Agatha Harkness - Fictional Character Biography

Fictional Character Biography

Agatha Harkness was first introduced as Franklin Richards' governess after she easily fended off the Frightful Four when they came to abduct Franklin Richards and admitting to the Fantastic Four that she is a witch. She then aided the Fantastic Four in battle against Annihilus.

Through the actions of Nicholas Scratch, her son, she was revealed as being a member of the previously unknown New Salem, Colorado colony of witches, of whom she had been the leader. Scratch had taken control of the town and had persuaded its inhabitants that Agatha had betrayed the communities' secrets by working for the Fantastic Four. She was abducted back to the community along with Franklin so that she might be put on trial. The Fantastic Four followed and came into conflict with Salem's Seven, who were Agatha's grandchildren by Scratch. The Fantastic Four eventually won out and freed Agatha. In the process, Scratch's evil was revealed to the community of New Salem and he was banished to another dimension.

Agatha became the magical tutor for the Scarlet Witch in the use of witchcraft.

Scratch and Salem's Seven returned one more time, and Agatha repulsed their world takeover attempt.

Eventually Salem's Seven took over the New Salem community again. They captured Agatha and killed her by burning her at the stake, though Agatha soon made her presence known to Wanda in what appeared to be a post-death astral form. In an ensuing battle between the Scarlet Witch and Salem's Seven, the entire community's energies were drawn into Vertigo of the Seven, who lost control of them. Wanda managed to capture some of the energy and funnel it away, but the entire town was still decimated. Following hints from Agatha's astral form, Wanda channeled the remaining energy to become pregnant with her husband, The Vision's, children.

Later, Agatha resurfaced, again alive and well, when Wanda's infant children began exhibiting odd behavior (disappearing for brief periods of time) and Wanda became unstable after her husband's dismantling; Agatha provided no explanation for her return. After Mephisto claimed that Scarlet Witch's children were actually fragments of his own soul and reabsorbs them, Agatha briefly mind-wiped Wanda's memory of her children in an attempt to help her deal with the trauma. Agatha later restored those memories soon after when Wanda became a pawn in a complex plot by Immortus. Agatha aided the Avengers in their battle against Immortus.

In a sequence during the Avengers Disassembled storyline, Wanda, again having no memory of her children, angrily confronted Agatha about their existence. At the end of that issue (occurring some time after Wanda and Agatha's confrontation), Nick Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D. found what appeared to be Agatha's corpse in her home and concludes that Agatha had been dead for a long time.

Some time later, a partially amnesiac Wanda tells Clint Barton she is under the care of her "Aunt Agatha" in a small apartment.