Issue(s): Vision and the Scarlet Witch #5
Cover Date: Feb 86
Title: "The others call it... All Hallow's Eve!"
Credits:
Steve Englehart - Writer
Richard Howell - Penciler
Jack Abel & Mike Esposito - Inker
Jim Salicrup - Editor

Review/plot:
I thought i was rid of Salem's Seven a couple issues back, but even though they're dead, here they are again. Agatha Harkness did try to warn us last issue, but her powers aren't what they used to be, since she's also dead.

In the past two issues, the idea that it was the magick of the New Salem witches that allowed the Scarlet Witch to become pregnant was strongly hinted, but it's really in this issue where it's stated as fact. Last issue the Scarlet Witch only said "I think so" when the Vision asked if that was the case, but in this issue Scarlet Witch definitively says she couldn't have done it without that Magik, and Thornn of Salem's Seven confirms it. They are after her child, since it "has the power that was stolen from us".

Their ability to cross back into the land of the living is thanks to the fact that it's Halloween, and Samhain, the demonic villain from the first issue of the first Vision and the Scarlet Witch series, was never fully defeated.

In addition to the Salem witches, we see a number of other dead characters.

The Vision, with the help of Glamor and Illusion, has to hunt down the ashes that were left behind from when they burned Samhain's book in that issue. He locates a young woman named Holly, who was a trick or treating child during the first Samhain story (which raises sliding timescale difficulties), and Glamor and Illusion use the ashes on her old ghost costume to seek out the rest of the book's ashes, and uses his solar beam to fully destroy the book this time. Even that doesn't fully defeat Samhain but it weakens him enough that the dead Agatha Harkness is able to finish him off.

All of that kind of falls in the "yeah, yeah, whatever" category for me. More interesting is Quicksilver's very positive and accepting reaction to the news from her sister that she's pregnant, even believing (or at least not arguing with the fact) that the Vision is the father.

I really don't like Richard Howell's art on this series. It varies between the deliberately goofy, like the above, to the awkward, almost Steve Ditko-ish (in the worst sense), like the scenes below.

There's also the decision to draw Scarlet Witch with heavier eyebrows and a starker nose and cheeckbones to emphasize her Eastern European heritage, something that had never been done before and so feels out of place.

Samhain is cool looking, though.

Quality Rating: C

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: I've pushed this back in publication time so that i can line up next issue with Power Pack #19, since both take place on Thanksgiving, and Power Pack #19 has some dependencies related to Secret Wars II #6.

A couple of notes on Characters Appearing. First, except for Agatha Harkness and Salem's Seven, i'm not counting any of the dead characters as real appearances. Among the dead are those who aren't really dead (Phoenix, Baron von Strucker) and that calls into serious question the fact that the other characters are real. That includes Magda, Scarlet Witch's biological mother, although the MCP does list her as appearing in this issue, unlike the others. Second, the MCP does not list the appearances of Glamor and Illusion. They list their first appearances last issue and that's it until the 2004 Witches series. Barring a retcon i'm not aware of, though, the characters do continue to appear in this series and i'll continue to list them until i learn otherwise.

References:

• The Vision tells Glamor and Illusion he got his "soul" when he removed Ultron's control crystal in Avengers #254, and that's what allows him to act more human.
  
• All of the witches of New Salem, including Agatha Harkness and Salem's Seven, died in Vision and the Scarlet Witch #3.
  
• Samhain previously appeared in Vision and the Scarlet Witch #1 (first volume).

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

Vision's statement about only being able to glide with the wind seems to imply he can only fly when he is mostly intangible. Has that ever been definitively discussed? And if so, how it is he flew off with the Serpent Crown and dropped it in the ocean?