"Humanity Through The Eyes Of Synthezoids"
Title: The Vision
Author/Artist: Tom King & Gabriel Hernández Walta
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Category: Heroes
Review by Brayden (they/them)
Other Favourite Titles Include:
Tom King is one of those names in comics that tends to be associated to statements like “best book of the year” and “the Eisner winning…”, so to shamefully say that I hadn’t read any of his work yet actually gives me a great position for this review! This was my first dive into the work of Tom King and can I just start off by saying that I now get the hype. I was told to do ‘The Vision‘ first before ‘Mister Miracle‘ since it only apparently gets better from here on out? Which is crazy to hear because this book was seriously excellent!
Never has a book made me feel so intellectual and so bewildered at the same time. I feel that it’s a good jumping in point for King’s work as the setting of Marvel Comics gave me just enough points of reference to not feel like I was getting lost. It was as though being familiar with Vision & Wanda as characters gave me little arm floaties in the ocean that is King’s analysis of humanity through the eyes of a sythezoid who just wants to feel normal and have a family.
If you don’t enjoy the feeling of something deep down being wrong and unsettling under the façade of everything being okay… boy howdy will you struggle to read this! Vision has created his own little nuclear family and is trying desperately to live a more normal life. But can you achieve a normal life when your children arrive at school by floating down from the sky and get referred to as “things” rather than kids?
More psychological thriller than superhero action, this story is fantastic and is paced excellently to maximise the growing tension of Vision’s family life slowly breaking at the seams. All of this is beautifully portrayed by Gabriel Hernández Walta whose illustration work manages to capture the emotionality in near-emotionless characters and present an overall tone that I haven’t seen in any comic I’ve read as of late.
From their new pet synthezoid dog, to their slightly off-putting family routine of sitting at the dinner table not eating anything, The Visions are a complicated bunch.
Oh, and if you watched ‘WandaVision‘ on Disney+ and thought “wow I wonder if they got the idea for a bunch of this tone from some comics?”, then yes pick this up and also check out ‘House of M‘ & any of the ‘Young Avengers‘ series.
Don’t be like me. Don’t take so long to read this excellent comic. Pick it up as quick as you possibly can and smash the whole thing in one or two sittings, then tell your friends to do the same. You will thank me.
