The Vision, a Marvel comic book by author Tom King and illustrations by Gabriel Hernandes Walta
This is my second reading of this Vision standalone comic book. I do not re-read books often but this one is definitely worth it. I realized that I have reviews for a few of Tom King’s books but not actually for my two favorites since I read them prior to writing reviews. Re-reads are now in order!
Vision used to be a fairly unknown character. He became more of a household name with the Avengers movies but he skyrocketed from Disney’s Wandavision tv show. I watched the first season of Wandavision, the first 4 episodes were great, original, and interesting. Then it got Disney all over it and stopped taking any risks, went back and retconned a few of them, and turned it into a teaser for other Marvel properties to come. Lame.
So anyway, Vision. In The Vision he is no longer married to Wanda and has decided he wants to attempt a “normal” life. He has made himself a family of fellow Synthezoids and moves to the Virginia suburbs outside of Washington DC. He’s taking a nice government job, in association with the Avengers of course, and intends on simply fitting in with society.
Unfortunately, he looks different and people don’t take too kindly to that. The family is harassed, vandalized, and threatened. The mother of the family refuses to accept this treatment and will protect the family at all costs.
Throughout the peril of being an outsider in white suburbia the Grim Reaper shows up to try to kill the family while Vision is away at work. There’s some backstory needed here, Vision’s consciousness was created from the brainwaves of Wonder Man, Grim Reaper’s brother. He’s now resentful that Vision gets to live the life that Wonder Man should have had.
He shows up to kill the family and make Vision suffer but he doesn’t take into account that the family is not helpless. Mom kills him in defense and then panics. She decides to hide the evidence and not tell her husband. A neighbor sees her bury the body and begins to blackmail her. The main plot of the story has to deal with all of this happening behind Vision’s back.
Throughout the book King tells us all along who will die in the end and what everything is building up to. It is not a surprise when we reach that point but it is still very effective, if not more so. This leans in to the theme of destiny and if it can ever be avoided. Is fate written in stone? Can you change your programming?
The book also explores how far a character should go to protect their family. It does not matter that this family isn’t human. What matters is that they love each other and were attempting to live peacefully before it became clear that that was not an option.
The Vision is the first Tom King book that I ever read and it’s the one that keeps me wanting to read more. He has a unique voice in comic books today, one that stands out from the sea of mass production. He took who was then an unknown character and made him shine. He still shines in this book even with people now being familiar with a very different take on Vision.
If you are trying to get a friend into comic books this is a great place to start. This 12 issue run doesn’t require a ton of backstory to understand it and it doesn’t deal with a lot of super powers and complicated lore. It’s simply a story about a family that wanted to fit in but prejudice was against them.
5/5 not robots 🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖
Please consider using the following amazon affiliate link to purchase this book, it’s at no extra cost to you and would really help me out, thanks!
For more Marvel check out Thanos Redemption
Tom King is my Jam. I really enjoyed this comic too.
He’s the king! Ahem, king. Get it.