Scarlet Witch Fact — October 31, 2026

Today's Fact

Checked against independent sources — the issues are cited below.

THE GOLDEN AGE WHIZZER THOUGHT HE WAS WANDA’S FATHER — AND FOR A WHILE, SO DID SHE!

The Featured Fact

In Giant-Size Avengers #1 (1974), an ageing Golden Age hero walked back into the Avengers’ lives with a family claim: Robert Frank, the wartime speedster called the Whizzer, believed that he and his late wife Madeline — the heroine Miss America — were the parents of Wanda and Pietro Maximoff. His wife had died giving birth at Mount Wundagore, he had been handed a story about twins, and for years he had stayed away out of guilt while his other son, the radioactive Nuklo, was kept hidden.

The claim had a cruel logic to it. Miss America had indeed travelled to Wundagore, the High Evolutionary’s mountain, seeking help with a dangerous pregnancy, and she had died there in childbirth. What Frank never knew was that her baby was stillborn — and that the twins born on that mountain on nearly the same night belonged to another fleeing mother entirely. A well-meaning attempt to spare a widower’s grief, involving the evolved cow-midwife Bova, left Frank believing the Maximoff twins were the children he had lost.

Wanda, who had grown up believing her parents were the Roma couple Django and Marya Maximoff, briefly gained a heroic father — and even fought Nuklo as a kind of brother. The reunion dissolved years later when the fuller Wundagore account emerged in Avengers #185–187 and the twins’ parentage was rewritten again, this time toward Magneto and Magda. Wanda’s family tree would be revised at least twice more after that, but the Whizzer chapter remains the strangest: for half a decade of publication, the Scarlet Witch’s father was a retired speedster in a yellow costume who had simply been given the wrong babies’ story.

Why It's Obscure

Before she was Magneto’s daughter, she was briefly the lost child of two Golden Age heroes — because a grieving speedster got the wrong twins.

1974

A father knocks — Giant-Size Avengers #1 brings the elderly Whizzer to the Avengers seeking help for Nuklo, and lays out his belief that Wanda and Pietro are the twins lost to him at Wundagore.

Wundagore

Two births, one mountain — Miss America died on Wundagore and her child was stillborn, while another mother’s twins survived nearby; the mountain’s midwife Bova sits at the centre of every version of the mix-up.

The speedster test

It almost added up — A super-fast father neatly explained Pietro’s speed, which helped the claim survive in print for years before the record was corrected.

1979 on

The tree keeps growing — Avengers #185–187 and later Vision and the Scarlet Witch #4 replaced the Whizzer account with the Magneto and Magda version, and later revisions would move the twins’ origins again.

Gallery

Comic art of Scarlet Witch and the figures named in today's fact.

Scarlet Witch in red costume casting hexes — **The witch at the centre**Wanda in her classic red costume and crown, hex energy circling her hands — the Avenger whose birth certificate has been rewritten more often than her costume.

Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver together — **The twins in question**Wanda and Pietro together; it was both twins, not Wanda alone, whom the Whizzer believed he and Miss America had left behind on Wundagore.

The Whizzer in yellow costume running — **The almost-father**The Whizzer in his yellow Golden Age costume at full sprint — the retired speedster who spent years believing the Maximoff twins were his lost children.

Sources

Every claim above checks out against at least two of these independent sources.

Bullpen Bulletins

The Identity of Scarlet Witch’s Parents, Explained — CBRCBR traces the retcons: Giant-Size Avengers #1 heavily implied the twins were the children of Golden Age heroes the Whizzer (Robert Frank) and Miss America (Madeline Joyce Frank), before the Magneto parentage replaced the idea.
Giant-Size Avengers Vol. 1 #1 — Marvel DatabaseIssue record: the Whizzer tells Wanda that Miss America was pregnant, travelled to Wundagore for the High Evolutionary’s aid and died there, and that he was presented with twins he assumed were the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver — an account later disputed in Avengers #182 and expanded in #185–187.