VISION #1

Capsule Review

I really like this book, which is the kiss of death — any 2015 Marvel comic so thoroughly aimed at the heart of a guy who lives in 1978 will find it has a vanishingly small readership. It is a minor miracle that this book exists and I am resolved to enjoy it while it lasts. The book looks up-to-date, but it has an old school ethos, including captions with honest-to-gosh omniscient third-person narration, and a direct call-back to one of my favorite Avengers runs of all time. And there is even some Bronze Age-style social commentary here, as the Vision and his artificial wife and children move into the suburbs of Washington D.C., and try to fit in, conjuring the dread of “the other” in their WASPy neighbors who try to welcome them and credit themselves for being so liberal as to embrace the synthezoids next door. This Vision has a wife, and children, created in his own image. They are just sufficiently defective that they are destined to spin out of control, a sense of doom that writer Tom King marvelously teases out, leaving the reader to survey the distress signals against a banal backdrop of the Vision having minor disagreements with his wife, and the kids attending their first day of school. Gabriel Hernandez Walta perches on the edge of the uncanny valley with Visions that are just … barely … able to pass for normal. But there is nothing normal about this book, which has one of the most singular voices of this Marvel re-launch, embracing the opportunity to genuinely test the limits of “All-New and All-Different.” It’s probably doomed.

Approachability For New Readers

It helps to have an affection for the Vision, and to know his past … without those things I think this is just a Twilight Zone story for new readers.

Read #2?

Absolutely! I only hope this series can reach a conclusion before sales-related cancellation breaks it up for parts.

Sales Rank

#54 November

Read more about the Avengers at Longbox Graveyard

• Avengers — Kree/Skrull War
• Longbox Shortbox
• The Bride of Ultron
• Avengers Gallery

Read more capsule reviews of Marvel’s All-New All-Different rolling reboot.