4 out of 5

When I was suffering the the Vertigo Quarterly mags in the hopes that they would recapture the Vgo anthologies of yore, literally the only entry that I didn’t have to justify writing was by a dude with whom I was then unfamiliar: Tom King.  I then noticed his name on some Robin books, but with Tim Seeley, which, by my logic, marked the title as more comicy than I’d probably dig.  (And a later sampling of the series proved this.)  And then then, Tom King was on The Vision, and Sheriff of Babylon, and I suspected we had another burgeoning star in our midst.  But, yeah, you got me, it was his CIA past that hooked me, and made me wonder if his reliance on the 9-panel grid in Vision and SoB was less cheeky and more calculated.

Somewhat unrelated, Devin Faraci has advised not giving backstory in reviews.  HE IS CORRECT.  ALAS, THIS IS MY SITE.

The point being that King definitely caught my attention without any prior hype inflating expectations.  But I remain cautious as to how he’s going to apply his interestingly technical layout / writing style to ongoing series, especially given that the star has now burgeoned and he’s signed an exclusive with DC to write non other than Batman.  The potential positive to this is that this might help to reign Vision in to the immense promise of its first few issues: namely being a truly insular Marvel tale that defines the All New All Different banner under which it, and several other titles, were published.  Elsewise, the conclusion of this arc, which starts to wind the story, potentially, into broader hero waters, portends things going in that direction all awesome Marvel and DC books inevitably go: toward normalcy.  (Which is ironic, given this series’ heavy meditation on that concept.)  For excepting a giant force of change like Morrison, every great writer who’s spun up a fancy new take on a classic character eventually gets sucked into the editorial tide, and you turn around one day and realize you’re reading a book more out of habit than interest.

Is Tom King a great writer?  Moments of The Vision indicate this.

Vision, due to recent Marvel events we don’t care about, has become the Avengers government liason, living in Virginia in a suburban neighborhood.  …With a wife, and a son, and a daughter, all of which he created.  “What Is It To Be Human?” isn’t a new topic by any means, but King’s abstraction of this to a whole family trying to justify their existences is an amazingly simple but amazingly amazing way of exploring the concept.  And he doesn’t cheat: Vision and crew remain synthezoidy throughout, correcting one another on accurate representation of words and emotions, and advising one another on the best way to seem, you know, normal.  The kid Visions, of course, were created with two “improperly mature” brains, requiring them to go through a regular “growing” process as teens, and the mysterious source of “Viv’s” brain patterns – Vision’s wife – seem to have allowed for some emotional quirks as well.  All of this offers the perfect palette on which King may paint a subversive picture of the nuclear family, written in a much more open-ended and dark fashion than we’re used to seeing in a Marvel comic.

And needless to say, things do not go well.  Bad decisions are made, and are covered up.  And now the fake family has to figure out how to be normal through that as well.  (…Just like the rest of us, natch.)

Occasionally, things are a bit too on the nose.  Even using the “robots gotta speak the truth” template, the narrator underlines things a bit too blatantly here and there, and there’s the over-arching problem that a lot of things happen but nothing really happens.  It’s hard to see this as a true story arc because of how it’s constructed; it almost feels like six issues of introduction.  It’s very purposefully written, and at series end, I suspect it the structure will prove to be the best one, but I admittedly walked away from each issue incredibly interested, though not exactly satisfied that I had anything substantial to mull over.  And I do think King wants us to mull over some things.

Gabriel Hernandez Walta, who kicked ass on Magneto, kicks even more amazing ass here, with Jordie Bellaire doing an amazing coloring job that supports Walta’s light, sketchy style.  And I kept marveling (geez, no pun intended) at the lettering design (Clayton Cowles); the different voices – notably the Visions’ stylized balloons – and sound effects and pacing are such an incredible part of the atmosphere that the book, seriously, wouldn’t seem half as smart without Cowles’ production.

The Vision is, absolutely, different.  You feel like you’re reading a Vertigo book.  (A classic one.)  But Tom King is still an unproven quantity to me, and the conclusionless nature of this first arc hasn’t changed that.  That being noted, there is no doubt that I will be reading this to the end, and probably checking out what happens over in Bat world when that starts up.