Agatha Harkness

Within Marvel Comics continuity Agatha Harkness is presented as one of the original witches from the Salem witch trials and as an ancestral figure in stories about New Salem. She debuted in Fantastic Four #94 (cover dated January 1970) and is depicted as a long-lived magic-user whose backstory connects her to the founding lore of the fictional New Salem witch community and to familial lines including her son Nicholas Scratch and the Salem's Seven.

Early comic depictions present Agatha Harkness as an elderly woman. Across Marvel stories and adaptations her visual presentation varies with medium; comic narratives and later media portrayals (notably Kathryn Hahn in the MCU) show her as capable of appearing in living, ghostly/astral, and—at times—restored or younger states within different storylines. The supplied sources do not provide a detailed, fixed costume or physical description beyond these narrative variations.

Sources describe Harkness as a 'powerful witch' and a human practitioner of magic who has served as a magical tutor (notably training Wanda Maximoff in the art of magic) and as governess to Franklin Richards. Narrative accounts record her using magic that can affect memory and perception (for example, temporarily mind-wiping and later restoring Wanda's memories of her children), appearing in astral or ghost form after apparent death, being killed by burning at the stake in one storyline and later manifesting again, and acting as leader or elder within New Salem and as teacher to groups such as the Daughters of Liberty. She has allied with and aided Marvel superhero figures (e.g., the Fantastic Four) in comic narratives.