House of M #1

[history79]

"I started thinking about how, if the Scarlet Witch went nuts, she's the biggest problem for the Avengers and the X-Men. So then came 'House of M,' which was really just supposed to be a summer story but then became an 'event,'. It was the first one of those that we had done in a long time. We had done crossovers, but nothing like this."

- Brian Michael Bendis




8 pages of 24

Comments

[dan_ingram]

"We had done crossovers, but nothing like this"

Was Amazon Attacks before or after this? Pretty sure it was after.

[scorntx]

Amazons Attack! was 2007, so after.

[informationgeek]

"I started thinking about how, if the Scarlet Witch went nuts, she's the biggest problem for the Avengers and the X-Men."

"...thus, sexism was the key to achieving the results I wanted!"

[deh_tommy]

What was so sexist? He’s probably have the same thought process if the Scarlet Witch was a man.

[informationgeek]

I'm referring to Avengers Disassembled where the reason why Scarlet Witch went "nuts" as he put it was based on reasons and how maternal instincts and pregnancy can make woman go crazy. It was... awful.

[cyberghostface]

“how maternal instincts and pregnancy can make woman go crazy”

Which Bendis said… never.

[dan_ingram]

In an interview, no.

In the story? Yes.

Instigated by Wasp teasing Wanda about her dead children after a pregnancy scare with Hawkeye.

Which, up until that point, Wanda knew about and had moved past, emotionally.

Now, suddenly reminded, Mama go crazy!

[cyberghostface]

So "having a mental breakdown because your kids were erased from existence" is the same as "mama go crazy because she has a uterus"?

[dan_ingram]

Wanda already had the breakdown, moved past it and moved on with her life.

Bendis undid all that, and then had her go super crazy only a day or two after 'remembering'.

[cyberghostface]

You're deliberately misrepresenting the events as "Wanda goes crazy because she has a uterus". Was Bendis sloppy with continuity? Yes, he was. But that's not what you are accusing him of.

[jlbarnett]

if I could go back in time and stop any comic run it'd be Byrne's. This couldn't have happened without it

[phantomfo]

I think the Jim Shooter run would have to be up there for both the Carol/Marcus story and Hank striking Jan, but Byrne's up there.

Bendis is definitely in the conversation, though. Disassembled/House of M has been one of those lingering distasteful stories that has followed Wanda for 15 years. The closest comparison would be Hank's domestic violence in the way it's defined the character ever since.

[jlbarnett]

but Bendis' run built off of Byrne's

[angelophile]

People rarely say they're sexist out loud, but they frequently do so through their work.

[cyberghostface]

I don’t think writing a character having a breakdown because her children were erased makes you sexist but k.

[fra080389]

Why? Sentry made almost the same thing and the situation was almost the same, his daughter or something...

[bravest_spinja]

Yeah Sentry even getting a vote sure didn't age well.

[stubbleupdate]

What's this about his daughter?

Bob had a son in House of M, and I'm struggling to think of any daughter of his

[dan_ingram]

"Lets use sexism to cripple a franchise about minority metaphor characters, because there are too many and because we lost the movie rights."

Bendis is right, I don't believe a crossover with such dumb intent was attempted before House of M.

[cyberghostface]

You’re conflating two different things.

[dan_ingram]

How so?

At the time, the stated intent was that there were too many mutants to constitute a minority.

But it's naive to pretend as if Marvel wasn't trying to undermine Fox, who had the movie rights at the time.

[cyberghostface]

Not really. Marvel had no reason to sabotage or undermine the X-Men at this point. And it’s not like depowering mutants had any effect on what Fox was doing (why would it?) They were still an a-list Marvel title at the time. Stuff like removing them from merchandise and trying to replace them with the Inhumans happened much later.

[silverhammerman]

I don't think this was an attempt to undermine Fox. This was years before the Disney/Fox movie feud and before Marvel was even dreaming of making its own movies. It was a very, very stupid move, but I don't think it was motivated by the same impulses as like, the M-Pox story.

[delanna]

Multiple pages of assembled superheroes discussing whether or not to execute somebody is not a scene I ever wanted to read in a comic.

[scorntx]

So, in a discussion on a serious threat to everyone on the planet, we've got some of the Avengers, and five of the X-Men.
Now, I got nothing against Piotr, but I have no idea what he's bringing to that discussion. Especially since he doesn't say anything.
Where's Storm, who has led the X-Men, and at the time was leading the X.S.E, who were supposed to be the Mutant police? Who knows.
(I can see why Beast's staying quiet. He only spent several years working alongside Wanda, and still had a sample of that Mutant cure kicking about. He's not got a horse in this race.)

"Threats to Mutants, not mutant-"
"We do both."
Just reading this as Kitty being reflexively contrary toward Emma, because even for Kitty-still-written-as-a-teenager, that's her being pretty dang forgetful. And childish.

And while she's being pretty quick to jump on the option of killing Wanda, Emma's not wrong about how if humanity learned about this, they would immediately flip out en masse.
The US government in Marvel's done worse for less.
Though trying to kill Wanda, even without everyone in the room holding the gigantic idiot ball of forgetting Pietro exists for the whole thing, could never work out well.
Almost certainly she'd lash out with her magic / reality warping in her last moments, and anyone nearby would be turned into a pretzel.

But as far as arguments go, there probably should be more options than "kill her" or Cap's "hope things just magically work out".
Obviously depowering would be wrong. You'd be turning her into a non-Mutant, and who could possibly live with that horror? And she'd still have all that reality-warping chaos magic that doesn't exist except when it does.

[delanna]

Was therapy ever an option?

Then again, the foremost therapist in Marvel is a guy who thought that stealing the Hulk's girlfriend while he was undergoing treatment was a good idea, so...

[scorntx]

I think what Xavier was trying to do as the series begins is his form of therapy.

Using telepathy to knock Wanda out whenever she starts getting too crazy, rather than trying to address the problem itself.
... in fairness, use telepathy to knock people out and repress the problem rather than actually try to solve it is right on the first page of the Charles Xavier rulebook.
And it worked out so well with the Phoenix, after all.

[tinygaylaura]

Did he consider getting her therapy from an actual therapist and not a man who has absolutely no training or experience in the field?

[donnblake]

There's only like three of those in the MU, and most of them are evil.

[tinygaylaura]

Explains a lot about the Marvel universe really

[scorntx]

At the time there was:
Len Samson. Well-meaning, but not always terrible successful.
Karla Sofen. Psychotic and evil, and at that time in a coma from being psychotic and evil. She wouldn't wake up until the end of Civil War.
Dr. Faustus. Also evil. And presumed dead at the time.

[shakalooloo]

Colossus is here and not Storm because this is - as the cover proudly proclaims - just the team from Whedon's contemporary Astonishing title.

[silverhammerman]

I always find alt-universe stuff fun in short bursts, so House of M is something that I've thought about going back and reading, but it's hard to look at the series now without thinking about all of the negative knock-on effects. Basically ruining the Scarlet Witch as a character, kicking off Marvel's obsession with events, acting as set-up for M-Day and the X-books spending over a decade running full speed away from the terrifying spectre of actually doing something interesting to move mutants forward narratively, Avengers as cops (incidentally also featuring the Bendis-era change of including Wolverine and Spidey on the team, which I think ended up being genuinely disastrous for Spider-Man's characterization).

[shakalooloo]

The art is still gorgeous.

[stubbleupdate]

Yep. One of the reasons I dip into it so often is because it just looks lovely

And I love the uniforms that Magneto's guards wear

[mastermahan]

EXODUS: And so The Pretender erased nearly all mutant powers! This came completely out of nowhere! No mutants had been talking about killing her. Our leadership certainly didn't declare that she should die for the good of mutantkind.

(Not justifying, just saying Exodus probably doesn't mention this part)

(He probably doesn't describe what the House of M portal looked like either - not to kids)

[shakalooloo]

"(He probably doesn't describe what the House of M portal looked like either - not to kids)"

Hey, those kids have to learn how to obey the First Law of Krakoa sometime.

[tinygaylaura]

What Wanda did had absolutely nothing to do with anything that happened here

In universe it happened because she was having a mental breakdown

IRL it happened because of shitty writing and even shittier editorial mandates

And I completely agree with Emma Frost's reasoning here.

[mastermahan]

It was directly related, though. Quicksilver heard a murder squad was coming and told Wanda to stick everyone in a happy world so she wouldn't be killed. It's not a coincidence they're getting sucked into the Suggestive Space Portal right at that moment.

Then after several issues of filler and tie-ins, Wanda gets pissed at mutants when Magneto *checks notes*... murders his son in front of his unstable reality warping daughter. Smart one, Erik.

[tinygaylaura]

If that's all it took to make her do something like this it makes you wonder why she didn't say "No more humans" decades ago with all that she had seen humanity in the Marvel universe do

[mastermahan]

She did. It was called House of M.

And I don't know, seeing your twin brother murdered in front of your eyes doesn't seem like a minor thing.

EDIT: Though don't think I'm defending this dreadful story - I am absolutely not.

[scorntx]

There's a reality where Wanda did say "no more humans".
Didn't turn out great for anyone.

[jlbarnett]

they should have shown them at least attempting to depower her with the stuff from Whedon's Breakworld story. If they wanted it not to be viable show someone holding the needle with a dark colored liquid in it, show it glows and turns clear. Squirt it out and it's water. Three or four panels and a viable option is mentioned and eliminated