{"id":7244,"date":"2021-10-21T21:57:41","date_gmt":"2021-10-21T20:57:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=7244"},"modified":"2021-10-21T21:57:41","modified_gmt":"2021-10-21T20:57:41","slug":"x-men-the-trial-of-magneto-3-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=7244","title":{"rendered":"X-Men: The Trial of Magneto #3 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>X-MEN: THE TRIAL OF MAGNETO #3<\/strong>
\n“Schr\u00f6dinger’s Corpse”<\/strong>
\nby Leah Williams, Lucas Werneck, David Messina & Edgar Delgado<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1.<\/strong> Magneto, with the scales of justice balancing his helmet against the Scarlet Witch’s headdress. The perspective is a bit confusing – it doesn’t seem to be drawn as if it’s tilting one way or the other, but the pan with the headdress seems to be resting on the ground. I’m honestly not sure whether it’s meant to be balanced or not.<\/p>\n

PAGES 2-6.<\/strong> The Scarlet Witch is overwhelmed, and Northstar attacks Magneto.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Scarlet Witch<\/strong> returned at the end of the last issue, assured everyone that she was all right and kissed the Vision while saying that she wanted to “get back to normal”. The implication, confirmed later in the issue, is that she was resurrected from an old back-up. That’s essentially confirmed in this story, where Wanda appears to have been resurrected with her memories reset to some earlier point in continuity. She evidently believes that she’s still in a relationship with the Vision – I’ll come back to when\u00a0exactly<\/em> this is meant to be.<\/p>\n

The Vision<\/strong> says that he had “not finished grieving my late wife” at the start of this story. He’s referring to Virginia, from the Tom King \/ Gabriel Hernandez Walta Vision<\/i> series that ran from 2015-16 (long, long after this Wanda’s memories end). She died in\u00a0Vision<\/em> vol 2 #12, roughly five years ago now. Vision was seen working on a new body for her at the end of that series, but nothing ever came of it. At any rate, it seems a slightly odd thing for him to say about a character who’s been dead for five years, even allowing for Marvel’s sliding timeline.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Northstar<\/strong>, meanwhile, ignores the A-plot entirely in order to focus on Magneto, who did indeed threaten his husband last issue in order to make the Avengers go away. He was (just about) talked by Jean into staying calm but clearly he sees Wanda’s return as a diversion from the more pressing cause of standing up for Kyle.<\/p>\n

Northstar claims that he’s “been enhanced since last we [he and Magneto] fought”. I’m not quite sure when Northstar last fought Magneto before the Krakoan era, but it may have been “Eve of Destruction” from\u00a0X-Men<\/em> vol 2 #111-113 and\u00a0Uncanny X-Men<\/em> vol 1 #392-393. That was the fill-in arc immediately before the Morrison\/Casey era, where a makeshift team of X-Men (including Northstar) fought Magneto in Genosha. I’m honestly not sure what he means by enhancement – maybe it’s something that happened in an\u00a0Alpha Flight\u00a0<\/em>story.<\/p>\n

PAGE 7.<\/strong> Recap and credits. The title, of course, refers to Schr\u00f6dinger’s cat – the point, presumably, being that the Scarlet Witch is both alive and dead simultaneously, as we see later on.<\/p>\n

PAGE 8-9.<\/strong>\u00a0The Scarlet Witch fails to recognise Wiccan and Speed.<\/em><\/p>\n

Wiccan and Speed are the reincarnated children of Wanda and Vision (which is a long, complicated story we needn’t go into).<\/p>\n

Curiously, Wiccan identifies this character as not “entirely” Wanda, “[l]ike she’s from the past or something”. If he’s simply referring to the memory gaps, then that’s not normally seen as affecting the genuineness of a resurrection in the Krakoan era – Laura Kinney has far bigger memory gaps than this, thanks to the time-dilation storyline in\u00a0X-Men<\/em>. It’s possible that Wiccan is picking up on something to do with Wanda not being fully resurrected, as we see later on.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, Jean and Rachel confirm for us that this is a resurrected Wanda, not an impostor, using what was presumably the most recent back-up on Cerebro. It’s unclear\u00a0why<\/em> that would be the most recent back-up, since it was long, long before the point when Wanda was revealed to be a non-mutant. What changed at that point to stop further back-ups being made? (Or, if the later back-ups were destroyed, why not this one too?)<\/p>\n

We see from page 8 that Wanda believes Magneto is her father, so her memories do extend up beyond\u00a0Vision & The Scarlet Witch<\/em> vol 1 #4 from 1982. On the other hand, Rachel says that Wanda “doesn’t even remember her sons’ (not merely that she doesn’t recognise them), so apparently this is before Wanda created the kids in\u00a0Vision & The Scarlet Witch<\/em> vol 2 #12 in 1986. So far as I can see, her memories could come from anywhere in there.<\/p>\n

PAGE 10.\u00a0<\/strong>Wanda’s memory is restored.<\/em><\/p>\n

Kind of. Although Rachel and Jean\u00a0say<\/em> they’re restoring her memory, it seems that what they’re actually doing is giving her a crash course on her forgotten history. On one level this is obviously the right thing to do: everyone else knows this information and it’s going to colour how they see her. But the failure to anticipate that this sort of infodump might call for a bit of aftercare is rather baffling. Don’t these people deal with minds for a living?<\/p>\n

There are six panels showing the information that Wanda is provided with. Several of them are reproductions from other comics.<\/p>\n