Scarlet Witch

When Marvel first announced an ongoing Scarlet Witch series from writer James Robinson, there was a conspicuous lack of an artist attached. On the one hand, it was a bad sign; announcing books without artists tends to devalue the role of artists. On the other hand, it was also a good sign; it spoke to Marvel's efforts to put the right artists on the right books, and perhaps specifically to assign diverse talent to diverse books, like artist Natacha Bustos on Moon Girl & Devil Dinosaur, and writer Jose Molina on the Santerians revival. To that end, a lot of fans were hoping Wanda Maximoff's first solo series would not come from an all-male creative team. The good news is that those fans have got their wish, with Vanesa R. Del Rey now joining Robinson on the title. The bad news is that it's only for one issue.

Womenswear in superhero costumes hasn’t always been about skintight, sexy unitards. In the early Silver Age of comics, readers saw the inception of the mystically-inspired heroine; one imbued with passive or non-contact abilities such as invisibility, telepathy, or magic. Especially common at Marvel, these mystic or faux-mystic heroines offered a contrast to the superhero brute force of their male colleagues, but they also had something else in common; the headdress.

Joe Phillips' table in Artists' Alley is always an essential stop for me at San Diego Comic Con. The former Heretic and Superboy artist is one of the only guys at any comics show who can always be counted on for a great selection of quality beefcake pin-ups that rival the cheesecake that's so prevalent on other artists' tables. If you're in the market for a coquettish Angel, or a stripping Steve Rogers, Joe Phillips is your man. But this year Phillips had something new on his table --- and so incredibly camp that it may appeal to much of the same audience that loves the hero beefcake. Phillips has taken some of the biggest stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood and cast them as some of the biggest names in superhero comics, to give fans a vision of what these movies might have looked like in another era.

We've covered the X-Men, and the Avengers teams. Now we're into potentially the biggest group, the Avengers solo titles, which includes some heroes getting their own ongoing books for the first time. In fact, this group is so sprawling, we've held a couple of characters who are technically Avengers for a later post. Everyone is an Avenger now. Jonathan Hickman made it unwieldy. So here are just eight of the infinite solo Avengers titles.

For today’s question, we asked our writers; Which comics should Marvel Comics launch after Secret Wars? Marvel has been unveiling its new line-up over the past few days, with the full reveal coming on Wednesday 1 July, and what the publisher has announced thus far has shown plenty of promise, including a more diverse Avengers team and a new central role for Miles Morales in the Marvel Universe. But there's always room for more. More diversity, more originality, more weirdness.

After a few months of hype, Hot Toys has finally revealed its Avengers: Age of Ultron Scarlet Witch figure, and it sure does look like a keeper. Beyond robots, this is the first new character figure we've seen in full from Hot Toys based on the never-ending series Age of Ultron collectibles. Her inclusion here also makes this the first Marvel movie figure line from Hot Toys to include multiple female figures. Yes, I'm still salty we never got an armored Pepper Potts from Iron Man 3, but we could get 99 other Iron Man armors. But I digress. Scarlet Witch joins the increasing roster of Avengers figures produced by the Hong Kong-based company, though we're still waiting for her brother, Quicksilver, and Thor to join the party. The figure is based on her appearance in 95% of the film, where she donned mostly street clothes, and not the uniform we saw her get during the very last moments of Age of Ultron. Normally, plainclothes figures don't really do it for me; I like the spectacle of the superhero costume. However, the rest of this figure is so nice, I'm ready to make an exception.

The Avengers are very famous indeed. After the success of their second movie as a team — and the tenth movie to feature any of the members — the Marvel heroes have a presence and profile in our culture like never before. It's a strange new reality to adjust to for those of us who remembers when co-workers, cousins and schoolmates had no knowledge of Iron Man or Black Widow, and perhaps only the vaguest idea about Captain America, and they thought of the Hulk as a sad man named David with flared trousers and a haunting piano theme. Now millions know these characters and could probably pick them out of a line-up. But the non-comics audience knows slightly different versions of the characters than the ones we might be used to. Sometimes the changes made from page to screen are for the better, sometimes for the worse, and sometimes they're... just different. In the best cases, the movies offer brilliant new takes on the characters that inform and refresh their comic book counterparts. So with that in mind, where does Avengers: Age of Ultron leave the best-known versions of these heroes? This article contains extensive spoilers for Avengers: Age of Ultron. It's been out for almost two weeks; you should have seen it by now.

Welcome to the latest episode of ComicsAlliance Presents “Kate or Die,” a series of exclusive comic strips created by one of our favorite cartoonists, Kate Leth! In this episode, Kate went to see Avengers: Age of Ultron, and she had some notes. Specifically, she wants to know what's going on with Scarlet Witch and Black Widow?

Who is the greatest Avenger of all time? You probably have your personal favorites. You probably also have a pretty good idea who the popular favorites might be. We wanted to know for sure, so to mark the release of Avengers: Age of Ultron we conducted a giant-size poll to give you the chance to choose between more than 100 Avengers members, and rank them from least to best. Now the results are in. And we think there are a few surprises.

Here we go again. Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow was largely absent in the merchandise from the first Avengers film, and you would think that Disney might learn their lesson for Age of Ultron, but they sadly have not. Once again, the lady Avenger is suspiciously left out of the fun in Disney’s newest round of merchandise, featured on only three items. Sorry, boys and girls, but if you’re a Black Widow fan, you’ll just have to make your own action figure.