Should Wanda go on trial for for her actions? Or should Doom go on trial for his actions?

[ROSA13]

Avengers Disassembled, House of M, and Decimation. These are some of the biggest events in recent Marvel history and apparently it was all part of Doom's plan. Or so Doom would have us believe. I will accept that his meddling with the Life Force was a catalyst for those mega events, but I don't buy that he had an agenda to eliminate the world's mutants

[Mark]

Trouble with that is who would be the judge and jury? Wanda wasn't in her right mind when she eliminated the mutants. Doom is always in his right mind -if you put aside his megalomania- but he's also the ruler of a country. As has been pointed out to me over in the Avengers thread people like Doom, Namor, T'Challa seem to get a free pass because they are acting for what they perceive is the best interest of their countries. Doom was grabbed and thrown into prison by Iron Man and the Avengers, but they were arguably a worse force than Doom himself.
One thing a court has to be is in the right, free from the taint of wrong doing and I can't think of a court in the mu that would qualify. The US government is corrupt to the core and riddled with more secret societies and human and alien conspiracies than I can count, it's chief law enforcement agency SHIELD was run by HYDRA for decades, it knows no laws and has no oversight and it's agents do everything from strip search women in public to experiment on captured prisoners.
In that environment who has the right to judge Victor or Wanda?

[Iron Maiden]

All I can say is that while I really liked that Heinberg at least undertook the job of bringing Wanda back from a far too long comic book exile, I think placing the blame on Doom was a bandaid that IMO really didn't resolve anything. Even in Heinberg's story, he places the seeds of doubt about Doom's last minute confession by using Cyclops and Wolverine as a sort of standin. Neither one seems to buy into the story...

Doom has never shown any kind of interest in eliminating mutants. If anything, he would try to study them to see how to exploit their powers. There's a lot wrong about the timeline too. the Fantastic Four stories Unthinkable and Authoritative Action take place before Dissassembled and as a result of consorting with demons, Doom ends up trapped in Hell. So if he did help Wanda get the Life Force, it had to happen before those stories. Doom does not get released from Hell until FF#537 when he hitches a ride from Mjolnir as it speeds its way through multiple dimension.

And in HoM, he was a subordinate to the Maximoff family and loathed being under their command. I can't see him creating that situation for himself.

[Michael P]

No reason you couldn't try them both.

It'd have to be a World Court thing, though.

[Expletive Deleted]

If it'd be a good story, then sure. If it'd be a re-litigation of stories that weren't a ton of fun the first time around, I'd pass. It wouldn't accomplish anything beyond restarting old arguments and it'd be unlikely to convince anyone of the opposing viewpoint, so why waste the paper?

Also, from a preemptive modding perspective, we all know exactly what kinds of behavior can derail a thread like this, so we'd appreciate it if everyone can try to stay civil. Don't antagonize other posters or other fanbases, directly or indirectly.

[XPac]

Really, the only reason to put Wanda on trial would be to give her more of a free pass since obviously marvel wouldn't want the character locked up. And I think at THIS point she's past needed it since she's operating publically as a super hero again. The time to consider a story like this might have been before Uncanny Avengers, but now I don't think it seems all that necessary.

Can you argue Doom should be put on trial? Sure... for this and a few gazillion other things. But that likely won't happen either, and doesn't need to.

[Dabrikishaw]

There's no point in putting either on trial.

[Tupiaz]

You could always have a trial in absentia.

[gurkle]

Trials are boring. And as Reed Richards pointed out in a Stan Lee script - which is as close as you can get to a statement from the Founding Fathers - you can't even put people on trial for cosmic multiverse-spanning crimes anyway:



Take it up with J. Edgar.

[lilyinblue]

If it'd be a good story, then sure. If it'd be a re-litigation of stories that weren't a ton of fun the first time around, I'd pass. It wouldn't accomplish anything beyond restarting old arguments and it'd be unlikely to convince anyone of the opposing viewpoint, so why waste the paper?.

Sort of building on the vein... I think it's also too late. It's been too long. You would NEED a rehash of the old material because this trial wouldn't be happening out of natural momentum from those events. It'd be an afterthought, years later.

[MyriVerse]

No point.
Mind control.
Don't think any laws were actually broken, anyway.

[Jynx]

Another thread about this. They just closed the should Wanda be put on trial thread in the X-boards and now another one starts here.

[Iron Maiden]

Really, the only reason to put Wanda on trial would be to give her more of a free pass since obviously marvel wouldn't want the character locked up. And I think at THIS point she's past needed it since she's operating publically as a super hero again. The time to consider a story like this might have been before Uncanny Avengers, but now I don't think it seems all that necessary.

Can you argue Doom should be put on trial? Sure... for this and a few gazillion other things. But that likely won't happen either, and doesn't need to.

And in regards to events in CC, you can't even say he killed Cassie Lang since in Axis he was able to siphon off some of Wanda's powers and used it to bring her back to life. So now she's alive and well and with her dad. Doom's been absolved of at least that one. Maybe that's why Marvel is giving him a pass on this because it was just a convenient way to do some housekeeping and bring Wanda back from comic book limbo.

[Michael P]

Bringing Cassie back from the dead doesn't change the fact that Doom killed her in the first place. He could totally be prosecuted for that, unless it took place on Latverian soil (my memory is fuzzy on that point), in which case he's probably already pardoned himself.

Edit: It strikes me now that bringing her back could be argued as a de facto admission of guilt.

[Mark]

Problem with any trial is that by the time one is held the events are retconned away. Avengers Dissasembled was a poorly thought out story with one goal: Destroy the Avengers. House of M had one goal: Destroy the majority of the mutant population in the mu. Once that was done Wanda was tossed into the trash heap and allowed to rot there while the MU was re-ordered. In one way she's a greater victim than anyone she harmed. I can't think that the type of lazy writing that was behind Dissasembled and House of M is in anyway prepared to do the hard work of a trial issue.