Saturday, December 22, 2007

Is Wanda Just A Running Gag?

Someone showed me an image tonight of Wiccan and Speed, and it jarred some thoughts out of me.

I'm not sure about Speed, but Wiccan at least has met SW, right? And I believe Wiccan and Speed currently know that they are somehow - - -

1) Holders of part of (or the whole and mingled) souls of her twins

2) Magically her sons brought to this time and place

3) Some variation of that.

Why then, if her babies are right fucking THERE, is Wanda going crazy attacking people and needing folk to think about putting her down like fucking Cujo?

Can someone please explain this to me? I am willing to follow some a to b logic on this. Lay down the lines, use baby words if you have to, but I'd like to fucking understand this.

Because without understanding this, I'm left to think that Wanda's mental health and her explainable survivor's guilt and mother's grief over the loss of her children is some of kind of Marvel punching bag joke. Or some kind of seeming fucking balance for some one deciding to give her the power to shift and shape reality.

I love Wanda. I guess maybe I'm a little like Wiccan in my admiration. She's overcome a shady troubled past. She's moved beyond being Magneto's daughter to being a hero in her own right. (At least in theory when writers aren't dicking her around at least). She married whom she wanted to and started a family and found her purpose all while staying close to her twin.

Why the fucking hell does she need to be an emotional wreck every fucking twenty-five issues because she lost her children?

Now I wouldn't be happy if part of her madness is because she looks like her mother and Magnus got incestuously close on the emotional level and that warped some things. It would also be taking away from her strength, but it'd be new. Original. Though seriously, after fucking saving the world, that bit of her past wouldn't have the same impact.

So no. I take it back.

Is Marvel purposely keeping the Rom down? Is this some combination of put the ethnic overly emotional think she can be a hero woman in her place? What? What the fuck is it?

Carol Danvers, blonde hair and blue eyes gets her life/memories/powers stolen from her, gets humongo power, loses it, has alcohol problems and RECOVERS but dark haired, dark eyed, dark skinned, likely descended from wandering ancient East Indians, among others, Wanda is still hung up over her children to the point of madness?

Wolverine has been effing mind raped, mind violated, memory jacked, mind fucked, has like far too many dead love interests but he gets to move forward. Why not Wanda?

What? Jean Grey is officially dead and they can't make her evil anymore so their new punching bag to shake things up is Wanda? (I'll rant about Jean another time)

Damn it there's just so much possibility with Wanda (far less combined with Wiccan and Speed). There's magic adventures to be had; rescue operations, urban tales. If Wanda has to have a profile of the perpetually grieving mother, why can't she have adventures steming from working with parents groups or other mothers. Where the hell was she during Civil War btw? I actually don't know.

I can see Wanda as a detective, hunting down rings that exploit children for dark purposes of magic or y'know, just regular atrocities like modern slavery - from camel jockeys to sex toys.

If Wanda can manipulate reality why isn't she working WITH Dr.Strange? Why isn't she an anchor-point against things that want to cross dimensions and twist reality to their own means? Wanda kicking the ass of Chaos Demons. How cool would that be? Very.

So WTF is it always "MY BABIES!" and now "Daddy, No More Mutants!"

I mean, geeze, look at the shit she's put her brother through. And hello, her children were mutants.

I sigh. I sigh a whole fucking lot.

(this is the second time blogger has messed up the time. this time marking it 4 hours later first it was 7:50AM when the real time was 2:50AM and now it's 12:50PM and who knows what it'll be when I finish editing here now.)

2 comments:

  1. "Why then, if her babies are right fucking THERE, is Wanda going crazy attacking people and needing folk to think about putting her down like fucking Cujo?"

    Because if Wanda, as well as 99.9% of the Marvel hero segment who gains galactic/universe-shattering powers acted with any kind of restraint, Marvel wouldn't be able to have the "Infinite Crisis of Secret Civil Wars" or some such "Must collect 900 comics to figure out the storyline" event.

    Wanda's power (both ability and upper-limit) make things easy to start such an event, and then drag it out unnecessarily long. Then it will end with Deus Ex Machina. Rinse and repeat.

    The short: Wanda could be Running Gag, but she is definitely a Crutch. And that is even worse.

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  2. Her babies weren't there when she was attacking people. While she did meet Wiccan very briefly before she went crazy, this was months (comic book time) before he became a Super-Hero and it was a retcon - published in the Young Avengers Special at least a year after "Avengers Disassembled."

    I believe that the character didn't even appear until after House of M - I could be wrong about that - but I know for certain it wasn't until after "Avengers Disassembled." Speed's first appearance, and with it the first hint that Wiccan may be related to the Scarlet Witch didn't come until nearly a year after that.

    There's no indication that Brian Bendis knew of Allen Heinberg's plans for Wiccan and Speed before setting "Avengers Dissassembled."

    Which, doesn't negate your questions concerns about her turning evil every twenty-five issues but I think it does answer your question. She had no idea that her children were alive.

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