Throughout his work on Scarlet Witch, Steve Orlando has highlighted the importance of Wanda Maximoff’s connection to others. Her solo series has seen her taking on apprentices and reconnecting with friends, while the Scarlet Witch & Quicksilver series featured her and her brother Pietro dealing with their own fractured family bonds. Now, The Vision & The Scarlet Witch #1 returns to the greatest bond she has: with her ex-husband and fellow Avenger, the Vision.
The Vision & The Scarlet Witch #1 begins when a series of mysterious black doors start appearing all over the world. One of these doors appears next to the Scarlet Witch’s magic shop, drawing in the Dead Wings – a group of death-obsessed bikers who won’t stop at getting into the door, no matter what. Enter the Scarlet Witch and the Vision, who join forces to defeat the Death Wings. But what they don’t know is that a figure from their past is lurking in the shadows.
Orlando scripts The Vision & The Scarlet Witch #1 is a way that splits the focus between both of the title characters. While Wanda has been dealing with her own mystic maladies, Vision is struggling to be a single father in the wake of the Vision series by Tom King & Gabriel Hernandez Walta. Orlando’s dialogue sings when these two get to share the screen together; even if you’re new to Marvel comics, or only know the characters from the movies, you can sense the history between them.
The Vision & The Scarlet Witch #1 also sees Orlando continuing to work with Lorenzo Tammetta, who’s illustrated the majority of his previous Scarlet Witch stories. Tammetta has a gift for drawing enchantingly chaotic fight scenes, as evidenced by the fight between Wanda and the Death Wings. The bikers turn out to have a potion on hand that transforms them into demonic looking beasts, with the strength and speed to crack through Wanda’s hexes. But this is also where the Vision shines, as he utilizes his solar-based powers and his ability to phase through objects to turn the tide.
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The comic also sings thanks to the brilliant use of color from Ruth Redmond. Since this is a Scarlet Witch book, you can expect copious shades of red, whether it’s the crimson hues of Wanda’s costume, the bright red energies she utilizes for her hex powers, or the reddish pink of the Far Realms. But other colors are at play too: when the Death Wings slip into their demon forms, the world goes the sickly greenish gray of death. The only source of light, ironically enough, is the Vision, whose golden body and glowing gold laser beams stand out in the sickly miasma surrounding our heroes.
Some readers might have noticed that the cover features Vision in the ghostly white form he was sporting during the original West Coast Avengers era. I can say that there’s a reason for this, though I’m unsure of what it means for Vision and Scarlet Witch going forward. Is it a chance to rekindle their relationship? To hash out some lingering issues? Whatever the case, The Vision & The Scarlet Witch #1 shows why these two work far better together than apart, and will appeal to the romantics among comic readers (and probably WandaVision fans, as well.)
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