Amazon Versus Witch, Winner Takes All: Reviewing ‘Scarlet Witch’ #4

Wanda Maximoff is a hero with a new mission; to help those who have nowhere else to turn for help. Those who enter the Last Door, a portal that appears to them in their most trying time, will gain her help. Even if that means taking on the former Queen of the Amazons and founder of the Bacchae, a secret society that protects women and the abused.

Darcy Lewis, a character born in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, has been there to help Wanda with her new mission and to provide shopkeeper assistance at Wanda’s new witchcraft store the Emporium. Since the start of the series a few issues ago, it was clear that Darcy came through the Last Door but had kept her reasons for doing so secret from her friend and employer.

Steve Orlando spent the first few issues building up their dynamic as well as showcasing Wanda putting her new mission into practice and scoring some wins (as well as reconfirming that the trauma baggage that had weighed her down for decades was no longer an anchor), which makes this issue work so well. We understand why Wanda will do everything she can to stand beside Darcy, someone she trusts and is friends with now, not to mention that Scythia/Hippolyta burned down her shop/home, which isn’t helping her case. Orlando also wisely chose to address Darcy’s secret and her situation as soon as possible rather than dragging it out, probably because of the fact that this series isn’t guaranteed to be ongoing but also because dragging such things in comics doesn’t always have the best track record.

Hopefully, this series is popular enough to keep going because it’s just a true delight, and Orlando 100% understands Wanda and knows how to work with her the way that she should be. This is not a series hammering on the past of Wanda or the sins she’s committed or the trauma that has been heaped upon her, but it’s a series allowing her to be the good person and hero that she’s always been and should have stayed.

Every single issue with the work of Sara Pichelli, Elisabetta D’Amico, and Matthew Wilson is just beyond words gorgeous. Not only is it so powerful and detailed and lively there is a uniqueness to each issue somewhat. Clearly, the style choices of each of them are still clearly there, one can tell that it’s the same team through the issues, yet there are slight changes done to fit each issue tone. The last issue started off with pages that were somewhat toned down in color and other elements because then it led into the stellar fairy tale/fantasy style format that most of the issue featured with all its bright colors and interesting full pages/panels, and the one before that had a lot of cyberpunk neon energy going on in Viv Vision’s dreams.

This has all the depth and detail that Pichelli creates and the weight that D’Amico’s inks add to it all with the colors starting off just super vibrant as this is a full one superhero magical/fantasy battle type issue from the first page. We can feel the kinetic energy as Pichelli’s panel layout choices are natural and energetic but also really fun because they don’t settle for standard. They shift and move in the best way to fit the story moments, putting us, the audience right down in the middle of this battle so that the emotions, body language, and everything else are so clear to us as if we had been pulled into the world.

The same goes for the flashback sort of pages (at least the version of history Scythia is telling them) where the panels change in a way that is fitting for someone regaling others with a tale and the colors are leveled up even more with vibrancy in a way that makes it clear that they are not in the present setting. I love how Wilson shifts the lighting for all these pages too as scenes inside the Bacchae warehouse are cold feeling with the darkness compared to the present-day street scenes where the main colors are toned down for the background but far brighter to match the sunlight. There are others that are in-between or have warmer bright colors matching the light and tone of that space, it’s just a nice touch that allows different spaces and times to naturally feel as different as they should.

It’s not just the colors or the panels that are fluid and can shift to match the moment in the issue as this is something that Cory Petit is great at doing with the lettering. There are so many ways that letterers can make changes or do little things to mirror the tone of a character, allow their personality to seep out, or really hammer home emotional/volume changes and all of them work in their own way. Petit here goes with judicious uses of bolding the font to show emphasis, while also allowing the font to grow in size where it needs to really showcase how loud someone is. Alongside the great uses of changing speech bubbles (sizes, shapes, and colors thrown in the mix) and the SFX that are right there in the moment making sure we see and ‘hear’ them as they happen.

Scarlet Witch #4 is now available from Marvel Comics.