W.A.N.D.

Creation

W.A.N.D. was created by writers Ben Acker and Ben Blacker, and artist Matteo Lolli. The organization first appeared in 2014's Thunderbolts Annual #1.

Major Story Arc

Thunderbolts

When it appeared that Doctor Strange was slowly enslaving the world into a mindless state of magical happiness, Thunderbolt Ross mobilized his team of Thunderbolts to take the Sorcerer Supreme out. To do this, the Thunderbolts needed to arm themselves with magical items to match Strange's might. While the Thunderbolts were successful in acquiring certain items, W.A.N.D. wound up helping them more than they would ever know. Taken to W.A.N.D. headquarters with a magical spell, Ross and the Leader met Director Pandora Peters and her right hand, Todd. The two Thunderbolts were magically restrained to prevent them from causing trouble, but were also given free rein of W.A.N.D.'s stores of magical weaponry and artifacts. After getting what they needed, Peters had Todd wipe the Thunderbolts' memory of their meeting, and replaced it with a memory of them getting their artifacts from a magical cache of Doctor Druid.

The Thunderbolts eventually proved victorious against the mad Doctor Strange, except that he turned out to actually be Oberoth'm'gozz in disguise, the True King of Faeries who sought to conquer Earth with his legion of Old Ones. Peters and her agents of W.A.N.D. soon arrived after the king's defeat to clean up the magical mess he'd left, and to bring back the real Doctor Strange. Peters reintroduced herself to the Thunderbolts and apologized for not handling the situation themselves, as they didn't know it wasn't actually Doctor Strange who was the threat. Afterwards though she had Todd wipe their memories once again, making them forget about their battle with Oberoth'm'gozz and replaced it with one of the Thunderbolts having a nice lunch of shawarma together.

Bigbox Prison

The Bigbox was a post-vital prison run by WAND. There, they stored the bodies of dead magicians, who had a tendency to come back from the dead. Unfortunately, when subdivision, Bravo Charlie, ran a war game involving computerized prayer wheels, the spell accidentally went live and raised every inmate in Bigbox from the dead. WAND was easily overwhelmed, forcing Pandora to call in a favor from Doctor Strange. He was unhappy with WAND having caught them surveilling him.

Strange ordered Pandora to move her people out of the cell block so he could activate the fail-safe. The failsafe happened to be three floors up from where Strange had been fighting. By opening his third eye, he was able to talk to the magical system that runs the prison and convince it to activate the fail-safe on its own. The resulting explosion reduced the undead to ash.

Unfortunately, this was a trial run. Bravo Charlie was preparing for a time where they could run the cryptotech spell casting that erased them from the world’s memory so they could repurpose its infrastructure into The Blasphemy Cartel. This opportunity came after SHIELD folded in the aftermath of Secret Empire.

Return

After Doctor Strange earned his life back by taking down The Blasphemy Cartel for Death, Wong decided to give him and Clea some much earned privacy at the Sanctum Sanctorum. He went on the road with Pandora Peters, as the only two agents of WAND, cleaning up the mess left from SHIELD's folding. After investigating the assassination of Aggamon, they find out that many dark magicians and magical monsters have been taken out by a mysterious foe. As a result, Wong suggests they start recruiting but on the condition that they don't do things like the old WAND.

Pandora already has a suspect in mind: Clea, but the real killer revealed themselves at the wedding of Tiboro and Umar. It was General Strange, the personification of Doctor Strange's trauma endured during the five thousand year long War of the Seven Spheres. The Vishanti had previously removed and imprisoned this trauma, but he had escaped during Strange's death. WAND was on stand by while Strange tries to negotiate with The Vishanti and their rivals, the Trinity of Ashes.

After Strange tracks the General to their childhood home in Nebraska, Strange asks WAND to fly in with their Psycho-Zepellin. They drop Doktor Zee's psychedelics expanding General's mind and returning his empathy and compassion. Strange used this opprotunity to surgically graft a piece of his soul to the General, and then WAND helped bring him back to the Sanctum, determined to help him medically with his PTSD.