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Post by rberman on Apr 7, 2019 8:24:14 GMT -5
The Vision #1 “Visions of the Future” (January 2016) Creative Team: All issues written by Tom King. All issues penciled and inked by Gabriel Hernandez Walta except #7. The Story: George and Nora Knowles bring cookies to the Vision family (Vision, Virginia, Vin, and Viv) who have just moved into the neighborhood. Pleasantries are exchanged and gift cookies surreptitiously dumped in the trash, since synthezoids don’t eat. Vision and Virginia debate the implications of saying “They seemed nice” vs “They seemed kind.” The kids try to fit in at school. Nobody’s mean, but even curiousity can be alienating, when you didn’t realize you were alien.  Then one day when Vision is away at work with The Avengers, his nemesis Grim Reaper comes calling and severely injures Viv. In rage, Virginia beats him to death with the neighbor’s unreturned cookie sheet. (Domesticity has been weaponized, not for the last time in this series.) Horrified by what she has done, she makes the first disastrous choice of this series (again, not the last): She will hide the corpse. This will protect her family from the community. This will protect her from her husband’s disapproval. Or will it?  My Two Cents: “Write what you know” means every story has at least a smidgen of autobiography. This one has a lot. The opening narration describes the life cycle of young people working for the government after college. Tom King knows this dynamic, since he and his wife lived some aspects of it and witnessed the rest when they worked for the Justice Department. She went to law school; he went overseas with the C.I.A. for a time. So when he writes about D.C. culture, he knows whereof he speaks.  This series contains narration, a rarity in modern (and post-modern) comic books. It’s appropriate to ask: Whose words are these? The author? They are rendered in white on purple. Colored backgrounds in text boxes are often used to keep different speakers straight, but no candidate speaker presents himself in this issue. This is not the first “Vision” series. It’s not even the first “Vision and his wife try to raise a normal family” series. Tom King knows this; as we’ll see, he exploits it. Virginia, Viv, and Vin are completely new characters in this series; their existence was completely unknown previously, and their origins are mysterious for the moment. The Knowles get a tour of the Vision home which contains several souvenirs which will become important as the series continues: A lighter from Captain America; a piano from Wakanda; a vase made of water, suspended in the air by poisonous gasses; a future-predicting plant from Wundagore Mountain. You might think some of these will enter the plot. In fact, all of them will.  King is already engaging in wordplay on the title character’s name. “Visions of the Future” could refer to the synthezoid family and their futuristic tech. Or to a prophecy. Or simply to someone’s hopes. King exploits the all-caps font to leave ambiguity when he’s talking about “vision” or “Vision.” Alan Moore excels at this sort of wordplay; think of all the meanings of “V” he found in V for Vendetta.Along similar lines, the first text box calls the main characters “the Visions of Virginia.” Arlington is an upscale Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C. But Virginia is also the mom’s name in this story. That slippery word “of” could make “THE VISIONS OF VIRGINIA MOVED INTO THEIR HOUSE” mean “The Visions, a family now living in Virginia” or “The Vision family belonging to Virginia moved in” or “Virginia’s visions/hopes of domesticity settled upon this neighborhood.” Then we have “Leaves just beginning to hint at the FALL to come.” Fall the season, or fall the downward motion? Yes. Not the first time that pun has been made, but it's effective all the same. As we shall see, Virginia feels a strong burden for keeping the family together. Her conversation with Vision about “nice vs kind” shows the pecking order. He is older and wiser; she is his pupil. As we'll see, Virginia doesn't know enough about being nice or kind.  When we first see the Vision family, they’re very into their other-ness. Diamonds on their foreheads matched by diamonds on their clothing, with trios of diamonds forming a “V” to boot. When I read the first few pages, I groaned. Oh no. Another “Munsters” story about families coming in all shapes and sizes, and a few jolly misunderstanding later, all the neighbors will come around. I get it; prejudice is a thing. But aren’t there other stories to be told? Then page five brings a chill with its vision that the fallible neighbors aren’t going to be won over by the heroes. They’re going to die horrible deaths.  Vin and Viv are enrolled in Alexander Hamilton High School, “a public high school in Fairfax, VA.” This is a fictional school. It must be a magnet school; testing is required for entry, which would not be true of a regular public school. The kids debate the morality of Shakespeare’s character Shylock from “The Merchant of Venice.” Shakespeare in general, and this play in particular, will become a major part of this series. Vision’s thoughts of his wife are poignant, as he reminds himself of his obligation to love her. Sometimes love is like that, an act of will and sacrifice rather than an instinctive response to perceived beauty. Can a marriage survive on that sort of love alone, given all the internal and external pressures conspiring against every relationship? We don’t know what person Virginia’s brainwaves were copied from. But given Vision’s history, we can guess. 
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Post by rberman on Apr 8, 2019 5:31:11 GMT -5
The Vision #2 “Everything Slips Through Their Fingers” (February 2016) The Story: Vision appears to accept Virginia’s story that Grim Reaper attacked Viv and then got away. Some of the details of the actual fight don’t match her story, but perhaps she doctored the house afterward. Vin is Virginia’s accomplice after the fact, since he saw the whole thing but doesn’t contradict her lies. Her story seems weak, but Vision wants to believe.  Viv’s chemistry lab partner Chris Kinzky asks Vin how to get in touch with her to discuss their incomplete assignment. The encounter ends with Vin half-throttling Chris. Vision and Virginia meet with the school principal. He is balding and chubby, two signs of a bad person in popular media. He wears glasses, a third sign. His vision is flawed. He wants to ban Vin from school on grounds of being a living weapon. Vision takes a strong stance, and the principal backs down.  In her mailbox, Virginia finds a cell phone containing a video showing her burying Grim Reaper in her back yard, with Vin looking on. The phone immediately rings with an anonymous call, indicating that the caller is in one of the nearby houses and is watching her this very moment.  My Two Cents: Now we have some idea where this story is really going. It’s about secrets, and the length to which a mother will go to protect her family. It’s a tragedy, not a comedy. There will be no wedding at the end. We’re not headed toward a Munsters-eque embrace of diverse cultures in the American melting pot. Rather, this clash of societies will end in blood. How much blood? That remains to be seen.  King limits the disciplinary debate to the principal and Vision. Is that what would really have happened? Vin throttled Chris in front of a cafeteria full of kids. Some of them would have immediately posted it online, provoking a Twitterstorm, feeding into the “Superhero Registration Act” hysteria that periodically surfaces in both the Marvel and DC Universes. (Is The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl the only superhero comic book that correctly recognizes the importance of social media today?) There would be TV trucks camped outside the school and the Vision home, leading to a Doctor Manhattan-esque “Leave us alone!” confrontation. Indeed, Vision is not far from being a pink Doctor Manhattan temperamentally, with a diamond on his forehead instead of a hydrogen atom. And we all know that Doctor Manhattan simply cannot stay on Earth. The Visions’ street address is “616.” This is a wink at the designation of the main Marvel Universe as Universe-616. But it’s also a reference to the book of Revelation, which in some manuscripts says that 616 (rather than 666) is “the number of a man” who will threaten the world. Vision is one of the many Pinocchio characters in genre fiction who wants to be a man, and we’ve been repeatedly told already that this quest will somehow threaten the world. King piles on the foreshadowing. The title “Everything slips through their fingers” refers to the fading hope of idyllic domesticity, as well as to Vision’s power to become intangible. Tom King works some good double and triple entendres into the titles of these issues.
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Post by rberman on Apr 9, 2019 6:48:01 GMT -5
The Vision #3 “In and Out” (March 2016) The Story: Two neighborhood kids spray paint a vulgar message on the Vision home. Virginia catches them and beats one unconscious.  On Wundagore Mountain in Europe, Agatha Harkness feeds her cat Ebony a petal from the rare Everbloom plant, then slaughters the cat, opens its stomach, and retrieves the petal to consume it herself. This gives her a vision of the future of the Vision. An alarming vision of an alarming Vision.  Tony Stark and Vision work to repair the damage Viv sustained from Grim Reaper. Tony routes immense power through Vision to reboot Viv. The electrical surge is dangerously strong, and Tony motions to cut it off, but Vision threatens to kill him if he does. The threat works, and so does the project; Viv is revived. Is anyone else perturbed by Vision's threat to kill Tony Stark? We’re in real Michael Corleone territory here, with a protagonist who will kill even the oldest friend for a chance to help his family.  When Vision comes home with Viv, he wants to talk to Virginia about the whereabouts of Grim Reaper and Virginia’s encounter with the two vandal teens. She distracts him with robot sex. Another instance of weaponized domesticity.  My Two Cents: Again we see Virginia exercising dangerously poor judgment, meting out violence upon the youthful vandal. She has an internal camera. She should have shown her video to the kids’ parents or the cops. A super-powered adult attacking a spray-painting teen would have led to battery charges, a media circus, and a civil suit. Virginia is showing herself profoundly unqualified to live among humans, and Vision as her creator (we don’t yet know the details) is culpable for endangering civilians with his dream of domesticity. The title “In and Out” refers to social structures; the Visions are “out.” But it also refers to the robot sex. And it also refers to the movement of the Everbloom petal in and out of various bodies. We don’t know what inspired Agatha to seek a “vision of the future,” but now we know that she is the narrator from issue #1, or at least has access to that narrator’s message from page 1 of that issue, since she recites it in the last panel here. 
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Post by rberman on Apr 10, 2019 6:13:52 GMT -5
The Vision #4 “Balls in the Air” (April 2016) The Story: Viv and Vin return to school. Chris Kinsky downplays his altercation with Vin because he’s desirous of getting in Viv’s good graces. He walks with her to school in the rain (apparently an experience lifted from Tom King’s own romantic life), and the phrase “it goes right through me” appears for the first time (but not the last). What a marvelously pregnant word “It” is, allowing this statement to be recontextualized repeatedly throughout the rest of the series, including once later this very issue.  That night, Virginia pretends she has a job interview. Actually she’s going to the nearby home of her blackmailer, who turns out to be Chris Kinzky’s father Leon. He doesn’t want money, but he demands that the Vision family move out of the neighborhood. She makes a move toward him; he fires a pistol. The bullet passes through intangible Virginia but also through the head of the very tangible Chris, who came to see who was arguing. Virginia makes things worse by clocking Leon when he swears vengeance for his dead son. Leon spends the rest of the series in a coma.  “It goes right through me.” And there it is. My Two Cents: This is turning into “Virginia’s increasingly bad choices.” Faced with another opportunity to come clean with Vision, she lies to him about her planned meeting with Leon Kinzky. Then she escalates the encounter with Leon by moving toward the already twitchy man with the gun instead of (a) sitting down in a nonthreatening manner to calm him down, (b) saying she will consider his offer and then leaving, or (c) using her forehead power beam to disarm him instantly from a distance. Vision is ultimately culpable for all this since creating a family and moving to the suburbs was his idea, and his family clearly needs more beta testing in a controlled environment. Even Jocasta didn’t assault civilians. The idea of rain passing right through Vision was present from his very first appearance in The Avengers #57. From the very first panel, in fact:  Viv and Vin have a fascinating conversation while doing their version of “Lucy and Charlie Brown and a football place kick.” In this case, instead of Lucy yanking the ball away every time, Vin keeps phasing at the last minute rather than kicking the ball. He taunts his sister that this is her opportunity to become more human by exercising faith, which is a higher form of cognition than knowledge. Does he believe this, or is he just yanking her chain so she doesn’t give up on the game? Vin has a point, though. Lower animals don’t exercise faith or hope. Just instincts and conditioned responses.  Tom King weighs in on the controversy about sports team The Washington Redskins. Vision takes it as a personal affront, though he is not the usual sort of redskin. This football is one of the several meanings of issue title “Balls in the Air.” Leon's bullet is another of the flying balls.  Another “ball in the air” is Vision’s attempt to fight monsters with The Avengers while managing his home life.  I'm confused by Vision's job. Back in issue #1, it was established that he had moved to Washington D.C. to serve as Avengers liason to the President. That sounds like a desk job, not an assignment for one of the more powerful Avengers. What does the job entail? He never meets with the President again during this series. Perhaps he got fired from that job when all these scandals started piling up in his home life? If so, we're not told. But we are told that the Avengers are no longer paying their members a stipend. Yet they expected Vision to buy and maintain a house in expensive Arlington, VA on his own dime? Weird. The set-up was a pretext to drop Vision into a milieu that Tom King knows well, but after the first issue, the story could have taken place in any suburb. 
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Post by rberman on Apr 11, 2019 6:30:54 GMT -5
The Vision #5 “The Villainy You Teach Me” (May 2016)
The Story: Detective Matthew Lin invites Vision down to the police station for a few questions about the death of teen Chris Kinzky and the severe injuries sustained by his father Leon. Wasn’t Vin involved in an altercation with Chris not long ago? Vision insists that his whole family was at home on the night of the murders, though he knows his wife was in fact out of the house.  The events of this story are taking their toll on Virginia; she begins glitching badly.  Covers That "Lie": Vision’s trip to the police station is nowhere near as violent as portrayed on the cover. Maybe it still felt that way though. Many of the covers in this series are like that, symbolic and thematic. It's a great set of covers. My Two Cents: Tom King has said that he thought of this series in terms of the television show “Breaking Bad,” in which a man justifies drug dealing and worse for the sake of his family. This particular issue is rather slight plotwise but does contain Vision's participation in the dark side. Vin’s studies in Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” are affecting him deeply, particularly Shylock’s famous speech about how Jews are human. The first half of this issue is an extended quotation from Shylock’s monologue, so let’s talk about that play, which I confess I have not read. Those of you who have, feel free to chime in! Its setup involves Shylock, a poorly liked Jewish moneylender in Venice. He lends a large sum to the titular merchant, with the collateral being the threat of Shylock carving a literal pound of flesh from the man’s body. The debt comes due and cannot be repaid. Shylock’s attempt to collect the flesh leads to a court case during which Shylock defends his own humanity and says that he learned the harsh ways of vengeance by observing Christians in action. Clever legal maneuvering impels Shylock to foreswear his claim on the merchant’s flesh. Shylock converts to Christianity, and a couple of weddings later (this is a romantic comedy, believe it or not), the curtain closes on a happy ending. Much has been said about Shylock over the years, much of it quite uncomplimentary. That was an easy sell in both Renaissance Europe and Nazi Germany, both rife with anti-Semitism. Modern audiences often find Shylock more sympathetic, a man driven to cruelty by a hateful world. (Hey, we were just talking about this with respect to the upcoming Joker movie in another thread!) That’s the best way to read Shylock’s claim that he learned cruelty from Christians. Not that he would have literally been unaware of the concept of cruelty without Christians, but that his own personal experience of cruelty was at Christian hands. This reading makes his eleventh hour “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” conversion to Christianity even less plausible, though. The issue title comes from Shylock’s threat of returning his injuries many-fold: “The villainy you teach me I will execute—and it shall go hard, but I will better the instruction.” For now, this series’ interest in Shylock is for his protestation of humanity, with Vin as the focus. Later, the focus will shift to Vision for other reasons.  The second half of this issue is the police interrogation. Vision had previously told Vin’s principal that he has saved the world 37 times. This is a fact, not an estimate; this issue enumerates the 37 instances, one by one, intercut with Vision’s interrogation. The moment he rationalizes that his previous heroics have earned him the right to protect his family with lies, he crosses the line into villainy, even just for the moment.  However, the number 37 is clearly an inside joke for Tom King as well, since it shows up in many of his stories, including variations such as $37.73, 273, and Dick Grayson, Agent 37.  Detective Lin is a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan like Tom King, so it’s reasonable to think that Lin’s comments on the experience mirror the author’s. 
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Apr 11, 2019 6:59:43 GMT -5
Oh My Gooooooood, this was so good. Just jaw-dropping.
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Post by rberman on Apr 12, 2019 5:28:23 GMT -5
The Vision #6 “P vs NP” (June 2016) The Story: George Knowles’ dog Zeke digs up Grim Reaper’s body from Virginia’s back yard and gets a fatal electrical burn from the corpse’s still-active weapon. This is how Vision finds out the truth.  The next morning, the house interior has been ruined by a tantrum or melee that we didn’t get to see. (Tom King scripted it and then decided it didn't add anything to the narrative, so he relegated it to a voiceover.) Vision removes Zeke’s brain and copies its patterns as he recalls the non-confrontation with his wife.  Not long after, Vision brings a synthezoid terrier home, presumably programmed with Zeke’s brainwaves. This makes Viv and Vin feel better. The dog will later be named “Sparky” as a result of a write-in contest staged for readers. A dog with no pupils inevitably reminds us of Little Orphan Annie's dog Sandy.  My Two Cents: OK, now we have another reason Virginia shouldn’t have disposed of the corpse herself: the weapon was still dangerous. Much of the captioning in this issue goes to explain the title, a math concept which basically boils down to “some problems are either unsolvable or only respond to brute force, and you can’t tell whether brute force will even work until you use it.” Vision is faced with a problem which has no elegant solution, and perhaps no solution at all. Tom King has confessed that his philosophy and history degrees didn’t teach him a lot of math, but he did pick up this bit of math along the way somewhere. Agatha Harkness informs the Avengers of her vision that Vision is going to do something terrible. She is confirmed as the narrator of the “white on purple background” captions, which is a little confusing since some of them earlier spoke of her in the third person, but no matter. Is her prophecy a way to prevent the catastrophe, or is it part of the chain of events which will make catastrophe inevitable? 
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Post by rberman on Apr 12, 2019 14:13:02 GMT -5
Oh My Gooooooood, this was so good. Just jaw-dropping. I never even heard of it until a few weeks ago, and wow, I was missing. Probably a lot people feel understandably burned by modern comics overall and are missing scattered work like this which is objectively superior to what thrilled them as kids in decades gone by. |
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Post by rberman on Apr 13, 2019 5:30:10 GMT -5
The Vision #7 “I Too Shall Be Saved By Love” (July 2016) Creative Team: Tom King writing. Michael Walsh pencils and inks. The Story: Time for a whirlwind summary of Vision’s marriage to Wanda Maximoff. Their heady romance, making out when they were supposed to be working. Their happy wedded days. The mad period when her reality-altering hexes fabricated fake children. The period that John Byrne rebooted Vision as an emotionless figure in white. The later time that he got returned to his classic colors, and Wanda had moved on to a relationship with Wonder Man, from whom Vision's brain patterns were taken in the first place. And finally, new information: Wanda gave Vision a copy of her own brain patterns so that he could make a synthezoid wife.  My Two Cents: Is this a fill-in issue? It’s got a different artist and recapitulates past events and character moments rather than advancing the plot. That smells like a fill-in issue, but a very well done one in this case. These characters have been retconned again and again, so spinning a sensible drama out of the convoluted backstory is no mean feat. It most reminds me of the Doctor Manhattan spotlight issue of Watchmen, which also originated in the need to pad out an intended six issue series so that it had twelve instead. A break in the action for character exploration is often a good idea around the halfway mark, so this works out fine even if it wasn't originally intended.  The title of this issue comes from a conversation in The Avengers #147 (Steve Englehart). The Avengers are facing down the Squadron Supreme, and Wanda is possessed by the evil Serpent Crown, but she’s able to shake it off by the thought of the Vision’s love. He hopes that love will be his salvation as well. 
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Post by rberman on Apr 14, 2019 19:07:42 GMT -5
The Vision #8 “Victorious” (August 2016) The Story: The family seems to be settling down again. Viv replays her final conversation with Chris Kinzky on an endless loop. Vision cleans the snow from the driveway. Virginia plays piano: “Life is but a dream.” Vin recites Shylock’s speech dramatically.  Victor Mancha, another of Ultron’s robotic creations, comes to visit. Vision accepts him like a brother. Like Red Tornado, Tomorrow Woman, and Vision himself, Victor was created by an evil genius to infiltrate the good guys and then betray them – in his case, in the identity of “Victorious.” He aspires to escape this fate. Victor spends time with each member of the family. He bonds over playing the stringless Vibranium-driven piano with Virginia, who is still glitching.  He visits an art gallery with Vision. He visits Chris Kinzky’s grave with Viv. He compares Vin’s fascination with Shakespeare to masturbation.  Victor is supposedly in D.C. for a government internship. But one night in the shed, Vin stumbles upon the truth. Victor is a mole working for the Avengers. As Vin backs away in distress, an agitated Victor lurches forward, shooting lightning…  My Two Cents: I never read Runaways or heard of Victor before this, but Tom King tells me all I need to know about him. The Avengers on the cover are not literally on Vision’s doorstep, but figuratively they are, through Victor, who is betraying his family based on Agatha Harkness’ vision of the future. Once again we wonder whether these events are actually bringing about the disaster she foresaw. Victor turns out to be an immature and unstable field asset, so whatever happens, the Avengers get to share in the blame.  The house across the street from the Vision’s house is for sale. Is this the Kinzky house, now vacant? We never find out whether Leon Kinzky survived the wounds Virginia gave him.  The art gallery has a picture of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. I guess Marvel can get away with this as long as they are owned by Disney.  Update: I was at the East Building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. and stumbled into the very room containing this painting. The East Building is dedicated to 20th century art, and this is Roy Lichtenstein's earliest comic book style painting, entitled "Look, Mickey" (1961). Here is my photo of the original: 
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Post by rberman on Apr 15, 2019 7:32:54 GMT -5
The Vision #9 “They Will Die In Flames” (September 2016) The Story: The first part of this issue details Victor Mancha’s addiction to Vibranium. It acts as a narcotic, but its virtue can be used up, and he has to keep finding new pieces of this rare metal. The Vision family’s vibranium-powered piano has been an unexpected windfall for him.  Back in present day, Victor uses increasing force to try to subdue Vin. The terrified boy fires his forehead laser, igniting the nearby home of George and Nora Knowles. Back in issue #1, we have already been told what happens to them: They die in the fire, as mentioned in this issue’s title.  Vision sees the fire, follows the trail of destruction back to his shed, and finds the lifeless body of his son.  My Two Cents: This has become a disaster of good intentions. Vision just wanted a family. Virginia just wanted to protect that family. Leon Kinzky just wanted a safe neighborhood. Agatha Harkness just wanted to know the future. The Avengers just wanted to protect the world from Vision. Victor just wanted to prove himself a hero rather than a son of Ultron. Any one of these alone, and the story would have had a different course. But the sum of the unintended consequences is now barreling toward (indeed, through) tragedy.  Tallying up the damage so far caused by Vision’s attempt to raise a family in the suburbs: - Grim Reaper assaulted Viv, leaving her nearly dead, then was killed himself. - Chris Kinzky was assaulted by Vin, generating conflict between Vision and the school. - Chris and Leon Kinzky, dead. - Vin, dead. - George and Nora Knowles, burned to death in their home by stray super-powers. Tom King is piling up the evidence: despite the best intention, some cultural gaps can be too broad to bridge for peaceful co-existence. This series has officially become the anti-Munsters.
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Post by rberman on Apr 16, 2019 7:21:41 GMT -5
The Vision #10 “All Will Return to Normal” (October 2016) The Story: Tony Stark deploys a force field around the Vision home, fearful that the death of Vin will incite Vision on the homicidal course foreseen by Agatha Harkness. We’re not told what justification was offered to Vision for the force field, but whatever it was, he and his family accept it docilely; Viv will get her assignments sent home from school. Sparky the dog trips the alarm accidentally; Virginia’s glitching worsens. I guess Vision has been suspended from his White House work? A line of dialogue saying so would have been nice.  Vision sits in his son’s empty room. The argument about the Redskins seems so trivial now. He plays back video footage of his son reciting “The Merchant of Venice.” He wishes he had spent more time paying attention to his son when he had the opportunity.  Vision realizes that the WW2-era lighter given him by Captain America is made of Vibranium; its properties allow him to escape through the force field surrounding his home. As he flies to murder the jailed Victor Mancha, the alerted Avengers begin to assemble against him.  My Two Cents: Vision and Viv pray for the fate of Vin’s soul, in the most touching sequence in this whole series. We recall Vin’s earlier comment that faith is the highest form of cognition; these synthezoids are demonstrating that they have achieved true humanity.  Unfortunately, humans are capable of holding grudges. Killing Victor will not achieve any positive purpose; indeed, we can think of all sorts of bad consequences it will have for Vision, his family, and many other people. Having achieved humanity, Vision is now capable of being motivated by another “higher form of cognition”: vengeance. He is no longer Red Tornado, chafing against a wicked master’s will. Now he is The Spectre, an agent of divine justice.  One important bit of plot slips by without commentary as Vision and Viv are praying: For some reason, Sparky decides to eat one of the flowers of the Everbloom plant. It’s bad news for him that this moment is deemed worthy of the reader’s attention, since Tom King has already established that those flowers only give a vision of the future after the one who consumes them from the plant is murdered.  This issue’s cover, also the cover of my hardback deluxe edition, is a nice image of Ultron’s family tree. Ultron was a murderer, and it appears his progeny are finding it harder than they thought to shake his legacy.
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Post by rberman on Apr 17, 2019 5:58:40 GMT -5
The Vision #11 “You and I Were Born for Better Things” (November 2016) The Story: Viv and Virginia discuss the consequences of all that has happened, and what will come next: No matter whether Vision succeeds or fails, his family will be deemed a menace and shut down. Virginia confesses her involvement in the deaths of Leon and Chris Kinzky. Viv is incensed and runs off. In a rage, Virginia tears Sparky to bits. Within his metal stomach she finds the Everbloom flower he consumed last issue. She consumes it herself. Does it give her a vision of the future? We’re not told.  At the prison, Vision plows his way through the Avengers standing between him and Victor Mancha. Even an appeal from Wanda falls on deaf ears. Vision simply incapacitates her and moves on.  Virginia travels to the prison, arriving just as Vision is confronting Victor. She tears out Victor’s heart, robbing Vision of his act of vengeance.  My Two Cents: Could Vision beat up the combined Avengers? Seems doubtful. But that’s what needs to happen for this story to go forward, showing that Vision has not really escaped Ultron’s original programming after all. He will fight the Avengers and win. He just needs the right incentive, the most powerful incentive. Not loyalty to his father, but loyalty to his children.  Isn’t it silly that superheroes chat while they are fighting? It’s a convention to give the writer something to do, in a genre often dominated by fight scenes. Action movies handle this problem by alternating dialogue scenes and fight scenes. A good comic book approach is to have dialogue overlying the fight scene which is not from the combatants, at least not at that moment. In this case, Tom King uses Roy Thomas’ dialogue from Avengers #57-58, in which Ultron-5 browbeats Vision with declarations about his origin, nature, and purpose.  Like a typical teenager, Viv can only process Chris’ death in terms of how it has affected her directly. Not so much what Chris’ death mean for Chris, or for the neighborhood, but the hole has it created in her own life. 
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Post by rberman on Apr 17, 2019 22:18:55 GMT -5
The Vision #12 “Spring” (December 2016) The Story: Returning home from the prison, Virginia gives an expurgated confession to Detective Lin. She tells the truth about her complicity in the deaths of Grim Reaper and the Kinzkys. She takes blame for Vision lying to Lin and later attacking the prison, saying that she tinkered with his programming.  Vision returns home from the prison as well. He changes out of his costume into business attire, only then looking for his wife in the living room. She has taken poison in punishment for her crimes. She talks with Vision until her systems stop working. He must not correct the lies she told to the police, or else Viv’s life will be ruined.  Later, walking by the D.C. Mall reflecting pool, Wanda and Viv try to make sense of what has happened. What is the purpose of parenting? Is there an ultimate beneficiary, or just an endless chain of sacrifice?  Sparky is rebuilt or replaced with a new synthepup. When Viv returns to school, she’s dressed in her most Visionary outfit (with V’s and diamonds) rather than trying to blend in. In the basement, Vision is secretly working on a synthezoid. Is it Virginia, Vin, or someone else entirely? His choice of song suggests it’s Virginia. My Two Cents: I’ve heard this series called “Marvel’s Watchmen,” which is dreadfully unfair. Such a label practically invites the reader to start enumerating things that Watchmen does which The Vision does not. I couldn’t help doing it myself. But that’s not the point. There is commonality, in that both stories recontextualize previous superhero adventure stories into explorations of the human condition. And there are so few stories about marriage and parenting in popular media that King gets points just for subject matter, even before figuring execution into the appraisal.  Alan Moore was technically working with all new characters and was free to have them die, commit despicable acts, exile themselves from Earth, or whatever. Tom King is working within the constraints of the Marvel Universe, and this last issue, more than the previous ones, shows the invisible chains. He can’t carry the story to its logical and just conclusion. Vision doesn’t pay for his hubris. Pinocchio (Virginia) takes the rap, and Gepetto (Vision) lives to create again another day. The smiling last panel seems indicative of a happy ending, but can we really buy that, given all that has come before?  Matthew Lin’s donut-eating detective colleague is named Roger Daneel. This is a reference to the robotic detective R. Daneel Olivaw in Isaac Asimov novels like “Caves of Steel.”  My “Deluxe Hardcover” edition of the collected The Vision comes with lettercols at the back and many pages showing the evolution from script through pencils, inks, and color. Many many pages, nearly totaling the length of the whole series. I’m not sure why; I would rather have paid less for fewer pages of “behind the scenes.” So, that's The Vision! This was my first exposure to Tom King, whom I really liked from the first. I take it from the lack of traffic in this thread that not many people here have read this, which is not surprising since it's relatively recent. Go get it!
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Post by rberman on Jan 10, 2020 12:38:57 GMT -5
After reading Tom King's other works The Sheriff of Babylon, and Mister Miracle, and Omega Men: The End is Near, and Heroes in Crisis, I understand better what he intended in The Vision. It's not about superheroes at all. It's about America's presence in the Middle East. The Sheriff of Babylon is about Americans covering up accidental civilian deaths in Baghdad during the US occupation. Just like Virginia, trying to sweep the Grim Reaper's death under the rug. It's about how you can't have a powerful family (the US Army) move into a civilian neighborhood (The Green Zone) and expect everything to be hunky dory. The setup guarantees a tragic outcome, and all the goodwill in the world won't prevent it. The power disparity automatically inflates every little interaction to a dangerous level.  Domesticity under those circumstances is just a dream.   |
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