Scarlet Witch Fact — November 5, 2026

Today's Fact

A grimoire, a missing hex power, and one incantation read aloud — that is all it took to deliver a conqueror from another dimension to Wanda’s doorstep.

WANDA WAS KIDNAPPED TO BE A WARLORD'S BRIDE — BY A SPELL SHE CAST HERSELF WHILE POWERLESS!

The Featured Fact

While her hex power lay dormant and apparently lost, Wanda Maximoff went hunting for it in books instead of battlefields. Touring ancient libraries with her brother Pietro and the Toad, she studied grimoires that promised to restore what she had lost — and in one of them she read a spell aloud. The incantation answered. It pulled Arkon the Magnificent, warrior-king of the other-dimensional world Polemachus, straight into her world in Avengers Vol. 1 #75 (1970), by Roy Thomas and John Buscema. Arkon took one look at the woman who had summoned him and announced his terms: she would be his mate.

Arkon had a second, larger errand on Earth. Polemachus lived under rings of energy that were failing, and his scientists had learned that atomic explosions on Earth recharged them — a yearly blast bought a year of light. Arkon’s arithmetic was monstrous: one explosion big enough to destroy Earth outright would power his world forever. So the self-appointed groom kidnapped the planet’s leading nuclear physicists as well as his bride, and carried Wanda back to Polemachus to watch his world live at the price of hers.

Wanda saved Earth with the smallest weapon in the story. Held on Polemachus, she showed Arkon a single flower and recited Tennyson’s “Flower in the Crannied Wall” at him in Avengers Vol. 1 #76 (1970) — a poem about how much world hides inside one small thing. The warlord who had come to burn a planet stood down, renounced both the destruction and the marriage, and let the Avengers find Polemachus a safer source of power. Buried inside the rescue is a quieter first: this adventure contains the first meeting of Wanda and the Vision, years before their marriage rewrote both their lives.

Why It's Obscure

The bride-napping is pure pulp — but the machinery around it quietly set up one of Marvel’s defining romances.

Avengers #75 (1970)

The summons — Arkon debuts by answering a spell Wanda should never have read aloud, and declares her his chosen mate before he has even asked her name.

Polemachus

A world of eternal daylight — Arkon’s home lives beneath energy rings whose slow failure turned a proud warlord into a kidnapper of physicists.

The flower

Diplomacy by poetry — Wanda reaches for Tennyson instead of a hex, and one crannied-wall flower accomplishes what the assembled Avengers had not.

Vision

A first meeting — the synthezoid and the witch share their first scene during this rescue, and neither of them makes much of it at the time.

Gallery

The witch in her classic scarlet, the conqueror who came calling, and Wanda with her hexes lit once more.

Scarlet Witch in classic red costume comic splash page — **The bride who said no** Wanda in the scarlet costume of the Arkon era, mid-outburst on a classic Avengers splash — the composure she kept in front of a warlord, pictured here among her own team.

Arkon the Magnificent roaring comic panel — **The groom** Arkon introduces himself in the only register he owns — “I am Arkon the Magnificent” — lord of warlords of Polemachus, and for two issues Wanda’s self-appointed fiancé.

Scarlet Witch casting hex energy comic art — **The power that came back** Wanda with a hex burning between her hands: the ability whose absence started the whole affair, when a borrowed book of spells promised to give it back.

Sources

Every fact on this page was checked against at least two independent sources before publication.

Bullpen Bulletins

Avengers Vol 1 #75 — Marvel DatabaseIssue synopsis: Wanda’s spell summons Arkon, who chooses her as his mate, defeats Quicksilver and the Toad, and carries her off to Polemachus.
Scarlet Witch Falls For Her Captor, Arkon — CBRRetrospective on Avengers #75–76: the lost-powers grimoire quest, the dying energy rings, the nuclear plan, and the Tennyson flower that turned Arkon aside.
Scarlet Witch — WikipediaPublication history confirms the sequence: after Arkon kidnaps Wanda, Quicksilver returns to the Avengers for help, and the twins rejoin the team afterwards.