This next issue of AVENGERS was the first part of a well-remembered storyline–not so much for the plot per se as for the revelations it set up for prominent Avengers Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch about their lineage. It’s worth setting the table a little bit, though. When they were introduced, Wanda and Pietro were simply brother-and-sister mutants who had been rescued by Magneto and subsequently joined his Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Their background was very simple: they were just a pair of Romani kids. But by the time of this issue, writer Roy Thomas had done a story in which it was revealed that they were actually the offspring of golden age Marvel characters the Whizzer and Miss America. And in fact, the Whizzer became for a time a supporting player in AVENGERS off the back of this idea. (They also had another sibling, who was Nuklo, but we don’t need to get into that here.)
The thing is, that reveal clashed with a bunch of assorted details that had been dropped off-handedly in prior appearances of the duo. On top of which, I think that a bunch of folks working in the industry thought it was a typical indulgence on the part of Roy, whose love of the golden age was well-known. And from a practical standpoint, it tethered the two characters to World War II, in a manner that was going to become more difficult to deal with over time. So a plotline was begun with the intention of putting the lie to that earlier story. In it, Django Maximoff, the supposed adoptive father of Pietro and Wanda, sought out his children to bring them back home. The encounter raised questions about their history, and the pair decided to accompany him back to the vicinity of Wundagore Mountain, where they had been born, to work out the answers. That’s what this three-parter was ultimately all about.
This plotline was started by former AVENGERS writer and now Editor in Chief Jim Shooter. I don’t know whether he had the revelations that we get to in this story in mind all along, or simply that he wanted to address the Whizzer and Miss America of it all. Either way, by this moment, Jim’s new duties had caused him to step away from writing AVENGERS. His replacement, David Michelinie, was a relative newcomer to Marvel and not comprehensively versed in its history and storylines. So editor Roger Stern turned to friends Mark Gruenwald and Steven Grant to actually plot this trilogy, which Michelinie then scripted. Penciler John Byrne, I imagine, also had a hand in the story, though to what degree I could not say. But especially given that the reveal here would be echoed in UNCANNY X-MEN shortly, one must imagine that Byrne was on board for it. It’s the sort of continuity-patching that Stern, Byrne and Gruenwald would do a lot of over the years.
The issue opens in the aftermath of the Avengers’ battle with the Absorbing Man last month. But Crusher creel discorporated into the nearby waters, so the Avengers are on the hook for all the damage caused by their fight. Heading back to Avengers Mansion, we get a couple of pages of characterization and subplot material, which was more prevalent in AVENGERS at this time and made the characters feel a bit more rounded and realistic than simply being super heroes all the time. This preamble ends with the robotic Jocasta speaking with the Vision about his wife Wanda, and then using that as a segue to transition to Europe where she and Quicksilver have arrived in Transia.
Quicksilver spends a portion of the evening turning over events of his past in his head, and giving Gruenwald, Grant, Byrne and Michelinie the opportunity to lay out all of the assorted flashbacks that we’ll need to understand what is to come in the next two issues, including the conflicting information. Elsewhere, Wanda’s slumber is disturbed by the arrival of a visitor, Modred the Mystic, a character who had appeared as a headliner in a couple issues of MARVEL SPOTLIGHT some time earlier. Modred claims to have access to the knowledge that Wanda seeks, and the pair head out through mystic means s o that Wanda can see what Modred wishes to show her.
The duo journeys up to the top of Wundagore Mountain, where what’s left of the citadel of the departed High Evolutionary still stands. There, they are attacked by mechanical safeguards that defy Modred’s sorcery. But Wanda’s hex-power proves to be a match for them. They also find a waiting altar and a spell book, and Wanda is suddenly struck down from behind by Modred. Turns out that despite having once been a headliner, he isn’t a good guy in this story. meanwhile, Quicksilver has discovered his sister’s absence and scours the town and the countryside in search of her. He eventually comes across a young girl who’s able to tell him that the Scarlet Witch ascended up Wundagore Mountain, and so Pietro races off in pursuit.
As he sprints higher and higher up the mountainside, Quicksilver is unaware of a mystic barrier that cuts off the summit from all approach, and he races right into the thing, which knocks him insensate. He falls/rolls back down the mountainside, and eventually regains his senses inside a small cabin, his injuries bandaged. His benefactor, however, proves to be an anthropomorphic cow-woman, who tells him that she was the one who brought both Pietro and his sister into the world. And that’s where this chapter is To Be Continued!
The Tom Brevoort Experience 
The original story never made a lick of sense. Although, Magneto being their father didn’t make much more, considering none of them figured it out when together in the Brotherhood. The one good thing to come out of the Fox/Marvel mutant divorce was Wanda’s new origin, so wonderfully fleshed out by James Robinson and Steve Orlando. I’m just happy they didn’t make them Inhumans in the bargain! 😛
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If Dormammu ever answers my prayers, then one day some Avengers cover artist will homage the iconic cover of Chris Chan’s Sonichu no. 0
https://sonichu.com/cwcki/Sonichu_0
but have Magneto be the one telling Quicksilver to “go out and zap to the extreme!”
(or whoever Quicksilver’s father ends up actually being. I remember one Avengers letter-writer suggesting Dr. Doom, which would have been cool, except that by now he and the Scarlet Witch have been in a relationship–and if we learn nothing else from Chris Chan and the Ultimates, it’s to just say no to incest!)
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Modred the Mystic and Doctor Druid, both sorcerer-types that started out as good guys and were eventually turned into bad guys.
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“Their background was very simple: they were just a pair of Romani kids.”
I don’t think they were, initially.
I think Roy may have been the first to indicate they were Romani, but it was well after they’d been around for a while. They were what seemed to be Eastern or Middle-European kids, but the Romani aspect came later.
“This plotline was started by former AVENGERS writer and now Editor in Chief Jim Shooter.”
Jim started out the retcon by introducing Django. I’m pretty sure Steven Grant has said the idea that they were Magneto’s kids was his. I thought it was a brilliant idea, suited all three characters well, and I hope it becomes true again oneday.
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No, they weren’t originally Romani. (Neither was Magneto, & I think it was Chris shifted him that way when he set Magneto’s boyhood in the death camps.)
I know Neal Adams, at least, proposed Magneto was the twins’ dad elsewhere, & drew the unhelmeted Magneto with the same hair as Pietro by way of in-continuity hint, but I don’t recall whether I knew that in advance. As I mentioned elsewhere, John, Roger & I had discussed the idea elsewhen, while shooting the continuity shit, as we frequently did back then. (We’d all known each other for a few years at that point.) What I can say with conviction is I suggested the idea be the story’s anchor point & big revelation.
Part of my argument was, in fact, that it seemed a stretch he, Wanda & Pietro were all just conveniently roaming the same little patch of Eastern Europe when he saved them from a pack of torch-wielding stock peasant villagers. That they didn’t at least consciously make the connection during their time together in the Brotherhood Of Evil Mutants, a fairly short-lived time, all things considered – Uncanny X-Men 2-11, was it? – can be fairly easily explained; Magneto had other things like world conquest on his mind & wasn’t looking for it, & back then he never took his helmet off (at least not that we ever saw) & it just never occurred to the twins b/c why would it? People (even mutants, I’d guess) are funny like that…
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Chris made Magneto Jewish, I think, and Magda Romani. But I don’t remember Magneto ever being Romani himself.
Though if someone did it while I wasn’t reading, I’d just have missed it.
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Once it was established that Wanda, Pietro, and Magda were all Romani, I think I just assumed that Magneto was, as well. I remember being mildly surprised when they finally explicitly said he was Jewish (X-Men #150, maybe? Somewhere around there…). But I can easily believe that was Claremont’s intention all along.
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Chris has said he based his version of Magneto on Menachim Begin, intending to follow Begin’s life arc from being a terrorist to being a statesman. Though I don’t know when Chris got that idea, it started to play out during the second Cockrum run of X-MEN. That was about two years after the Wundagore revelation, so it’s possible he didn’t have the idea that Magneto was Jewish yet. But if not it wasn’t a long gap.
So I gather the idea was that Magneto was a Jewish concentration camp survivor who met a good-looking Roma woman at some point about 30 years ago his time (or 80 years ago our time), and began a relationship. She ran off because his anger scared her, and he didn’t know she was pregnant at the time.
I keep thinking these days that Magda had twins, Miss America had twins, and whoever is claimed to be Wanda and Pietro’s mom these days had twins, all on or near Mount Wundagore. We’re told Miss America’s twins died, and I’m not sure what the story is these days about Magda’s twins.
But this being Marvel Comics, you know none of them are actually dead (or at least, dead without any chance of their souls being resurrected or something), so there are four other potential characters out there who could crop up at any moment and become X-Men supporting characters (or members) or Scarlet Witch antagonists or something.
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[Chris made Magneto Jewish, I think, and Magda Romani. But I don’t remember Magneto ever being Romani himself.
Though if someone did it while I wasn’t reading, I’d just have missed it]
Thinking back on it, I think that was my innovation at the time we were plotting the story – it just neatly fit everything together, since, as I mentioned elsewhere, Romani were also death camp fodder for the Nazis – but it never made it into the books… (As I recall now, I brought it up but it was thought to be stepping too much on Chris’s toes…)
But Magneto hadn’t taken his Jewish turn yet at that point, which was before Chris began morphing him into antivillain mode (which as I recall kicked into gear with that story sometime later where he & Storm hang out together for a couple issues)…
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In a flashback story to Professor X’s ( as Doctor Xavier ) first encounter with a mutant with magnetic powers calling himself Magnus ( Magneto ) [ The Uncanny X-Men#161 ( September 1982 ) ] and Gabrielle Haller ( Legion’s mom ) in Israel. Baron Strucker and Hydra were the bad guys looking for Nazi gold.Magnus’ Auschwitz tatoo is seen and mentioned.
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Yes, but Gypsies/Romani were also on Hitler’s hit list & rounded up for the death camps, as were gays & Catholics, so there’s plenty of room for interpretation on Magneto’s cultural origins. (Magnus is a fairly common name in both Poland & Scandinavia, so along with Lindstrom, that also confuses the issue.)
I don’t know that it has ever been definitively stated what his (homo sapien) ethnicity is…
My old joke: if his mother was Polish & his father was Norwegian, does that make Magneto the Norse Magnetic Pole?
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Yes, for all his talk about the fellowship of mutants, Magneto didn’t care about his troops at all (as he put it once in Vision/Scarlet Witch, he wasn’t a man, he was a mission).
My three standards for a great retcon are that it’s fun to read, adds interesting history and has an “Oh, that makes sense!” quality. You and everyone who worked on this succeeded admirably.
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Thanks. That it made sense was something of an accidental bonus…
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In Uncanny X-Men#150 he mentions Auschwitz and the gas chambers but never says he is Jewish ( When he thought he killed Kitty Pryde ). Earlier in the issue he told Cyclops & Lee his large family were all killed.
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They can’t be allowed to be Romani. The issue is movie / TV casting. If the characters are Romani, then the choice becomes either (a) casting only Romani actors, (b) whitewashing the characters, or (c) “Gypsy-face.” Hollywood has already decided that “Jewface” (non-Jews playing Jews) ought to be avoided, so it would be awkward to treat Romani any different. Yes, this also applies to Dr. Doom (now played by Downey, Jr., presumably as a non-Gypsy) and Nightwing.
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They’ve been canonically Romani for over 40 years, regardless of movie continuities.
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For that matter, Magneto’s been Jewish for most of that 40 years, and neither Ian McKellen nor Michael Fassbender are Jewish.
Hollywood moves in mysterious ways, and the one thing to know about Hollywood rules is: “Nobody knows anything.”
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In answer: if Jim contributed any ideas to Avengers 185-187 aside from the Django connection, I was never made aware of it. I don’t even remember Roger giving Mark or me any particular instructions aside from WRAP IT UP!, which was pretty much all the instruction David gave us as well. So plotting it became a bit like falling down a rabbit hole. John didn’t have anything in particular to do with the plotting either, though he, Roger & I had previously discussed why Wanda & Pietro were really Magneto’s kids. (We used to shoot the shit on a LOT of continuity topics, & not just Marvel’s.)
As far as I know, & I don’t have any insider knowledge on this, Jim just didn’t like Roy’s Whizzer/Miss America/Wanda/Pietro bit & undid it for that reason. What his ultimate intention was or even if he had one I couldn’t guess. As far as I recall, all we had to work with was the twins heading back to Transia where it all began.
It was Mark who wanted to bring Modred The Mystic into it, a forgotten character he had always liked, which brought in the Darkhold, which, as you note, had corrupted Modred by that point, a standard feature of the book from then on. I don’t recall whether Wundagore Mountain was already in the equation – was Wundagore in Roy’s version? – but the Darkhold opened up the rest of the story.
Of course, Wundagore Mountain carries with it everything Stan & Jack put there… except the High Evolutionary, who was long gone from that scene & didn’t much fit the forward thrust of the story anyway.
But that’s what I mean about rabbit hole: before you know it, you’re being swept away by continuity… esp. when it’s Mark’s finger in the dike. (Not that I was much better at that moment…)
A note about that single page in X-Men: we didn’t know about it, & Chris got no warning either. John decided to throw that in all on his own. I was actually a little miffed about it, because my idea had been to make the Magneto connection sort of an Easter egg that readers would be made aware of, but none of the characters would ever find out about. In retrospect, it was a bit crazy of me to expect that in the first place, since if there’s one thing that can be definitely said of modern superhero comics, it’s that there’s nothing implicit that some writer won’t decide to make explicit. It was also probably the right move, in that we were given the mandate to bring the matter to a full stop, so connecting Magneto to the woman identified as the mother of the twins brought the matter to a full conclusion, at least until very recent times, though at the time it was very odd & disorientingly out of character to see Magneto waxing nostaglic over the love of a homo sapien.
And over the years that became quite the rabbit hole itself…
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Yeah, Wundagore was in Roy’s version.
After the birth of Nuklo, when Miss America got pregnant again, she and the Whizzer went to Wundagore to ask the High Evolutionary for help in making sure the baby (or babies) would be okay this time.
Bova the cow-nurse debuted in GIANT-SIZE AVENGERS 1.
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Oh.
Right.
Nuklo.
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This storyline was a big deal for me. The Avengers were always in space or fighting villains in urban environments.
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I loved the reveal of Magneto being Pietro and Wanda’s father at the time. That feeling was long gone by the time it was undone. I was tired of Wanda being written as daddy’s girl and Pietro as a second gen bad guy. (BTW, what did Englehart have against Pietro? He’d write him villainous, someone else would undo that, and then he’d do it again) I didn’t think the picture of Magda was unlikely. Now, considering Byrne’s relatively small number of faces he can draw per gender or race, that picture Magneto saw could have been related to one half of the women Byrne had drawn at Marvel.
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It could’ve been, but absolutely NOBODY took it that way…
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Jim Shooter was interested in taking a hero and turning them into a villain permanently. Quicksilver was one of the various candidates for that, as was Yellowjacket. So Steve was asked to have Quicksilver do a heel turn, and then, as I understand it, annoyed when he did as requested and had it retconned out from under him.
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In the original X-Men series under Jack Kirby, Quicksilver was never a true believer in the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants cause, he was only with them because of his sister who herself was only with them because she felt she owed Magneto for saving her from that angry mob. Probably why the 2 of them picked to join Captain America’s new team of Avengers ( Where again as in the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants he demonstrated his over protective brother thing ). I hated being turned into a bad guy, since his sister was the only reason he originally was one to begin with.
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There’s a throwaway bit in “When the Commissar Commands” (my first Avengers — I’m fonder of it than it deserves) that mentions Pietro dreamed of being a circus acrobat, Wanda of going on the stage. A shame they never followed up on those character bits.
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Fraser Sherman:
”A shame they never followed up on those character bits.”
Check out POWER MAN/IRON FIST 102 sometime…
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Englehart’s Quicksilver didn’t bother me as much as Byrne’s “The Vision is a toaster!”
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His love of minor girls with adult men bothers me more.
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Sigh, yes indeed.
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“And from a practical standpoint, it tethered the two characters to World War II, in a manner that was going to become more difficult to deal with over time.”
And so they were tied to Magneto, who never had any connection to World War II whatsoever.
*Listens in earpiece*
Concentration what? Ohhh…
(Yes, obviously that came later, but I still find it somewhat ironic.)
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Magneto was deaged in Defenders by Alpha the Ultimate Mutant. I just assumed when Erik the Red restored him to adulthood it was right at the start of adulthood, effectively delinking him from historic events. I assumed Xavier;s clone body after the Brood story would give him the same age get out clause….
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Yes, Magneto and Professor X are no longer tied agewise to WW2 because them being made younger is part of the present day sliding timeline but Ana, Legion, Pietro, and Wanda are all tied to the decade after WW2. Unless of course, the twins were kept in suspended animation between times that Bova tried to sucker passersby into fostering them.
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“Yes, Magneto and Professor X are no longer tied agewise to WW2 because them being made younger is part of the present day sliding timeline but Ana, Legion, Pietro, and Wanda are all tied to the decade after WW2. Unless of course, the twins were kept in suspended animation between times that Bova tried to sucker passersby into fostering them.”
OR…
Their mutant genes cause them to age at a much slower rate than homo sapiens.
I mean, why not? It’s all nonsense anyway…
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At least it only niggles at the brain when you’re not reading it. It’s nowhere near the pre-Crisis Black Canary retcon.
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“At least it only niggles at the brain when you’re not reading it. It’s nowhere near the pre-Crisis Black Canary retcon.”
Hey, when you gotta jump through hoops, you gotta jump through hoops…
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I didn’t understand it then . . . I don’t understand it now. Why? Why a cow? No – I know the storyline explanation. But why a cow? Who in that planning meeting said “You know what? I really think she should be a cow.” I don’t want to ever hear anyone complaining about Mister Tawny the talking tiger. A tiger makes more sense. Don’t ask me why – I don’t know. It just does.
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Well… I can’t answer to Roy’s thinking, aside from maybe cow’s give milk, babies drink milk, so cows must be a symbol of maternity, therefore a cow artificially evolved to human level by Dr. Morea… I mean the High Evolutionary… would NATURALLY be a midwife/nursemaid/nanny…
As for us… she was a cow b/c by then she was a cow…
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But isn’t her being a cow udderly ridiculous?
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I get the joke, but… more ridiculous than most other things in Marvel comics?
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Io (of Jupiter fame) was turned into a cow… That’s a story worthy of an Avengers annual!
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What I’m about to print is not a contradiction of what Steven Grant wrote above:
“It was Mark who wanted to bring Modred The Mystic into it, a forgotten character he had always liked, which brought in the Darkhold, which, as you note, had corrupted Modred by that point, a standard feature of the book from then on. I don’t recall whether Wundagore Mountain was already in the equation – was Wundagore in Roy’s version? – but the Darkhold opened up the rest of the story.”
But I think it’s worth mentioning that Mark G was possibly also motivated by wanting to weave together the continuity threads that had been established by Marv Wolfman prior to the launch of the Spider-Woman book, in a five-issue TWO IN ONE arc. Here’s part of my reconstruction of those issues from my blog:
“The only other interesting point is that all five issues are confined to England– and I theorize that Wolfman chose that setting so that he could revive Modred the Mystic, in whose creation Wolfman was loosely implicated. True, one of the other guest-stars who teams with the series-star The Thing is also Shang Chi Master of Kung Fu, and his character was based in England. But Shang Chi vanishes from the sequence after issue #29, while other, more important aspects of the story evolve from the release of four elemental demons who are trying to capture Modred, who’s still a resident of Old Blighty. At the story’s conclusion, Modred is actually the individual who divines that Spider-Woman is a human being. Wolfman would later seek to explicate this facet of the character’s nature in the first eight issues of SPIDER-WOMAN.”
Feel free to pick the analysis apart as you will. I realize Spider-Woman doesn’t come into the Yesterday Quest directly, though it seems to me that her Wundagore origins are touched on therein.
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That may have been Mark’s motivation; I don’t recall. I don’t even recall Modred being part of Spider-Woman continuity, but then I never paid a lot of attention to that book until I ended up aiding Mark on it. I do suspect a major part of his desire to use Modred was his dream of a Marvel version of the Justice League, using either largely abandoned found character (The Aquarian=Superman; The Shroud=Batman; Quicksilver=The Flash; Quasar=Green Lantern; Hawkeye=Green Arrow; Modred=… Dr Fate, I guess; I forget who besides Zatanna was the JLA’s magic use of the moment) or using new characters (Mockingbird=Black Canary). It was something he was quietly trying to wrap his career around at the time. (Frankly, following Avengers 185-187, he may have had dreams of standing in The Scarlet Witch for Zatanna, if he could pry her free.)
At any rate, you may be right. But I do recall with Spider-Woman he was largely following his own direction; I’m not sure Marv’s run was very much on his mind, aside from any continuity holes it left. Those were always on his mind. Mark loved an orderly universe/omniverse.
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Marv Wolfman was definitely setting up some sort of Arthurian connection by SPIDER-WOMAN #2, though nothing definite came of his hints. But maybe because Marv W had worked (very briefly) on WEREWOLF BY NIGHT, he decided to mingle Russoff lore with the evolving story of Jessica Drew, by linking Spider-Woman to a villain who wanted the Darkhold.
“Though I said elsewhere that Jessica’s only connection with knights-in-armor were the demi-human Knights of Wundagore, here she has a Close Encounter of the Medieval Kind. While visiting a museum she finds she has a strange intuitive knowledge of Matters Arthurian. At the same time, the sorceress Morgan Le Fay– only seen in a non-magical iteration back in the BLACK KNIGHT comic book of 1955– projects her spirit to 1978. She uses a magic sword that’s on display to take control of a petty thief, changing him into a super-knight to achieve her ends. The false knight seeks out an old, Merlin-like sorcerer, Charles Magnus, because Morgan wants Magnus’s copy of the Book of the Darkhold.”
YESTERDAY QUEST flashes back on Magnus in medieval times placing the Darkhold in the tower where Modred later comes across it, and then the story goes through the history of how the book went through other hands. I’m not sure how the book gets back into Magnus’ hands at the time of S-W #2, but I don’t think the book figures into the rest of the S-W series. How does it get back into the hands of Modred? I’m open to theories/research.
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I’m guessing at this point Mark’s the only one who knows how Modred came by the book, b/c it was Mark’s idea to bring Modred into it, & I had next to no knowledge of his continuity – the only story of his I read was the first one – & no interest in the character. My contribution to that whole thing was Chthon, & suggesting he authored the Darkhold. (& that he was Gaia’s brother, which amused me b/c that made him Thor’s uncle…)
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I really liked that one story, the first one and still can’t shake the illogical feeling of betrayal Modred got a heel turn so quickly.
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Re: MModred’s turn… Don’t recall after all these years whether that was Mark’s idea or mine…
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Good grief. I reread S-W 2 and 6. The first one makes it sound like Magnus has the book, but in the second he doesn’t seem to have it at all. Because Ghostly Margan Le Fay has Magnus and his protege Jessica Drew prisoner, Magnus sends S-W to involve Jack Russell to gain time, and after Stuff Happens, Morgan gets exiled and no one mentions the book. I resorted to looking at one of the wikis. It mentions that in the early seventies Dracula gets the book that was in the Russoff holdings, and that it got liberated by Morgan who then had it stolen from her AGAIN by Magnus– but no clue about how the book got into Modred’s hands. Probably once he was totally enthralled by Chthon Modred simply stole it from Magnus, though the Wiki doesn’t directly say this. I’m guessing the wiki is describing an event that was never directly depicted, only seen in flashback.
“In recent times, Le Fay’s spirit found and got her spectral hands on the book, but Magnus snatched it from her. Not long after that, Modred the Mystic would obtain the book and use it in a new attempt to revive Chthon through the then-adult Scarlet Witch.[40][41]”
The citations are from Yesterday Quest, and at the end of that story Modred’s book is implicitly in the hands of the Avengers after they defeat Modred and Chthon. The wiki doesn’t say what happened to the book, though later stories seem to claim that it was just a copy anyway,
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