Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics, doctor strange, dormammu, entertainment, marvel, scarlet witch

Is Marvel's Comic Definition Of Magic Different From The Film Version?

Published Fri, 10 Mar 2017 15:00:18 -0600

With the Doctor Strange film, magic has been brought into the MCU… except by Marvel's definition, magic was introduced in 2015 with Avengers: Age of Ultron. It seems that Marvel has an odd definition of what magic is. If someone asked me to name the top magicians in the Marvel Universe, I would go with Doctor Strange, Baron Mordo, Modred the Mystic, Agatha Harkness, Brother Voodoo (because I still think of him that way) and so on. I don't think I would put Scarlet Witch on that list even though her powers are called Hexes and she trained with Harkness… her powers have been definite as the mutant ability to alter probabilities. So… is Scarlet Witch a mutant, a magic user or some combo of both? Her origin has changed so many times it's hard to keep track.

According to Marvel's new Top Ten Most Powerful Magicians they posted today… she is, along with a few other interesting choices.

https://youtu.be/jkyEOxQI8qo

Their list consists of Magik, Mephisto, Clea, Agatha Harkness, The Ancient One, Doctor Voodoo, Dormammu, Doctor Doom, Scarlet Witch, and Doctor Strange. A few of those seem odd. Is Doctor Doom a better magician than the Ancient One? Or Baron Mordo? Doom is a badass… but his tech is a major part of that. And I never really though of a demonic creator like Mephisto as being a magician.

Did Doctor Strange really bring magic into the MCU, or was it the Scarlet Witch? Or are Wanda's powers in the films very different from those in the comics? This is the problem with retconing origins over and over… you end up with characters whose true nature becomes confusing. Scarlet Witch is now the Hawkman of the Marvel Universe… Is she a mutant, an experiment by the High Evolutionary, or a creation of Loki's scepter? Is she a magic user in the comics but not in the film? And is all this confusion part of why Fox decided to use Quicksilver in their more recent X-Men films but not his sister Wanda?

A list like this shows that Marvel either doesn't have a clear cut definition of what a magician is or their definition is so expansive that it includes anyone who can tap into magical energies of any kind. I'd like to know if our readers here at BC thing of what Marvel Comics considers their top magicians.

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