![\"First_appearance_Pietro_Wanda\"](\"http:\/\/aboutcomics.blogwyrm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/First_appearance_Pietro_Wanda.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nIt seems that Magneto had saved them some time earlier from villagers intent on harming them for being different.\u00a0 In their first battle with the X-Men, Quicksilver\u2019s incredible speed doesn\u2019t prevent him from being literally out-maneuvered by the Angel.\u00a0 The Scarlet Witch quickly retaliates with a small movement of her hand and the ceiling caves-in on the Angel, incapacitating him.<\/p>\n
This is the first occurrence of her mysterious hex power.\u00a0 This choice of mutant ability will cause problems for Marvel from here on and will become a sort of \u2018deus ex machina\u2019 that some writers avoid and others embrace but which will continue to generate controversy even after it is \u2018fully explained\u2019.<\/p>\n The twins appear repeatedly in X-Men #5-7, but with the action always carefully scripted so that Wanda either doesn\u2019t need to or is prevented from using her hex power in any significant way. There is even an occurrence when, while meeting the Sub-Mariner, Wanda is overcome by girlish emotion an accidently unleashes a hex his way.<\/p>\n They stay under the thumb of Magneto until the end of X-Men #11, when the dread master of magnetism is snatched away by the Stranger. Feeling their debt to Magneto fully paid and longing for a more wholesome way to employ their mutant powers, brother and sister bid their time by laying low in Europe and looking for an opportunity to become heroes.<\/p>\n Such an opportunity presents itself in Avengers #19, when they read a newspaper account of how the Avengers had just added Hawkeye to their ranks and that other new members might be accepted as well.<\/p>\n A quick letter is penned and sent to the Avengers (ah, the good ole\u2019 days of snail mail and low security).<\/p>\n And the next thing you know, Wanda and Pietro arrive in New York, where they are greeted by none other than Tony Stark (looking vaguely like Robert Downey Jr).<\/p>\n The Avengers do name them as replacements, as the heavy hitters on the team, Iron Man, Thor, and Giant-Man, had decided to step down from team adventuring for a while.\u00a0 At the end of Avengers #16, the first really new lineup is introduced<\/p>\n with Captain America leading the Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, and Hawkeye.<\/p>\n In many ways, this is one of the best Avengers lineups, since the team now lacks in raw strength and has to compensate with teamwork, strategy, brains, and resourcefulness. It also provides a showcase for the talents of both Hawkeye and the Scarlet Witch.\u00a0 In particular, the nature of her hex power gets better defined and a limit on her ability is set down \u2013 most probably in order to cap the open-ended nature of her appearances in the X-Men.\u00a0 Wanda is only able to produce 3 hex bolts before becoming too exhausted and needing some time to recharge.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, this approach was probably too much of a strain on the writing crew and the roster gets switched again by issue #28 with the return of Giant-Man and the Wasp. Shortly thereafter, the twins return to Europe in Avengers #31 to regain their power. A brief stay seems to rejuvenate them both but with a greater impact on the Scarlet Witch.\u00a0 They rejoin the team in Avengers #36 and remain there until issue #53. During this time the Scarlet Witch is an on-again\/off-again character \u2013 sometimes deadly strong with her hex power, sometimes weak.\u00a0 I think the writers simply didn\u2019t know what to make of her powers and, by issue #48, she\u2019s lost her hex powers completely.\u00a0 This happens during the opening round of a cross-over battle between the Avengers and the X-Men, on one side, and Magneto and his Brotherhood of Evil Mutants on the other.<\/p>\n After Magneto\u2019s defeat in issue #53, Wanda and Pietro again return to Europe looking to revitalize Wanda\u2019s mutant powers.\u00a0 The readership is denied even a glimpse of the pair until nearly two year later, when Wanda and Pietro resurface in issue #75.\u00a0 This time Wanda is lured into reciting a spell and releasing a menace from another world.\u00a0 This is the first inkling of her possessing magic as well as mutant powers.<\/p>\n Brother and sister again rejoin the Avengers shortly thereafter and a romance almost immediately blossoms between Wanda and the Vision.\u00a0 Indeed they almost kiss in issue #91 but, at the last minute, the Vision demurs.<\/p>\n By now, nearly 8 years have passed since Wanda and Pietro made their first appearance and during that time they were never really parted.\u00a0 That said, their paths diverge in Avengers #104.\u00a0 After a battle between the Avengers and the Sentinels, Quicksilver is mortally wounded and, being stranded in an unknown location, is left behind.<\/p>\n As I recounted elsewhere, he is eventually rescued by Crystal of the Inhumans<\/a>; an act of kindness that entwines his fate with theirs.<\/p>\n Wanda remains with the Avengers, where her romance with the Vision deepens.\u00a0 Eventually the twins are reunited at the marriage of Quicksilver and Crystal.\u00a0 Shortly after the ceremony, the witch known as Agatha Harkness, who had been the Fantastic Four\u2019s governess, chooses Wanda as her new magical apprentice.<\/p>\n Under Harkness\u2019s tutelage (and Steve Engelhart\u2019s scripting), the Scarlet Witch begins to evolve from a love-smitten damsel into a strong, mature character.\u00a0 Part of that maturation results in her marriage to the Vision in a joint ceremony marking the end of the Celestial Madonna storyline that ran through the Avengers from 1972-1974.<\/p>\n By now, the attentive reader might have noticed that I have not used the name of Maximoff in describing the Wanda and Pietro of the comic book universe.\u00a0 This is because their parentage and surname went unrevealed for a long period of time, and when revealed it was given as Frank (Giant-Sized Avengers #1, 1974).\u00a0 The Golden Age hero Robert Frank, aka the Whizzer, maintains that Wanda and Pietro are his children, and this identification seemed natural as both the Whizzer and Quicksilver possessed super speed.\u00a0 Robert, distraught with grief over his wife\u2019s death in childbirth, abandoned the children to be raised by Roma in Eastern Europe. Frank\u2019s assertion of paternity remains unchallenged for five years until John Byrne ties all of the various pieces together into one of the best storylines in Marvel\u2019s publication history.<\/p>\n It starts in issue #181, when a Roma by the name of Django Maximoff \u2018kidnaps\u2019 Pietro and Wanda and tells them an alternative origin.<\/p>\n He insists that Pietro and Wanda are his very own children and urges them to remember him.\u00a0 They soon free themselves from his clutches but decide to journey with him to Eastern Europe to find the truth.\u00a0 After all, they had returned there on two other occasions when they needed to.\u00a0 Their journey leads them to the awful truth that neither the Franks nor the Maximoffs are their parents.<\/p>\n By eyewitness testimony of the cow-woman Bova, they come to learn that their mother, a woman named Magda, had fled from her husband and sought refuge on Wundagore mountain.\u00a0 Wundagore is the home of the High Evolutionary, a scientist obsessed with creating a race of sentient animals.<\/p>\n Magda soon gives birth to Wanda and Pietro, but her happiness is short lived.\u00a0 Fearing that her husband would soon hunt her down, Magda leaves Wanda and Pietro with Bova, who then brings the babies to her master.\u00a0 The High Evolutionary first attempts to give them to the Franks,<\/p>\n who were expecting their own child. However, Madeline Frank dies after giving birth to a stillborn baby and Robert flees under the weight of his own grief.\u00a0 The High Evolutionary then gives the babies to the Maximoffs to raise as their own.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n