(no subject)
A synthezoid. Whatever.
Are you up on Marvel? I am not completely up on Marvel. I am a shiny new fan and I haven't been hurt yet. But I have figured out more or less what I like, and what I like is also shiny and adventuresome, so even though I am not entirely sure what an "annual" is I picked up the Avengers Assemble Annual #1 because I like comics that make Tony Stark naked* and I am interested in the Vision.
*He lost a bet. Hulk was there too. Spidey took a picture.
The Vision is basically an android, albeit an inexplicably bright-red cape-wearing android, who started out evil but got free will and turned good. He was also, for a while, married to the Scarlet Witch, who conjured them up some babies: twin sons Thomas and William. Who were, uh, horribly destroyed by a supervillain, because it turned out that some of the raw material that went into making magic babies came from Mephisto, lord of the underworld, aka Marvel Satan. Good job there, Wanda.
So Vizh and Wanda broke up, and he seems to have consoled himself with the though that the twins weren't real children anyway, just illusions she conjured up somehow. Wanda, meanwhile, was on a downward spiral of grief and insanity that culminated with her going on a reality-warping rampage against all the Avengers, manifesting all their worst nightmares, which included taking control of Vision's body and forcing him to attack Avengers' Mansion. He was apparently conscious at the time but unable to stop himself; She-Hulk had to tear him apart.
He just got rebuilt recently (in comics-time) and this is the shit he has had to get a handle on:
--finding out that Wanda was the one who betrayed everyone and used him as a suicide bomb
--finding out that the twins were in fact real boys, who were reincarnated and became Young Avengers...
--...as did another android, also called Vision, built from the same parts but with a different personality...
--...and while they all moved Heaven and Earth, or rather, Time and Space, to find Wanda, rescue her from Dr. Doom and get her sanity back, they apparently never thought to ask where their robo-soul-dad was...
--...which was in a pile of loose parts in a warehouse somewhere, because Tony and Hank Pym were kind of preoccupied with Avengering (Hank: "I was a Skrull at the time!") and took forever to actually fix him.
So, yeah. That's a lot to deal with. Which is probably why, when Vizh and Wanda see each other again for the first time in the AvX arc, he tells her off and kicks her out of the mansion. This is basically how most people who are not Young Avengers react to Wanda at this point--she did commit mutant genocide, after all--but in this case it's particularly personal and extremely ugly.
So to Avengers Assemble Annual #1: Company Man.
This is Vision's side of the story, and a tastefully understated look at post-traumatic stress. He's got a lot of understandable anger and unresolved pain: at his friends, at Wanda, at the Young Avengers collectively and Billy, Tommy and Young Vision individually, etc. Some of the other Avengers are trying to help him cope (Carol, Quicksilver) but others (the aforementioned Tony and Hank) would seem to prefer that the whole thing be water under the bridge. The actual plot hinges on a corporate-sponsored super called the Sunturion who's started lashing out at his employers; while Vision is trying to help the other Avengers contain him, he's also sympathizing with him a little too much, and can't take the advice he's dishing out. Take this dialog:
VISION: I understand what it is to be other than human. To give your life to an organization. I know it's easier to lash out--in frantic bursts of action--than to come to terms with one's limitations. One's pain. And the pain we bring to others. [...]
SUNTURION: And when you asked for help...the Avengers gave it?
VISION: I...they always have in the past.
And the ending is...drastic. But Vision does realize that Avengering is not what he needs to be doing right now, and so he steps away, over the rest of the team's protests. This is actually quite similar to what Wanda does at the end of Children's Crusade, the miniseries in which the Young Avengers rescue her and get partially killed doing it, and for similar reasons: to do some soul-searching about who they really are.
And in the last two panels, Vizh finally meets Billy face-to-face for the first time.
D'AWWW!
SO MANY ROBOT FEELS.
DAMMIT MARVEL.
Are you up on Marvel? I am not completely up on Marvel. I am a shiny new fan and I haven't been hurt yet. But I have figured out more or less what I like, and what I like is also shiny and adventuresome, so even though I am not entirely sure what an "annual" is I picked up the Avengers Assemble Annual #1 because I like comics that make Tony Stark naked* and I am interested in the Vision.
*He lost a bet. Hulk was there too. Spidey took a picture.
The Vision is basically an android, albeit an inexplicably bright-red cape-wearing android, who started out evil but got free will and turned good. He was also, for a while, married to the Scarlet Witch, who conjured them up some babies: twin sons Thomas and William. Who were, uh, horribly destroyed by a supervillain, because it turned out that some of the raw material that went into making magic babies came from Mephisto, lord of the underworld, aka Marvel Satan. Good job there, Wanda.
So Vizh and Wanda broke up, and he seems to have consoled himself with the though that the twins weren't real children anyway, just illusions she conjured up somehow. Wanda, meanwhile, was on a downward spiral of grief and insanity that culminated with her going on a reality-warping rampage against all the Avengers, manifesting all their worst nightmares, which included taking control of Vision's body and forcing him to attack Avengers' Mansion. He was apparently conscious at the time but unable to stop himself; She-Hulk had to tear him apart.
He just got rebuilt recently (in comics-time) and this is the shit he has had to get a handle on:
--finding out that Wanda was the one who betrayed everyone and used him as a suicide bomb
--finding out that the twins were in fact real boys, who were reincarnated and became Young Avengers...
--...as did another android, also called Vision, built from the same parts but with a different personality...
--...and while they all moved Heaven and Earth, or rather, Time and Space, to find Wanda, rescue her from Dr. Doom and get her sanity back, they apparently never thought to ask where their robo-soul-dad was...
--...which was in a pile of loose parts in a warehouse somewhere, because Tony and Hank Pym were kind of preoccupied with Avengering (Hank: "I was a Skrull at the time!") and took forever to actually fix him.
So, yeah. That's a lot to deal with. Which is probably why, when Vizh and Wanda see each other again for the first time in the AvX arc, he tells her off and kicks her out of the mansion. This is basically how most people who are not Young Avengers react to Wanda at this point--she did commit mutant genocide, after all--but in this case it's particularly personal and extremely ugly.
So to Avengers Assemble Annual #1: Company Man.
This is Vision's side of the story, and a tastefully understated look at post-traumatic stress. He's got a lot of understandable anger and unresolved pain: at his friends, at Wanda, at the Young Avengers collectively and Billy, Tommy and Young Vision individually, etc. Some of the other Avengers are trying to help him cope (Carol, Quicksilver) but others (the aforementioned Tony and Hank) would seem to prefer that the whole thing be water under the bridge. The actual plot hinges on a corporate-sponsored super called the Sunturion who's started lashing out at his employers; while Vision is trying to help the other Avengers contain him, he's also sympathizing with him a little too much, and can't take the advice he's dishing out. Take this dialog:
VISION: I understand what it is to be other than human. To give your life to an organization. I know it's easier to lash out--in frantic bursts of action--than to come to terms with one's limitations. One's pain. And the pain we bring to others. [...]
SUNTURION: And when you asked for help...the Avengers gave it?
VISION: I...they always have in the past.
And the ending is...drastic. But Vision does realize that Avengering is not what he needs to be doing right now, and so he steps away, over the rest of the team's protests. This is actually quite similar to what Wanda does at the end of Children's Crusade, the miniseries in which the Young Avengers rescue her and get partially killed doing it, and for similar reasons: to do some soul-searching about who they really are.
And in the last two panels, Vizh finally meets Billy face-to-face for the first time.
D'AWWW!
SO MANY ROBOT FEELS.
DAMMIT MARVEL.