I continue to not be a comics person

Vor dem Civil War war House of M! Seht die Rächer und X-Men vereint, im Kampf gegen ihre größte Bedrohung: Wanda Maximoff! Die Scarlet Witch ist außer Kontrolle und das Schicksal der Welt liegt in ihren Händen! Und nichts wird mehr sein, wie es war! Der Mega-Event, der Geschichte schrieb! In einem Band!

Written by comics legend Brian Michael Bendis, House of M is about what happens when Scarlet Witch (aka Wanda Maximoff) has a mental breakdown and attempts to recreate the universe. You see, she’s lost her two children—Billy and Tommy—as well as her grip on reality. The other Avengers and X-Men (in the comics, Wanda is a mutant) realize they must consider killing Wanda, because her reality-shaping powers pose an enormous threat to humanity if she cannot recover her sanity. Does her brother or father have anything to do with the warping of reality? What happens to the powers held by mutants upon the earth?

Read this to find out.

It will be interesting to see if WandaVision incorporates elements into the new MCU series. It certain seems like Wanda might have lost her grip on reality after the events of the previous MCU movie, where she kills Vision. ( )

Un crossover solide, proche dans l'esprit de l'Ere d'Apocalypse ou de Heroes Reborn (on traite d'un monde alternatif) mais au traitement plus intimiste, axé sur le questionnement de certains plutôt que sur les sempiternelles confrontations. House of M naît dans la tragédie et propose une alternative heureuse à la noirceur qui a frappé les plus grands héros de la Terre et interpellé tous les êtres dotés de pouvoirs les plaçant au-dessus de l'humanité. A l'instar, naguère, de Xavier qui avait décelé le potentiel quasi infini de Jean Grey et avait placé en elle des barrières psychiques destinées à protéger la population de tout dérapage, Strange a tenté également de canaliser les capacités inouïes de Wanda afin qu'elle ne parvienne pas à altérer la réalité sur une trop grande échelle. Mais après avoir illusoirement créé ses propres enfants, puis entraîné la mort de plusieurs Avengers, le Maître des Arts mystiques a dû se rendre à l'évidence : il faut stopper la Sorcière rouge. Sauf que son frère, Pietro, et son père, Magneto, ne l'entendent pas de cette oreille...

En recréant de toutes pièces un monde où chaque super-être trouve son bonheur, Wanda pensait faire le bien, et permettre une véritable cohabitation entre humains et mutants, fondée sur la domination éclairée de l'homo superior et de la Maison Magnus. Sauf qu'une jeune fille mystérieuse, Layla, se souvient de notre continuum. Seule, elle ne peut rien faire, jusqu'au moment où Wolverine retrouve tous ses souvenirs. La résistance est née. ( )

As one might expect with a giant crossover event, "House of M" will be a confusing and shallow read to the casual fan, but for the very invested Marvel reader, it's a bit of a treat. The "what if" nature of the premise is never properly explored here -- there is a myriad of tie-ins for that -- as the main series focuses instead of the set up, dismantling and pay-off of the brief change of the entire Marvel Univese to a place where the mutants are the first class citizens, ruled by the largely benevolent House of Magnus. The book thus feels quite focused, in spite of the hundreds of characters, as it becomes the story of the resistant movement trying to reclaim their memories of the real world and undoing the new one. Though should they? The House of M's world is not perfect by any means, but by and large it seems at least as good as the real one they left behind. Possibly better ...

And for what it is, the story is good. I particularly find some of the quiet moments with Magneto in this book, before, during and after the alternate reality, to be very powerful indeed. As are some of the Scarlet Witch's moments of near-lucidity, and great character moments also abound for Wolverine, Spider-Man and (perhaps surprisingly) Emma Frost. All in all the rare satisfying crossover event, albeit again only for the highly invested. If you don't know or care about Wanda Maximoff's recent mental breakdown prior to this, nor of the devastating effects the crossover has on the X-Men titles in particular moving forward afterwards, then you'd do better finding a self-contained arc to read. And if you only care about the what if... aspects of the alternate world, ironically, the tie-in books will be what delivers the thing you're looking for. As memory serves, the "Fantastic Four" story in particular (following Doom, who leads them in this world) is quite solid. ( )