Avengers West Coast #57
Family Reunion
The Scarlet Witch has gone bad and rejoined her father, Magneto, who has renewed his desire for mutant supremacy.[1] With Agatha Harkness, the Wasp, US Agent, and Wonder Man being held prisoner the other person who could save them was Hank Pym. Unfortunately, when Hank attempted a rescue mission he was knocked out by Quicksilver, Wanda’s brother, who had come to also join forces with their father.[2]
Meanwhile, at the front gates of Avengers Compound, the Human Torch is dealing with a bailiff who has come to serve the Avengers with an eviction notice. This comes as a surprise to him as he was under the impression that the team owned the property.[3] That’s when the Torch notices that his emergency signal has been going off and flames on. He then races to the source of the signal, Wanda’s bungalow. When the Torch burns through the wall, Wanda attempts to use her hex powers against him. However, Quicksilver nudges her aside at super-speed and tells her that doing so was weakening her hold on Wonder Man and he almost broke free. This surprises Simon as this isn’t true, but he doesn’t say anything. Before Wanda can question him, the Torch then ensnares them and Magneto in a cage made out of flame. But, before the Torch can free the others, Magneto uses his powers to destroy their prison and fly himself and his children away.
Finally free from Wanda’s hex powers, Wonder Man wants to go charging after them. Hank stops him, saying that they need to formulate a plan before they do anything. The escaping villains soon cross paths with Iron Man, who is also responding to the Avengers emergency signal. Magneto tells the hero to leave them alone as he has no quarrel with the “new” Iron Man.[4] When the Avenger refuses, Magneto uses his powers against him, but Iron Man has developed a suit that is immune to the mutant’s power over magnetism. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the Scarlet Witch’s powers and she casts a hex that shuts down his armor, sending Iron Man crashing to the ground.
Meanwhile, back at Avengers Compound, the team is plotting on how to rescue Wanda from Magneto.[5] After sending Wonder Man to prepare a Quinjet, the Wasp expresses how sorry she feels for Simon and Wanda, Simon for his unrequited love for her and Wanda going evil after the loss of her family.[6] Hank is about to say something about Quicksilver and rather than saying what he really wanted to tell — out of fear Magneto might have bugged their headquarters — he tells the Wasp that they also need to take him in alive as well. Soon, the Avengers are off in their Quinjet tracking Magneto’s trajectory into space. There, Magneto brings his children to his newly rebuilt satellite, Asteroid M where they begin planning their next move.[5]
Back on Earth, Iron Man finally gets control of his armor back, but not before he crashes through the skylight of a photographer trying to convince a prospective model to consent to taking nude photos.
In space, the Avengers first the new Astroid M, and dispatch the Wasp to scout a way in while at insect size. As she makes her way there she thinks about all the trials and tribulations they have been under recently.[8] She also thinks about all those they have lost over the years and refuses to let Wanda be another victim.[9] Unfortunately, when she finds an access vent, her radio transmission cuts out. The other Avengers then suit up so they can go into space and rescue her.[10][11] They force their way into Asteroid M where Magneto and the Scarlet Witch are waiting for them. Magneto had caught the Wasp and imprisoned her in a glass jar and returns her to Hank. When the Torch tries to rush them, Wanda uses her hex powers to deactivate the Torch just as easily as she activated him sometime earlier.[12] However, rather than killing the Avengers, Magneto uses his powers to wrap them up in their disassembled Quinjet and forces them to return to Earth. He tells his daughter Wanda that his days of killing a helpless foe are long behind him. However, he promises her that if the heroes come after them again, he won’t let them off so easily.
Recurring Characters
Avengers West Coast (Iron Man, Hank Pym, Wasp, Wonder Man, US Agent, Human Torch), Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (Magneto, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch), Agatha Harkness, Lockjaw
Continuity Notes
There are a lot of statements made about the nature of Wanda and Pietro’s powers and their relationship with Magneto that have since turned out to be untrue.
At the time of this story, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch are believed to be mutants. This was part of the reason why Magneto first recruited them into his Brotherhood of Evil Mutants way back in X-Men #4. The pair have more-or-less been reformed since Avengers #16, give or take.
Also at this time, everyone has been led to believe that Wanda and Pietro are the children of Magneto. This was told to them by Bova, one of the New Men created by the High Evolutionary, in Vision and the Scarlet Witch #4.
However, it’s later revealed that neither are mutants after all. They were actually kidnapped as children and experimented upon by the High Evolutionary. To cover up his work he made it so the pair would register as mutants. See Uncanny Avengers (vol. 2) #4-5.
Their biological mother has also since been revealed to be Nataliya Maximoff in Scarlet Witch (vol. 2) #3. The identity of their biological father (as of September, 2022) has yet to be revealed.
Magneto manage to turn Wanda over to his side in Avengers West Coast #54. However, Pietro is only pretending to want to rejoin the Brotherhood here in order to stop his sister form crossing a line and keeping her safe, as we’ll learn in issue #60.
Indeed they did, the Compound was previously owned by actress Moira Brandon, who sold the property to the Avengers. This was detailed in Avengers #246 and Avengers West Coast #100. Issue #60 addresses this a little further, revealing that the reason why an eviction was served was because the municipal government of Palos Verdes thought they were bringing down the tone of the neighborhood. Nothing much comes of this, so I guess the notice had no legal grounds to stand on.
Magneto says he one fought Iron Man’s “predecessor”, this was in Avengers #110-111. At the time of this story, Tony Stark’s double identity was secret. It is also not long after a mission to shut down stolen Iron Man tech put him at odds with the government. To get around this, Tony faked Iron Man’s death and convinced the world at large he replaced him with a successor as seen in Iron Man #225-232. Tony will eventually drop all pretense that he is anything but the original Iron Man by Avengers West Coast #72.
Here, the Avengers talk about how they were under the impression that Magneto had gone straight. This was the case for a time after Charles Xavier, founder of the X-Men, needed to go into space to treat injuries that would have been fatal had he remained on Earth. He convinced Magneto to reform and join the X-Men, which he did in Uncanny X-Men #200. However, Magneto had since abandoned this path in Uncanny X-Men #253.
The Scarlet Witch witnessed her husband, the Vision, get disassembled. However, when he was rebuilt, he no longer had any emotional attachment to her. Her children, likewise were revealed to be the product of her imagination and not real and were subsequently erased from history. During this period, Wonder Man discovered that he loved Wanda, but because of her grief couldn’t tell her how he really felt. See West Coast Avengers (vol. 2) #42-45 and Avengers West Coast #51-52.
This is actually the third Asteroid M that Magneto has built in space. The original was first seen and destroyed in X-Men #5. He had built a new one by the time we see him in X-Men #113. This second Asteroid M was destroyed in New Mutants #21. This third Astroid M will remain in orbit until it is destroyed following the events of X-Men (vol. 2) #1-3.
Here, the Wasp recounts Loki’s “Acts of Vengeance” plot of which the Avengers were directly involved as seen in Avengers #310-312 and Avengers West Coast #53-55.
The Wasp recounts many of the heroes and villains that she has encountered over the years who were, at least at the time of this story, considered to be deceased. They include:
The Swordsman: He died defending his beloved Mantis in Giant-Size Avengers #2.
Captain Marvel: The Kree hero had died of cancer in Marvel Graphic Novel #1.
Baron Zemo: Died in a life-or-death battle with Captain America back in Avengers #15.
The Grim Reaper: Died by committing suicide in Vision and the Scarlet Witch (vol. 2) #2. He has been briefly resurrected in issue #12 of that series. He will be resurrected as an undead zombie in Avengers West Coast #65.
The “evil” Black Knight: She is referring to Nathan Garrett, the first person in the Modern Age to take on the mantle of the Black Knight. Dude fell off his flying horse in Tales of Suspense #48 and died of his injuries in Avengers #48.
The Human Torch states here that “despite what some old stories about me might say, my powers are useless in outer space.” This is in reference to Timely era stories that showed the Torch using his powers in outer space. There are two particular stories that come to my mind the first was when the Torch somehow managed to fly to Jupiter in Human Torch Comics #33 and the time he met the Guardians of Space in Young Men #28. Later stories, particularly Young Allies 70th Anniversary Special #1, states that the Timely era stories are “fictional accounts” of “true events” that happened in the Marvel Universe during World War II, providing at least a half-assed explanation for this discrepancy.
Hank Pym counteracts the Torch’s limitations in space by giving him a specialized mesh used by his successor, Johnny Storm whenever he is in space. This mesh was first seen back in Fantastic Four #13, allowing the Torch to flame on in space.
For decades, the Torch was presumed dead following the events of Fantastic Four Annual #4. When the Avengers West Coast found his grave to investigate the ties between him and the Vision in Avengers West Coast #50, it was Wanda’s hex powers to reactivated the android. At the time, circa issues #42-45, they were tricked into believing that past accounts that the Vision was built out of the Torch’s body (first revealed in Avengers #134-135) were false. It turned out that it was true and this is a grand manipulation by Immortus, who created a chronal duplicate of the Torch as explained in Avengers Forever #8. One Torch was turned into the Vision while the other was buried.
