House of M Omnibus
By Brian Michael Bendis, Tom Peyer et al
Marvel 2023

Viewers of the sprawling Marvel cinematic universe will be familiar with the character of the Scarlet Witch, a young mutant named Wanda who has the ability to cast probability-altering “hexes” – a bad guy will point a gun at her, and suddenly it will jam, or a nearby curtain will fall on the bad guy’s head, or somesuch. As used by the character’s creator, Stan Lee, this power acted as a deus ex machina in a pretty red skirt. Wanda wasn’t an actual witch, just a mutant whose superpower sometimes resembled a witch’s spells. 

And viewers of the disastrous Disney/Marvel miniseries “Wandavision” will be familiar with what is, sadly, one of the most familiar plot devices writers have tended to use when it comes to the Scarlet Witch: making her lose both her sanity and control of her powers. Fan-favorite writer and artist John Byrne did this to tremendous reader acclaim in 1990 when he first “revealed” that Wanda’s hexes didn’t so much alter probability on tiny scales but rather alter reality itself – and then had her go insane and attack her Avengers teammates. 

Writer Brian Michael Bendis revived this plot gimmick twenty years later in a storyline called “Avengers Disassembled,” in which this all-powerful reality-altering version of the Scarlet Witch again goes insane and again attacks her teammates, killing many of them. 

At the beginning of the “House of M” storyline that came the following year – now collected with all its spinoff issues in a lovely, solid omnibus from Marvel – the superhero community is reeling from the events of “Avengers Disassembled.” The traumatized Scarlet Witch, her mutant brother Quicksilver, and their father, the metal-controlling supervillain Magneto, have withdrawn to the ruins of the land of Genosha, but they all know that things can’t rest where they are. 

Back in New York, the X-Men – Cyclops, Emma Frost, Colossus, Kitty Pryde, the Beast, and Wolverine – are summoned to Avengers headquarters, where they’re confronted with a roomful of Marvel heroes, from Spider-Man to Doctor Strange to Captain America and his Avengers. The topic of discussion? What to do about the Scarlet Witch. 

Bendis is in many ways something of a poster child for the kind of short-term shock-jock continuity-wrecking primadonnas that comic book writers have become in the 21st century, but he has a knack for writing superheroes as normal people (if that’s a knack it’s desirable to have). In this huge collection full of action and gorgeous set pieces by main artist Olivier Coipel, the most gripping scenes are often simple conversations – starting with that first one, in which the various heroes debate what to do about their murderous former teammate. More cold-blooded characters like Emma Frost and Wolverine immediately state what they consider the obvious: they must all go to Genosha and kill the Scarlet Witch. More idealistic figures, primarily Captain America, insist that this would be an abomination – which produces a bitter outburst from Wolverine: “Somebody do the math for me,” he asks. “How many more of you does she have to kill before you snap out of it?” “Geez,” Spider-Man blurts out, “So, like, if any of my powers wig out on me, I can count on you to just kill me?” To which Wolverine grimly responds, “Yeah. Hope I can count on you to do the same.”

Both sides agree at least that they must go to Genosha and talk to Wanda. But when they get there, a glowing blob of energy engulfs them – and the world changes.

When our heroes reawaken, they’re living completely changed lives in a completely different Marvel Universe, one in which they’re all quietly, domestically content – Emma Frost is happily married to Cyclops, Peter Parker is happily married to his long-lost girlfriend Gwen, and so on. But when Wolverine’s mutant “healing factor” resets his memory, he realizes that Wanda has somehow re-written reality itself, not only to give all these heroes the ordinary lives they’ve always wanted, and not only making mutants the plentiful dominant life-form on Earth, but also granting Magneto and his family widely-beloved royal status as the House of M. 

Wolverine sets about finding his former comrades and waking them up to this new reality’s true nature. Emma Frost’s reaction is instantly bloody. “This is it!!” she rages at Wolverine. “This is it!! We’re going to kill him! AND his kids!” To which he responds, “Yeah, I got no problem with that.”

But it isn’t just the former supervillain Emma Frost who reacts this way. When Peter Parker is awakened, he snarls, “I swear to God … I think I’m going to kill them. Magneto. His stupid daughter. I’m gonna kill them with my bare hands.” To which Wolverine responds, “Don’t worry. You won’t get the chance. I’ll have done it already.” 

This is all very savage, and it’s a good example of that short-term shock-jock approach: Unless Bendis (or some other writer, once he’s wandered off) completely re-writes continuity, he’s created a situation in which, regardless of outcome, all the heroes of the Marvel universe will not only viscerally hate their former friends Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch but be eager to murder them on sight. So either Bendis creates a permanent, fundamental change, or he creates a gigantic problem that somebody else has to solve. 

In any case, these suddenly bloody-minded heroes (minus Captain America, who’s out of the action in this new world) attack the House of M, a battle ensues, and at the peak of the action and heartbreak, the focus returns to Wanda, whose broken mind gathers the full breadth of her near-omnipotence, identifies what she sees as the heart of all her problems, and says, “No more mutants.” 

The final chapter of this core original mini-series opens in this yet-more-changed reality. Everybody’s back to their normal lives … but there are hardly any mutants in the world anymore. 

And so the stage is set for a whole slew of storylines that branch out beyond the scope of this omnibus volume, which is already packed to the rafters with “House of M” side-stories that appeared at the time in other comics ranging from Black Panther to the Hulk. Some of those spinoff stories are interesting, but none of them has anything like the dramatic power of Bendis’s core scripting or Coipel’s dynamic artwork for the original mini-series. The result is twofold: first, the omnibus reminds readers of a very effective X-Men/Avengers storyline from twenty years ago, and second, the omnibus reminds readers of just how much second-rate cash-grabbing marketing ploys Marvel Comics has long since embraced as a marketing strategy. Readers seeking the heart of the “House of M” story might want to save themselves $100 and hunt up a second-hand collection of just those original eight issues.

Steve Donoghue is a founding editor of Open Letters Monthly. His book criticism has appeared in The Washington Post, The American Conservative, The Spectator, The Wall Street Journal, The National, and the Daily Star. He writes regularly for The Boston Globe, the Vineyard Gazette, and the Christian Science Monitor and is the Books editor of Georgia’s Big Canoe News.