Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics, entertainment, marvel, Tom King, vision, Watchmen

It Says Vision #7. But It Feels More Like Watchmen #9.

I've been calling The Vision by Tom King and Gabriel Hernandez Walta (and now Michael Walsh) with Jordie Bellaire, Marvel's Watchmen.

With today's issue I'm hardly going to stop.

If Marvel play it right, treat it right, package it right, The Vision #1-#12 should be a perennial seller, both a critical and commercial hit. And then a few decades later Zack Snyder will destroy.

Next month, Tom King starts up with DC's Batman Rebirth but he will leave Marvel with a twelve issue series they should be able to package up and sell in a collected form forever.

It is as good – better even – than the Fraction/Aja/Pulido/Wu run on Hawkeye. It could well be one of the best runs Marvel have ever published alongside Unstable Molecules, Groo, Journey Into Mystery and The One.

In Watchmen we saw Doctor Manhattan leave Earth saying that he was fascinated by life, and thought he'd go off and make some. This is, to some extent, that story. The Vision, a robot android whose life decisions in the past seemed to doom his love, Wanda Maximoff, now trying to recreate what was once denied him by creating a family of his own, but a family with many problems of its own that he remains unaware of. Including a mother willing to murder to protect her children.

In today's issue, which is reminiscent of Watchmen #9's look back at the history of Manhattan, so we see moments from the Vision's life – specifically that with the Scarlet Witch – and the circumstances of his non-existent family with her.

Reviving the John Byrne storyline that took the Steve Englehart plot of Scarlet Witch and Vision having children through magic, egged on by Agatha Harkness…

Only revealed to be phantom pregnancies given mutant/magic form by John Byrne…

…and done away with. And the memories deleted by Agatha Harkness who really seemed to have it in for Scarlet Witch over this… Despite, you know, being the person who persuaded her to do it in the first place.

Things changed later, the children were revealed to have been reincarnated as the Young Avengers Speed and Wiccan. Yes, it's complicated. But today's Vision sees that conversation between Scarlet Witch and the Vision.

The Vision's own subsequent reformation after being taken apart and put back together in a very different fashion is also retold, in relation to his family.

To some degree, as with Dr Manhattan, this is The Vision questioning his reality as a fictional being, and striving to be part of the creative fictional process. Jokes are made that gain added pathos. People interpreted as objects and vice versa. Fully immersed into decades-old Marvel continuity, yet absolutely fresh and accessible. And each page, each moment told with measured expertise and skill.

Five issues to go and I have no idea where. But looking back with hindsight it will no doubt seem obvious.

Vision #7, out today. What else were you going to do with your money?

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