Last week, I wrote about Professor X, and gave a quick introduction to the mutants. Quicksilver (Pietro Maximoff) is a mutant. This poor fellow definitely got off to a rough start in life. He and his twin sister Wanda (The Scarlet Witch) grew up not knowing their father. Their mom, Magda went very low profile while she was carrying them. Sadly, she died during childbirth which left the children to be raised by gypsies. It was fine until the twins reached adolescence and their powers began to develop. For a mutant child, "What's happening to my body?" takes on a whole new meaning. The gypsies thought they were demons, and they were treated as such.
The twins showed great skills. Quicksilver could run 175 miles an hour and create a tornado just by running in circles. Wanda could mentally induce spontaneous combustion, instant oxidation, (rust) and other types of decay. She also had "hex bolts" which could be used to deflect objects like a force field, scramble transmissions, and disrupt energy flow. This is how she happened to set a house ablaze, and an angry mob set out after her.
You would think that things couldn't get much worse - but they did. The guy who saved them from the mob was Magneto. It also turns out that he is their father, but they don't know it, and neither does he.
Last week I also explained that Magneto is really bad dude. (which is why their mother didn't want the children to know him, or for him to know about the children.) Mother always does know best - as soon as Magneto found them he recruited them into The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants!
As they fought with the brotherhood both twins realized something very important. They were NOT villains. They were in terrible conflict over this. A part of them felt indebted to Magneto for saving them and explaining what was happening to them, but mostly they felt sick using their powers for evil against the X-Men when they knew in their hearts they belonged on the other side.
The Brotherhood eventually broke up, and the twins quickly went back to a secluded life and swore they would never use their powers for evil again. They were restless though - when they heard the Avengers were recruiting, they asked for and received acceptance into the group.
Fighting on the right side of justice suited them nicely for a time, but you have to know by now that drama ensued. Wanda married an Android and Pietro did NOT approve. He stayed mad about it until the day he almost died in a battle. The near death experience isn't what knocked the chip off his shoulder, it was his nurse, (who eventually became his wife) Crystal. He married her, and then they had a little girl, Luna. As a family man and a battler of evil with the Avengers and then the Mutant Team X-Factor, he didn't have a lot of time to attend to a grudge.
All was well until Wanda had a breakdown, flipped out, and destroyed the Avengers. Quicksilver hatched a plan for her to use her powers to warp reality so that the mutants would rule the world. This was in direct violation of their pact, but sometimes the thought of power clouds the ability to reason. The warped world was created, then eventually destroyed by luck. As it turns out, some of the mutants had powers which allowed them to retain their true memories. With their reason intact, they helped other heroes remember reality, too The good guys restored the world to normal - with one unfortunate side effect. Almost all of the mutants lost their powers!
Quicksilver tried to use Terrigen to restore his lost abilities, but it didn't go quite right. He did get power, but he lost a lot of friends, including his wife.
After a period of time Pietro had to remove the Terrigen and was left with no friends, no family, and no power. Down on his luck, living a vagrant life, he figured this was his destiny. Then, one day out of the blue after a series of hallucinations, he inexplicably regains his powers.
Trying to restore his life and reputation is not easy. Luckily, the New Avengers gave him a shot, and the last I read he was working on redeeming himself.
Thanks to Jenny, our gracious host who blogs at ...off on my tangent... Stop by and see what other Q inspired posts are linked up.
