Scarlet Witch #9 // Review
There are alarms going off in the Emporium in Lotkill, New York. Something is tripping alarms in the middle of the night and Wanda is in a bit of an awkward position, so she contacts her protege Amaranth. Something is entering the vault and she’s going to need some help in dealing with it in Scarlet Witch #9. Writer Steve Orlando continues a fun journey with the title character in another issue brought to page and panel by artist Jacopo Camagni. Color comes to the page courtesy of Frank William. Though there is the definite set-up to something potentially monumental, the ninth issue in the current series seems to be a bit slow.
Wanda transports herself an Amaranth into the vault. She hasn’t ever seen the interior of it. Few have. Tokens from many realms had been entrusted to Wanda and she can’t let just anyone into the place.The vault’s library alone could re-write the stars. The vault is one of the most dangerous rooms in the world. It’s layered with defenses. So how is it that Black Cat found her way into the place and what does she want with it? And why didn’t she simply call Wanda to have coffee with her instead?
The probability manipulating hex on Black Cat is a fun angle on the character that doesn’t always get the kid of play that it could. It’s a fun concept for a power that never really gets the kind of depth it deserves on the page. It doesn’t get a whole lot of significant play on the page with Orlando’s script, but at least it becomes kind of a prominent plot point in a largely enjyable issue that moves quite swiftly across the page in spite of its relative sluggishness in moving from Point A to Point B in the plot.
It’s actually kind of weird that things move as slowly as they do given the fact that there is as much energy as there is in the conflict between Black Cat, Scarlet Witch and her apprentice. The specifics of the disagreement seem to cast Black Cat in a bit more of a chaotic light than she had been under the pen of longtime Black Cat writer Jed MacKay. Camagni renders the action of the drama quite well in the foreground as the specifics of the danger in the setting don’t feel too terribly well-rendered. A vault setting containing some of the most totally dangerous things in the Marvel Universe should have a much more distinctive look about it than Camagni manages in the issue.
It’s interesting to see Black Cat pop-up a couple of times in the same month in different titles. One might suspect that she’s up to something, but there’s no through line connecting this particular crossover with anything that she might be doing in MacKay’s The Avengers. It’s just a weird, little coincidence that she happens to be strolling through a couple of different issues in the same week.
