how WandaVision is mining three different histories

I have a piece up on Tor.com in which I look at how the first four episodes of WandaVision on Disney+ have been mining three different histories: the history of American sitcoms, the history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and most especially the history of the source material, to wit, the characters’ comic-book counterparts.

An excerpt:

We still don’t know the extent of what’s happening in WandaVision, but episode 4 made it clear that the weird sitcom world they’re occupying is of Wanda’s own creation and she has a certain amount of control over it, much as she did the House of M setting. And she’s resurrected people from the dead before in the comics—she’s done it with the Vision, with Wonder Man, and with her brother Quicksilver. And the comics character has a history of mental issues and instability, including being possessed by the demon Chthon (in Avengers #185-187 by Mark Gruenwald, Steven Grant, David Michelinie, & [John] Byrne in 1979), a massive mental breakdown after the Vision was dismantled and resurrected and she found out her children weren’t real in Byrne’s run on Avengers West Coast ten years after that, and then another breakdown that nearly destroyed the Avengers in 2004’s Avengers #500 by [Brian Michael] Bendis & David Finch, with subsequent issues in the “Disassembled” storyline, and then House of M.