Monday Review: The Visions #1 & #2

This particular comic wasn’t even tangential to my radar. Vision is a fascinating character to be sure but his story has been played out several times without a ton of variation. It’s a good story, or was the first several times, but it isn’t a story I feel the need to revist.

A preview of issue #1 sparked my curiosity, however, referencing some odd and twisted moments that, if properly aligned, could make for a compelling and interesting story very different from that in which Vision has previously featured.

The first two issues do exactly that and they do it quite successfully.

Property of Marvel Comics

Vision, assigned as government liaison for the Avengers, Vision decides to begin anew. He creates for himself that which he sees not only as the American, but the human, dream: a wife, a daughter, a son, steady work, and a house in the suburbs. So logically reasoned and carefully planned is this life, a life he has sought since his inception and almost achieved so many times, lost so many times, he is blind to what could go awry. Terribly, horribly awry.

His greatest obstacle?

The very thing he wants most.

Humanity.

Because who wouldn’t want to be human, right? In the past, achieving humanity was Vision’s Mjorlnir-worthy mission.

Unfortunately, faith in human nature isn’t once what it was, neither in comics world nor in our own. The world is minute now and we we can explore it so easily, virtually if not actually. We should be kinder. We should be wiser. We should be more accepting.

As a larger group, we’ve failed. Anyone with half a brain must question how much good there is in us, how much that is worthy of emulation. We should have learned from our mistakes, when we should be wiser, when the world is so small and truth so readily available, have made anyone with half a brain question how much good there is in us.

Which changes the nature of Vision’s mission from worthy to something less pleasant. Less savory. Knowing the worst of humanity, Vision still tries to emulate it, to integrate with it. And he drags other sentient creatures into his obsession.

His mission, as it stands, is extremely selfish and more than a little cruel as regards his family.

Regardless, we find the Visions in the vicious lands of suburban Virginia (I have been there. It is vicious) trying to live a normal, human life. To make a home, go to work, read the paper, go to school, make friends with the neighbors. To fit in.

In a way, the achieve their goal; like everyone else, they are judged on how they look and how they speak. They’re the subject of gossip because they’re different and, to so many, different is terrifying. Because kids learn from their parents, the Vision children are bullied and attacked. The Visions are a curiosity, a curiosity people love to hate because they are so easily recognizable.

Like those of us with tattoos. Women who choose to wear a hijab. With dark skin or prosthetic limbs.

Property of Marvel Comics

This is not a tale, like his pervious ones, of why Vision should want to experience humanity.

It’s a cautionary tale. A warning to Vision and to us.

It’s a lens through which we are asked to examine our ugly side. The power of our fear. The magnitude of our capacity for hate.

If you have a decent bone in your body, you’ll take the message to heart. You’ll be nicer to the next stranger you see. You’ll teach you kids to befriend the kid who’s different, no matter if that difference is flesh versus cyborg, Muslim versus Jew, black versus white, or any variation thereof.

Disturbing. Difficult. But definitely worth the read.

Four out of five fingers on the hand of glory for The Visions.