NEWS - SCARLET WITCH Ongoing Series To Define Difference Between Marvel Magic & Witchcraft

[lordultimus]

In the giant wave of new books announced as part of "All-New All-Different Marvel," among them was a first -- the first ongoing series for the Scarlet Witch. And now series writer James Robinson is pulling back the curtain on the series, and how it will expand on the character as more than just a member of the Avengers but as her own woman.

"If you ask most people to describe the personality of any of the main Marvel heroes, any of them—Captain America, the Vision, Hawkeye, The Wasp—fans of those characters can give you, ‘Oh, he’s this or that. He’s this or that,’” Robinson said. “She-Hulk, Starfox, you name it, no matter how obscure you go, you can describe them. People can describe the personality of D-Man, for God’s sake. But when you get to Wanda, well, what is her personality? She’s kind of aloof and quiet?”

Robinson said that while fans can point to her marriage, her children, and her membership in the Avengers and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, when it comes to her personality she's been overlooked.

"And to a lot of people her personality is her back story. Who she is as a person, it’s all about her back story. There’s nothing current about her. There’s nothing about her as a human being, as a woman, living in the world, interacting in the world," said the writer. "And I think now that her father’s no longer Magneto, I think that it’s the perfect time to showcase her as an independent character, as a witch, and give her adventures that are unique to her, that could only be adventures that she would have.”

In this series, Scarlet Witch will go out to save witches like herself, and the broader thing that ties them together: witchcraft.

“She wants to fix it, because it’s important to her as a witch,” said Robinson. “But [she] also [needs to] discover how it was broken, and if someone broke it, who that was. Also, she suffered from periods of mental instability, and she wants to know if that’s something that she needs to treat herself with the established ways that you treat mental illness, or if the practice of witchcraft is affecting her mentally as well. She has a personal stake, as well as a sense of wanting to fix it in the big picture.”

Although for some witchcraft might be synonymous with magic and the domain of Doctor Strange (who's also getting a solo series this fall), Robinson said that in the Marvel Universe witchcraft and magic are distinctly different.

“I’ve been talking to [Doctor Strange writer] Jason Aaron about making sure that she isn’t just a female Doctor Strange,” said Robinson. “There [are] differences even between her and Doctor Strange so that her magic is different; I’m really making a point of stressing that there’s a female energy that connects with a certain kind of magic. As a sort of shorthand, I'm calling it ‘witchcraft,’ but there are literally areas of dimensions that she can go to that Doctor Strange wouldn’t be able to go to, because he’s a man.”

One of the longtime Marvel characters joining Wanda on this book is the ghost of Agatha Harkness, whom Robinson describes as a "sort of her spirital Alfred."

While no interior artist has been announced for the series, Robinson said that Scarlet Witch will feature standalone stories with different artists each issue. Kevin Wada will provide some artistic continuity however, doing the covers and Wanda's new costume design.

“I'm going to give her her own villains, her own supporting cast and her own place in the world,” promised Robinson. “She has realized that as much as there’s a part of her that will always be an Avenger, she’s been sort of living under that umbrella for so long it’s become her identity, and she wants her own place in the world.”

Although not in any solicitations up through November 2015, Marvel has said the Scarlet Witch series would debut in the fall.

Comments

[lilacsigil]

Hmm, Robinson. When he's good, he's very good, but that's not always the case. Kevin Wada covers will be great, though!

[nightauditguy]

Mental instability is an understatement.

[silverhammerman]

Robinson talks a pretty good game here, though the lack of a confirmed interior artist and Robinson's own checkered resume have me feeling cautious.

Also, in this day and age I'm kinda leery of seeing dudes talk about writing female characters "as a human being, as a woman, living in the world". I'd be more excited if this book had a writer from outside the usual cape comics stable, especially if that writer were actually a woman.

[liliaeth]

Yeah it's why I worry about him saying that there's something 'distinctly female' about witchcraft...

[mrstatham]

The artists are confirmed to be rotating, aren't they?

[silverhammerman]

We know that the artists will rotate, but we still don't know who any of them are, not even who's doing the first issue.

[bruinsfan]

While reading that, the SNL skit Black Widow: The Age of Me kept running through my head.

[starwolf_oakley]

James Robinson

Excuse me while I sigh sadly. Yes, he did THE GOLDEN AGE and STARMAN. He also did CRY FOR JUSTICE, that was originally going to have Lian Harper *and* Mia Dearden dying.

THE GOLDEN AGE also had Adolph Hitler's brain in a superhero's body. So, comics?

[flint_marko]

It was DC's idea to kill them, and he convinced them to spare Mia.

[theflames]

I giggled at the female energy bit. Its not very needed. I do however entertain the idea of gendered magic (I enjoy magical girls and I believe if magic did exist, there *would* be gendered magic, for better or for worse... since we gender everything in this society) but I'm not getting much confidence from what he described. Im not sure why.

Also, shame about the rotating artists... I enjoy consistency.

[baihu]

Neil Gaiman wrote it this in his Sandman stories, most explicitly in the story about the Cuckoo where a witch helped to call down the moon and only the born-female characters could use the portal (there was a transgender male-to-female character who could not follow).

This links to old-world beliefs, the whole idea of 'moon's blood' aka menstruation and the linkage of women to the power of the moon.

This is what Robinson probably means. I'm familiar with the idea since I grew up around the concept of yin and yang/female and male/moon and sun energy. Neither is weaker or stronger, they are different and parts of a whole.

I can imagine a lot of alarmists and PC people who don't know the old beliefs, but it sounds like Robinson actually knows what he's talking about, that makes me relieved and optimistic.

[crabby_lioness]

It could be good. It could also be a whole world of bad.

[baihu]

Meh, we can only hope for readable mediocre.

[icon_uk]

Morrison's Invisibles also had Lord Fanny, born male, but raised as a girl because her grandmother needed a female to continue her shamanistic lineage and eventually she became a fabulous trans woman.

I'm also reminded of the Discworld, where witches and wizards are very different because of the way they look at the world.

Wizards are born academics, sitting outside of society to study their arcane and incomprehensible arts.

Witches live amongst people (or near people, depending on their mindset) they are the midwives, the nurses, the arbiters. That particular kind of woman who commit themselves to gettng the job done, and walking the fine line between light and dark, good and evil, today and (if they do their job right) tomorrow.

Wizards stomp around and try to change the universe,

Witches prefer to try and make people treat the universe they are already in a bit better.

Witches use magic, but as little as possible, and only as a last resort (it's almost an admission of failure when you have to defeat an opponent with magic). They prefer to use "headology", ruthless practicality and common sense (which is sadly not common at all).

Unlike the magic of wizards, the magic of witches did not usually involve the application of much raw power. The difference is between hammers and levers. Witches generally tried to find the small point where a little changes made a lot of result.

To make an avalanche you can either shake the mountain, or maybe you can just find exactly the right place to drop a snowflake.

In true Pratchett style, one of his first stories is what happens when, just after a dying wizard has passed his magic staff on to the newborn eighth son of an eighth son (8 being the magical number of the Discworld) they discover that it was actually a girl, not a boy.

[laughing_tree]

"And to a lot of people her personality is her back story. Who she is as a person, it’s all about her back story."

Honestly, I think this the case for a lot of Big 2 characters.

[theflames]

Absolutely.

[flint_marko]

now that her father's no longer Magneto

[dcbanacek]

Nice gif...

So since Magneto isn't her dad anymore, does that mean the Whizzer (really unfortunate name) is again?

[baihu]

No, I think it's now the Romani gypsy couple who raised them the longest, Django Maximoff (I think).

The whole thing has left a pair of unnamed twins floating around somewhere btw, cause unless it's retconned, Magda did give birth to some kids in Wundagore, who are now not Wanda and Pietro. So where the heck are those babies now?

[tugrul]

You mean after the last Uncanny Avengers vs. the High Evolutionary Django Maximoff is the father? I thought it was revealed High Evolutionary created them.

[lordultimus]

He took them to his lab, experimented on them, then brought them back.

[tugrul]

Gah. Why go through that trouble if they weren't going to introduce something new? Thank you.

[lordultimus]

The thing they introduced that was "new" was a Mary Sue sister-clone that had both their powers but was even better at them.

[tugrul]

O, I know. I liked her introduction but then she wasn't original enough.

[philippos42]

Wow, too bad James Robinson is doing this.

Hmmm

[wtfomfg2]

I wonder how much of this is going to be thrown out in a few years when she's re-re-re-re-re-re-re-revealed to be Magneto's daughter.

Re: Hmmm

[mrstatham]

That'll be when Fox inevitably implodes their franchise because they make a couple of X-Men films that stink real bad.

Re: Hmmm

[flint_marko]

They already did that with X3 and the first Wolverine movie, they're not going to get rid of a profitable franchise over a flew clunkers.

Re: Hmmm

[lordultimus]

Yeah, they're going to have to make a lot of clunkers.

Re: Hmmm

[baihu]

Maybe it'll be a Magdalene situation and there's clones involved. That always seems to be a go-to solution with Marvel.

Or, the three of them never bothered to do a scientific paternity test, sooooo they could write it off as Wanda not doing the spell right in later stories.

Uhhh

[night4345]

Aloof and quiet is a personality. Maybe not one popular with people but it's still a personality.

Re: Uhhh

[bruinsfan]

Add to that fiercely protective of her imaginary magic babies, and penitent and self-sacrificing once her mental stability and memories returned.

Re: Uhhh

[baihu]

I thought Busiek wrote her with a lot of depth beyond the magic babies thing, and she was really quite normal/stable prior to Disassembled. Bendis kinda ignored all character growth with Disassembled, and now she's stuck with the crazy over imaginary babies rhetoric forever.

Which they then tried to 'fix' by saying she wasn't in her right mind cause she got possessed with 'nameless-source-magic-#3' in Children's Crusade. Honestly I don't think that helped.

I'm glad that finally after all this time, she's actively trying to figure out how to stop her tendency to be possessed. Get right down to it, her being an easy conduit for every kind of magic under the sun is the biggest problem.

Re: Uhhh

[superboyprime]

I think the point is that if that's *all* you can say about a character, it's a very shallow personality.

[full_metal_ox]

Got it: Ceremonial Magick is from Mars, and Witchcraft is from Venus, because it always, always, always, is.

(And I find myself speculating about a Wanda who realizes that she's spent her existence being chronically dicked around by the writers...)

[thenicochan]

What he says sounds interesting, and I really want a good Wanda series.

...Fingers crossed.