In every installment of Abandoned Love we will be examining comic book stories, plots and ideas that were abandoned by a later writer without actively retconnng away the previous story. Feel free to e-mail me at brianc@cbr.com if you have any suggestions for future editions of this feature.
Reader Joe O. wrote in to suggest this one, which is a bit out of the ordinary for this feature, in that it was the case of a single writer abandoning his own plot, but I think it still counts in just how abrupt it all was.
We begin with "Avengers" #47 (by Roy Thomas, John Buscema and George Tuska), where Magneto returned to Earth and quickly captured Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, who were formerly members of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants before reforming and becoming Avengers.
In the following issue (by Thomas and Tuska), they spend the whole issue captives of Magneto as he tried to get them to change sides. They continued to rebel...
But they ended the issue still in Magneto's custody. Magneto forced them to accompany him to the United Nations, where he planned to threaten the assembly. The Avengers showed up and it looked like Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch would soon be reunited with their teammates. However, Magneto pulled off one last gambit and it totally worked...
Now a part of Magneto's team once again (Scarlet Witch lost her hex power after being shot in the head and she's all super confused as to why she and Quicksilver are Evil Mutants again), they end up fighting the X-Men (after Quicksilver tried to secretly attend Charles Xavier's funeral as a tribute to the man that he had admired) and once they defeated the X-Men, Quicksilver explained his position in "X-Men" #44 (by Gary Friedrich, Don Heck and Werner Roth)...
In the next issue, Cyclops escaped and Quicksilver explained it AGAIN...
Cyclops and Quicksilver fight and Cyclops wins but then the Avengers show up, leading to a fight in "Avengers" #53 (by Roy Thomas, John Busecema and George Tuska). Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver aren't involved, because she is without her hex power and he is out of it after being defeated by Cyclops. In the end, the Toad decided that he was sick of Magneto's nonsense and betrayed Magneto, taking Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch with them as they escape...
Notice that Quicksilver doesn't, like, learn a lesson about how humans are okay or whatever. He just learned that Magneto is a psycho, and even there, had he not been out of it, who knows what would have happened there?
Now we come to the abandoned part of the story, when Quicksilver returns to the Avengers in "Avengers" #75 (by Roy Thomas, John Buscema and Tom Palmer) to ask for their help with the Scarlet Witch. He does apologize for ditching them during the battle with Magneto, but not the whole, you know, denouncing humanity thing!
As it turned out, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch and Toad found a book of spells to help restore Scarlet Witch's powers, but instead, it opened up a doorway to the dimension of Arkon...
He came through and then took Scarlet Witch and some scientists back to his dimension. So Quicksilver got the Avengers together and they rescued Scarlet Witch from Arkon and stopped Arkon's plot against Earth, and in the end (in the following issue), Arkon's like, "Oh, by the way, by crossing into my dimension, your powers are back."
And then that's it! They're just both back in the Avengers! "Avengers" #77 even has jokes about them being back (the plot is that Tony Stark needs the Avengers to pay him the back rent on Avengers Mansion)...
So, yeah, that was an interestingly abandoned story by Thomas.
Thanks for the suggestion, Joe! If anyone else has a suggestion for a notable abandoned comic book plot, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!