WandaVision: the must-read stories of Wanda and Vision
Scarlet: the first steps
Scarlet Witch (in Italian simply Scarlet) makes its first appearance in Uncanny X -Men # 4 along with his over-protective brother Quicksilver. Both are linked by a debt of honor to Magneto, who saved the young woman from an angry mob who wanted to lynch her, labeling her as a witch. For this reason, they reluctantly accept the offer of the lord of magnetism to join his Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (at the time both they and Magneto thought that the two were mutants) becoming the first group of enemies of the very first team of the X-Men . Already at the end of the first fight with Xavier's group, the two regret joining the mutant terrorist and secretly help their opponents. Soon they would leave Magneto to join the group in which they would have played the longest, the Avengers, becoming members of the second formation of the team along with Hawkeye and Captain America, the only remaining member of the previous formation. Both stories are written by Marvel's most legendary author duo: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.Scarlet's first appearances are in the Stan Lee volume. Marvel treasury edition
Vision: the first steps
Even the syntezoid, like his future partner, approaches the Avengers after being a villain. It is in fact created by Ultron, the evil artificial intelligence rebelled against his "dad" Hank Pym (in the Marvel Cinematic Universe Ultron is instead a creature of Tony Stark and Bruce Banner) with the aim of killing the team of heroes. During the battle, however, he was struck by the collaborative spirit between the team members and their nobility of spirit. Even the Avengers are touched by how an artificial being managed to be incredibly human and sensitive. After giving him the chance to explain his origins and how Ultron had plagiarized him. the Avengers decide to admit him to the team. The syntezoid, upon hearing the news, walks away for a moment with shining eyes, demonstrating that, as the title of the story reads, "Even an android can cry" One of the most important stories of Marvel, written by Lee's best student, Roy Thomas , and drawn by another legend: John Buscema.The first appearance of Vision can be found in the volume We are the Avengers
Life as a couple
The two fellow Avengers will start shortly after feeling something towards each other, but facing them an enormous series of difficulties. Vision, first of all, is in a struggle between his wanting to freely reciprocate the feelings that the witch feels for him and his being "only" a machine. Wanda, on the other hand, in addition to the opposition of her brother Pietro, is insecure and jealous of the attention (without ulterior motives) given by her beloved to the fascinating "Celestial Madonna" Mantis. The love between the two, however, wins over everything and they get married in a double ceremony that also sees the aforementioned Mantis marry a member of the Cotati alien race reincarnated in the body of the beloved who died prematurely, the Swordsman.The two heroes and their bizarre love story broke the hearts of fans to the point of obtaining a miniseries dedicated exclusively to them. In it they both face their origins. Vision again meets Wonder Man (upon whom his mental patterns have been modeled, making him a sort of "adoptive brother") and the latter's evil brother, the Sinister Reaper. Scarlet Witch, on the other hand, discovers that her father is not the Golden Age hero known as La Trottola, as she believed, but rather Magneto (even this revelation will only be discovered in recent times not being true).
Do you want to witness the wedding between Wanda and Vision? We recommend the volume Vision & Scarlet Witch
The crisis
In the second miniseries dedicated to the couple (unfortunately still unpublished in Italy), with her probability-altering powers Scarlet succeeds in what will be her greatest miracle. She becomes pregnant with her husband and gives birth to twins, Thomas and William. The idyll between the two, however, is short-lived. Visione loses his head due to a malfunction of his control crystal (a sort of system BIOS) and decides to have to protect the Earth at any cost… even to control every computer and war arsenal on the planet! By deception he manages to gain the presidency of the Avengers and manipulate the group in its plan of world control. His crazy plan is finally stopped by Wanda (noticing her husband's change in personality) and the other Avengers, who make the syntezoid reason and bring him back on the right path. The gamble does not go unnoticed and the rulers of the planet, frightened by a possible second attempt to seize power, have Visione kidnapped (which is disassembled and "formatted") and delete any backup copy from the database of the most powerful heroes in the world. Hank Pym and Black Panther then join forces to restore life to the ally who, however, in addition to his normal coloring, loses all emotion towards his wife. To recover them, Wonder Man's mental schemes are needed but he, falling in love with Wanda, initially refuses to grant them and then receives a refusal from Vision itself, which has now become a new person. However, Scarlet's already precarious mental equilibrium collapses is the discovery that the children are not real, but fragments of the soul of the demon Mephisto, reabsorbed by his lackey Pandemonium. After going into a catatonic state, she briefly yields to the dark side, joining the evil intentions of Magneto and Immortus (another identity of Kang, the time lord).The transformation of Vision and Scarlet's madness are collected in John Byrne's Avengers omnibus
Avengers: Divided
* Years after the dramatic events that lead the couple to separate and change radically, the two return several times to the ranks of the Avengers and, while not reconciling as a couple (Wanda has in the meantime become romantically linked to Wonder Man), they often find themselves collaborating. This is up to a joke from the Wasp reminding Scarlet of her missing children (the memory was erased by the witch Agatha Harkness). Wanda falls back into the abyss and, quite suddenly, attacks her own group. In the battle, the Avengers base is destroyed and the Knave of Hearts, Scott Lang (the second Ant-Man), Hawkeye and, above all, ex-husband Vision, lose their lives (temporarily). The woman, now a victim of her own powers, is only stopped by the joint action of all the Avengers and Doctor Strange. The Avengers have fallen, shot from the inside. The group’s main financier, Tony Stark, fell into disrepair, lost his role as Secretary of Defense and plunged back into alcoholism due to the witch. Wounded by the losses, no longer having a base or money to refound everything, the Avengers are forced to disband.The blackest hour of the Avengers is in the book Must Have Avengers Divided
House of M
With no control over her abilities and under the joint care of Magneto and Professor X, Wanda is now seen as a global threat. A group of heroes formed by the New Avengers (the "all-star" formation spontaneously created a few months after the witch's attack), by Strange and the X-Men, flies in search of him in the island state of Genosha (capital world of mutants ruled by Magneto, recently razed to the ground by the Sentinels). A beam of light awaits them that will change reality. Wanda creates a utopia where being mutants is the norm, humans are the feared minority and the father heads the United States with his family: House of M, in fact. With the help of young Layla Miller and a Wolverine immune to reality change, the heroes are able to stop the ex-partner and restore the world to its original form. Almost. Scarlet believes that all the pain in her life is indirectly due to her father and his struggle for the survival of the so-called Homo Superior and for this he decides to deprive 90% of the mutants of their powers, effectively marking the imminent extinction of the mutants.Scarlet's utopia, House of M, is also available on Amazon
Children's crusade
* The Young Avengers are a group of young heroes linked in a more or less direct way to main group in whose ranks are, among others, the sprinter Speed and the magical Wiccan, who are the reincarnations of the two children of Wanda and Vision, and a new version of Vision itself, recreated in "teenager" mode with the mental schemes of the young Iron Lad and romantically linked to Cassie Lang, known as Stature. The group, after what happened in House of M, decides to go in search of Scarlet Witch and discovers that all the recent events attributed to Wanda's psychological breakdown were actually orchestrated by the diabolical Doctor Doom. In the battle against the despot of Latveria, in addition to being able to bring Scarlet back to the side of the good guys, the team of teenagers also manages to resurrect Ant-Man, but losing the latter's daughter in the fight.Young Avengers : The Children's Crusade is available in its original language on Amazon
A little worse than a man, a little better than a beast
We conclude with the now famous Tom King and Gabriel Hernandez Walta miniseries, The Vision. Shortly before the start of the series, Vision is rebuilt for the umpteenth time and, to prevent his emotions for Wanda from clouding his judgment, he decides to format his entire emotional sphere. He moves to Virginia and tries to create a very normal middle-class life for himself, building a syntezoid wife (Virginia) and two children, Vin and Vivian. Despite the neighbors' understandable curiosity about this strange robotic family, life seems to go by quietly. At least until the Sinister Reaper, taking advantage of the absence of the head of the family, decides to break into the house. From this event and the death of the villain at the hands of Virginia (hidden from her husband), a succession of lies, silences and family dramas will unleash that could lead the placid synthetic Avenger to become the greatest threat the world has known. A very important story for the evolution of Vision (and, in some ways, of its relationship with Wanda) as well as one of the most precious gems in the panorama of contemporary comics. Inevitable.Tom King's Visions from the Future is available online on Amazon
