seems unfair to eternally hold an innocent fictional character responsible for the actions of her writer (who was only following Quesada's orders anyway).

It's not as if it was even a good story, worthy of remembering. It was barely a story at all. It was an editorial fiat to cut down on the number of mutants in the Marvel Universe.

Isn't that one of those don't pull that thread lest everything unravel kind of questions? Admitting that fictional character's actions and motivations are the result of their writers and it's pointless to discuss them pretty much invalidates most of the time spent on here.

[CSTowle]

I agree with Coin Biter, we need to start boycotting "Event" books. I'm doing my part, but we all need to pitch in and refuse to support these books. It's rare anything good comes from them, and most of the time something awful (or several somethings) does. As to the Scarlet Witch, it's comics. Have her reverse it, and don't use Cyclops or Patriot as a plot wall to prevent her from doing it. You don't have to bring it back to the Morrison millions-of-mutants status quo, but repowering anybody who's ever gotten decent panel time in an x-book would do. Give her a cosmic cube or an Infinity Gem or have her sell her soul to Mephisto.

As has been said, the utter lack of remorse and indeed contempt/snark for her victims isn't doing her any favors. It's not her fault, she was first the tool of Bendis/Quesada, now she's working under Remender. Poor girl can't buy a break. She makes Quicksilver and Polaris look well-adjusted. Unless a Morrison or a Gaiman says "f##k it" and takes up the role as savior of her concept (hopefully in her own book), chances are it's going to be years before this gets addressed and probably unsatisfactorily at that.

[CSTowle]

Isn't that one of those don't pull that thread lest everything unravel kind of questions? Admitting that fictional character's actions and motivations are the result of their writers and it's pointless to discuss them pretty much invalidates most of the time spent on here.

We're all (or mostly) adults here, we know these are words/drawings on a page, just like we know movies/TV feature people acting parts, but there's room for legitimate criticism if the suspension of disbelief is so stretched that you're forced to pull back the curtain to find the answers. It's a sign of bad art. "No More Mutants", "One More Day", Parallax as a yellow fear bug, the return of Aunt May/Norman Osborn, most of AvX, these are all awful stories that have one thing in common: the quality of the stories themselves were secondary to serving an out-of-story purpose. And it's completely unnecessary. They could have found better ways to handle all of those situations, spent more time and looked to fit it into continuity if they'd wanted to. But they had a goal and just went ahead full-steam and to hell with what fans thought.

Imagine if Mr. Sinister had done this somehow. How much would that have elevated his status as an X-villain? Or how about some relatively minor character who could be pushed into a major player? Like Arcade and the Avengers Academy kids in Avengers Arena.

[Coin Biter]

I agree with Coin Biter, we need to start boycotting "Event" books. I'm doing my part, but we all need to pitch in and refuse to support these books. It's rare anything good comes from them, and most of the time something awful (or several somethings) does.

I'm certainly boycotting AXIS - for two reasons (apart from the general one that events are mostly terrible ). One, I'm tight-fisted. I already spend too much money on my comic-buying dangerous habit to safely spend it on AXIS. Life - unlike a Remender story arc - is simply too short.

Two, I find the whole set up just remarkably... vulgar. Red skull/mutant death camps/Onslaught? Back to the 90s with added bad taste. There were some good things to come out of the 90s - Time Cop with Jean Claude van Damme, for example - but Onslaught was not among them.

[idiyona]

We're all (or mostly) adults here, we know these are words/drawings on a page, just like we know movies/TV feature people acting parts, but there's room for legitimate criticism if the suspension of disbelief is so stretched that you're forced to pull back the curtain to find the answers. It's a sign of bad art. "No More Mutants", "One More Day", Parallax as a yellow fear bug, the return of Aunt May/Norman Osborn, most of AvX, these are all awful stories that have one thing in common: the quality of the stories themselves were secondary to serving an out-of-story purpose. And it's completely unnecessary. They could have found better ways to handle all of those situations, spent more time and looked to fit it into continuity if they'd wanted to. But they had a goal and just went ahead full-steam and to hell with what fans thought.

Imagine if Mr. Sinister had done this somehow. How much would that have elevated his status as an X-villain? Or how about some relatively minor character who could be pushed into a major player? Like Arcade and the Avengers Academy kids in Avengers Arena.

I never said we shouldn't stop the suspension of disbelief every once in a while and look behind the curtain. It's even interesting sometimes. What Carabas said though is that Wanda was completely innocent in all this and it was all the writer's fault as if those who still suspend disbelief (even the initial question in this thread is based on the suspension of disbelief) had no right to. Besides, by now they've had enough time to follow up and fill in all the gaps they need to. I'd also mention readers/fans usually understand enough to keep the suspension of disbelief conversations and those "looking behind the curtain" conversations separate.

[ROSA13]

Deaths Wanda is directly responsible for: Hydro, Hawkeye, Ant-Man, Vision, technically Jeffrey Garret. Generation M went into many former mutants that died the moment their powers went away because they were flying or phasing through the ground or various other things or a lot of people that committed suicide because they lost their powers o yeah whether one is going whichever of the directions with what to do with Wanda, there are a bit more deaths on her docket than those few. Also factoring in the fact that Forge found that a lot of alternate realities also got wiped out at the time, one can assume that similar deaths and such occurred too. Just thought I'd throw that out there.

[somacula]

The closest thing she had to a redemption was in uncanny avengers (yeah, I know. . .) when she casted a spell to transport all mutants to the giant ship before the earth was destroyed, and she did that after rogue tried to kill her wich I consider one of the best moments in UA (rogue you're the best). All of that lead to planet X when there were no humans and only mutants alive, and that thank to the one and only scarlet witch, magneto was nice enough to mention that every mutant in planet X was alive thanks to his daughter sacrifice. That was in my opinion the redemption of the scarlet witch, sacrifice her life and use her power to save all the mutants she once hurt. But then the timeline of planet X was reseted, I'd buy planet X universe books if marvel released em, I mean jean grey was in it (late 20's but still jeanie).

Not wanting to start a cyclops oriented flame war but cyke of planet X was in fact seeking on active ways to save the earth and he took the chance by sending the mind of the UA back to the past and risking the whole planet X timeline, all because he wanted to save the humans and the earth that despised and rejected him, thank to RR for portraying a noble cyclops

[Carabas]

I never said we shouldn't stop the suspension of disbelief every once in a while and look behind the curtain. It's even interesting sometimes. What Carabas said though is that Wanda was completely innocent in all this and it was all the writer's fault as if those who still suspend disbelief (even the initial question in this thread is based on the suspension of disbelief) had no right to. Besides, by now they've had enough time to follow up and fill in all the gaps they need to. I'd also mention readers/fans usually understand enough to keep the suspension of disbelief conversations and those "looking behind the curtain" conversations separate.

The problem with not looking behind the curtain is that as far as I am concerned, with stories like House Of Meh, One More Day, Flashpoint... Marvel and DC pretty much stopped having a curtain.
When you have an editor in chief who is incredibly vocal about not being pleased with the number of mutants in his universe or the marital status of Peter Parker, and then boom, these things are fixed in the most nonsensical manner possible...

There isn't a curtain.

[Carabas]

Imagine if Mr. Sinister had done this somehow. How much would that have elevated his status as an X-villain? Or how about some relatively minor character who could be pushed into a major player? Like Arcade and the Avengers Academy kids in Avengers Arena.

Brilliant idea. Need something monstrous done in your superhero universe? Get a frelling supervillain to do it.

[Mikekerr3]

She didn't learn the third time either as she forced Mutantkind into the Apoc Twin's trap thus allowing Earth to be destroyed as the Apoc Twins only cared about Earth because there are Mutants on it and were betting on the Scarlet Witch to send all Mutants to them which she did.

The funny thing was what Wanda intended to do to the mutants was worse than what the twins wanted to do to the Mutants. The Twins did not want to slaughter mutants, Wanda's plan required it.

[Mikekerr3]

Well let's see: gen·o·cide
ˈjenəˌsīd
noun the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation.

Turning mutants into humans isn't killing anyone, so yeah I think the g-word is getting tossed around in a way that demeans true genocides.

By the legal definition that international law uses she committed genocide five different ways out of five
http://www.preventgenocide.org/genoc...ficialtext.htm

"Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.


She has a perfect score five out of five criteria

[Mikekerr3]

It seems unfair to eternally hold an innocent fictional character responsible for the actions of her writer (who was only following Quesada's orders anyway).

It's not as if it was even a good story, worthy of remembering. It was barely a story at all. It was an editorial fiat to cut down on the number of mutants in the Marvel Universe.

It is a bit harder to ignore the many years of stories that were driven by that event though. Its implications were even the basis of AvX not to mention countless X-books

[CSTowle]

It's hard to blame the writers who came after for trying to craft stories from the crap parts they've been given. They could ignore or alter continuity (which would probably be best for fans and certainly be better for characters like Wanda/Cyclops/Beast/Stark/etc.), but a lot of this has been set down by the big guns at Marvel & DC. Bendis doesn't seem like he'd give a damn, but some of the other guys don't seem like they have that sense of humor (drowning in yellow liquids or kissing red things, that guy perhaps). Can't ignore it, have to do the best they can with what they've got.

[Juggernaut Punch]

She can acknowledge that she did something horrible and stop being so nonchalant about it. It's really off-putting to see her go "Geez, you guys are still talking about that? Get over it already."