Although most fans know her as a member of the Avengers, she first appears in The X-Men #4 (March 1964) as a founding member of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. She is a reluctant villain from the start and tries to quit the group, but Magneto refuses to let her go.

Wanda and her twin brother Pietro are raised as the children of a gypsy couple, Django and Marya Maximoff. The circumstances of their separation from their family are so traumatic that not until well into adulthood can they remember anything but the barest details of their childhood.

Quicksilver has the superhuman ability to move at great speeds. Both twins are recruited by Magneto after Wanda accidentally causes a house to burst into flames and he saves her from the angry mob.

Wanda's natural powers come from her ability to create "hex-spheres," which are reality-disrupting quasi-psionic energy projections, but training with Agatha Harkness (one of the original witches from the Salem witch trials) helps her to better control her powers.

Although her backstory is shrouded in mystery and has changed over time, she is usually depicted as the offspring of Magneto, born to his estranged wife.

Magda, the wife of Magneto, escaped from him while pregnant and took sanctuary on Wundagore Mountain, the home of the High Evolutionary. There, she gave birth to twins, who later became known as Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch.

Bova was an evolved cow created by the High Evolutionary as one of his New Men, animals given humanoid form and high intelligence. When the pregnant Magda Lehnsherr arrived at the Evolutionary's citadel after fleeing from her husband, Bova served as midwife for the birth of her children. Fearing her husband might find her, Magda fled the castle a short time later, leaving her children in Bova's care.

A wimple is a medieval form of female headdress, formed of a large piece of cloth worn around the neck and chin, and covering the top of the head. The Wife of Bath and the Prioress are depicted wearing wimples in the Canterbury Tales.

Wanda and the Vision have a long-running romance in the pages of The Avengers. They move to the suburbs, endure the hatred of cul-de-sac bigots who don't want "their kind" as neighbors, and become parents to twin boys, a pregnancy enabled by Wanda's probability-altering hex powers.

Wanda's children are in fact missing shards of the soul of the demon Mephisto. The revelation of her children's origin, followed by their loss when they are reabsorbed into him, drives the Scarlet Witch insane.