Not Your Typical Vision: A Review of The Vision, Vols. 1 and 2 / Matthew Quann

Not Your Typical Vision:

A Review of The Vision, Volumes 1 and 2

Matthew Quann

Volume 1: Little Worse than a Man

The hype is real!

Aside from a select few comics, I’ve switched from floppies to trade-waiting in the wake of Marvel’s Secret Wars. The comics are a bit more affordable in collection, and I don’t feel as obligated to continue reading a series in trades if the first one isn’t very good. But there’s been a few series whose near unanimous praise has me itching to dig in, like Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Black Panther and Tom King’s The Vision.

I’d heard the Vision series was an amalgam of Breaking Bad and the wackiest stuff the Marvel Universe had to offer. I am also all-over the fact that this series will be twelve issues long, a proper maxi-series, that is not required to dive in and out of Universe-wide events. Luckily, the praise is well earned and I was both entertained and routinely surprised by The Vision’s narrative.

In brief: The Vision has crafted a synthezoid family in his image in an attempt to live amongst humans in the suburbs of Washington. Of course, this all goes horribly wrong by the end of the first issue, which is as perfect an intro to a comic series as I’ve read. There is an unseen narrator (who is revealed by Issue 3) who establishes the exceptionally dark and foreboding tone of the series. The reader is made aware from the first few pages that Vision’s experiment will result in death and disorder, helping to build tension with each misstep the Vision makes.

Gabriel Walta’s art is highly consistent. He doesn’t use the straight lines and well-shaped characters that you might see from someone like Jim Cheung, but his line-work is ideal for the unsettling story of The Vision. The colourist, Jordie Bellaire, also deserves accolades for being one of the best in the industry. His colour choices help to establish the serious tone of the series and kept me feeling like doom lurked just around the next page.

While the ending of this volume is a tad predictable and concerning (I hope the scope doesn’t become too wide in the second, and final, volume), I was totally rapt up in the story the whole way through. I have so many questions I want answered. Whose brain patterns did Vision use to create Virginia? How will it all come crashing down? Will anyone make it out of this one alive?

This isn’t your typical superhero comic.

The Vision makes good use of continuity, but requires no prior knowledge of the Marvel Universe other than knowing that Vision is an android who is an Avenger. Its tone is so atypical of capes and spandex comics that it is worth the price of admission just to try a series under full sway a writer. File this one next to Fraction and Aja’s Hawkeye for being a series that dares to do more with a superhero than the average fare. Highly recommended.

Volume 2: Little Better than a Beast

This is a worthy, if not entirely satisfactory, conclusion to The Vision maxi-series. I really, really enjoyed the first volume’s moody, dread-filled, dark take on the Marvel Universe’s favourite synthezoid. It felt like an independent-publisher take on a classic Marvel character. However, as I feared in my review of the first volume, the imminent entrance of the rest of the spandex- and armour-clad super-folk does put a bit of a damper on the second half of this series.

I think that all faults laid at the feet of this volume can be traced to the problem of the shared universe.

It’s sort of like how you have to suspend disbelief when Spidey is in the toughest slug-fest of his life. Why doesn’t Thor jump in to thrash Doctor Octopus? Best to quiet those thoughts and pretend like everybody is off fighting the Shi’ar. Alternatively, it is sometimes pleasant to imagine that the characters can exist off on their own during solo adventures, and they link up when convenient. Here, The Vision suffers only in small quantities. The central conflict revolves around the family unit introduced in the first volume and the fallout from their, surprisingly murderous, actions.

The other big hindrance is the copious continuity that was laid before me in Issues 7 and 8. The Vision and Scarlet Witch’s complex relationship requires the kind of understanding known only to the most elite of comic nerds. Luckily, I knew all of this and was pleased with the issue. The downside: I was hoping to give this to a few friends who enjoy comics but can’t be bothered with the heavy-duty continuity. The other bit is the introduction of Victor Mancha. His introduction makes sense given the whole concept of family, but I can almost imagine my buddies putting the book down and being like, “Are you serious? Ultron had another kid?”

I’d like to note that I love the Marvel Universe and all its idiosyncrasies, difficulties, highs, and lows. I’d also like to note that a love of the form does not exempt it from criticism.

But, even with those complaints, this is still one of the tightest series from Marvel in recent memory. I mean “tightest” in both the fist-bumping-bros and structural sense. All of the consequences in this book can be clearly traced back to actions in the first volume. In that sense, I can see why many reviewers have drawn comparisons with consequentialist television show Breaking Bad. Of course, this isn’t that show, but it is as close as I can imagine the Marvel Universe getting.

The Vision should be essential reading for all Marvel comic readers. It is a mature, dark story that is able to play to the uniqueness of the Marvel interconnected universe and only rarely suffers for it. If nothing else, I hope this prompts Marvel to engage more writers in maxi-series. Wouldn’t it be interesting if every year a new writer came onto the scene to drop their particular, AHEM, vision onto a preexisting character? Though it might not work for every character, I think it would introduce a freshness to the Marvel Universe much like this series. Think Fraction and Aja’s Hawkeye, Hickman’s Avengers, and now King and Walta’s The Vision. These are comics worth noting: they are doing different things.