Spoiler: I might be done reading Tom King.

I came by Mr. King honestly, through a short in Vertigo Black.  Being the only story I truly liked from that series, I poked around to see what else he was doing and those cool Omega Men books I’d initially passed on – due to their Green Lantern ties, that being a character I’m not much interested in – came up in my searches.  Along with those searches  came the rave reviews for that title.  I similarly passed on his Grayson work as it was co-authored with Tim Seeley, with whom I haven’t had much success, but then there was Vision.  This seemed like the in-road: A solo take on a character that might allow for some risks, pairing the writer with an awesome artist.

So this isn’t exactly me saying I was there before the hype because I wasn’t; Omega Men had already earned Tom fans, and I joined Vision a couple of issues in, after it’d released to raves. It’s more clarifying how I started this review: I feel I came by his work honestly.

And I feel I’m stepping away from it with equal honesty, not a gut reaction to X, Y or Z.  I did end up reading Omega Men and was unimpressed, and Tom’s Batman hasn’t done much for me so far, but Sheriff of Babylon has been pretty fantastic (review of its ‘first season’ conclusion pending) and I did sincerely dig – with some pretty minor exceptions – the opening half of Vision.  But its conclusion wore on me – nigh to the point of annoyance – and repeated some of what I didn’t like about Omega Men.  So I think I’ll be bowing out of the King club, after completing the current Batman arc as a sort of double-check on that decision.

It is a pre-determined conclusion, which doesn’t help some of the criticisms I’ll offer, but does mean that the series undeniably feels complete.  But: I don’t imagine these things arrive / are written at as one bulk script, so although planning might have outlined where we’d end up, I don’t doubt that Tom’s increasingly busy schedule, the encouraging fan response, and the general passing of time between issue 1 and 12 may have indirectly resulted in tonal shifts along the way.  That’s not an accusation, simply a reality, and me trying to justify why I might like how it starts but not how it ends.

Because the story that, to me – which is important to acknowledge that maybe I was just reading more into the concepts I wanted to see –  was poking at the darkness behind all our personalities, the true lacking logic of identity, funneled, funnily, through a robot’s point of view… that story turned into some family bonding schmaltz.  People still died, dogs were still kicked, but by the severalth repetition of some key lines Tom wanted to tattoo on our eyeballs, it became apparent that we were going to be reaching for a point instead of just casting us adrift in the darkness, and that point had to somehow wrap around to designate a carrot for That Which Drives Us, and I guess, like, it’s family, or whatever.

I’m simplifying.  Tom – the whole team – put a lot of work into this.  But it was such a creepy, solemn contemplation at the start that my adoration for such bleakness can’t but feel disappointed when things got more plotty.  Incensed murders and digging-the-hole-deeper coverups: That’s some noir shit.  Later: Actions redeemed via sacrifice, and lets throw in a happy pup as well.  That’s some audience pleasing schmear.

The through-the-crucible happy ending would be fine if it felt earned, but much like Omega Men, there’s a character turning point for our lead that’s required for the last chapters’ shit/fan hitting, and though letter writers seemed to feel that such a turn had been percolating, I didn’t feel that at all.  It just felt like a plot maneuver that had been falsely justified by overwrought metaphors and a “here’s my point again for those in the cheap seats” narrative.  This does seem fitting with Tom’s writing approach as I imagine it, a theory partially informed by his admittance of obsessing over his process in the letters col: That his story must hit certain beats at certain points, come Hell or high water.  Unusual for a writer?  Not at all.  But the balance between organic storytelling and being a slave to your outline is a tricky one, and I feel like the balance teetered in this case.  On the plus side, I cannot deny that that (supposed) planning and thought is visible.  I might not like where the story went, and that it might not match the first half effectively, but isolated, these issues were absolutely meditated upon extensively, and I do think that the poetic, metered style of Tom’s narrative voice is a great addition to superhero comics.  Flip-flopping between backhanded compliments and insults, I think the end result doesn’t say half as much as it “sounds” like it does, but it’s adult writing, with zero tang of Biff Bop Pow that new readers might assume are still the sole contents of our beloved floppies.  That’s pretty powerful, and possibly why this title has had appeal to a larger group: You feel like you’re reading, and not just flipping pages.

Bloop.

And what about the art, whilst you read them pages?  Welp, here’s some sacrilege: Due to Tom’s page breakdown and purposefully repetitive dialogue / narrative structure, while Walta / Bellaire were instrumental in defining the somber feeling of the title, the panels become incredibly predictable.  Tom briefly speaks to some behind-the-scenes layout decisions in a particular issue, where they broke from their usual grid, but again, it just didn’t do anything for me.  I’d been trained into the drone of the tone for too long for it to matter.  Walta worked with the grid a bit too seamlessly in a way.  On a meta level, a repeated in-story mantra of things floating through other things was communicated by this unity of art and writing, but I’m not sure that was intentional, and if so, maybe not the best intention for holding my attention.  I much preferred (in this case) Omega Men’s use of the grid as a jail cell, restraining the art.  Again, as with the writing: The effort is unmistakable, and isolated, these pages are gorgeous.  But within context of the story, I fell out of love and grew bored.

So here we are.  Vision was a unique experience, and despite my lack of connection with it overall, an agreed important one for comic readers, introducing another distinctly literary voice to the bullpen.  It is a work of art, with visible skill and thought applied to each page.  Had I come to this arc first, I think I would have been floored by it.  But putting it together with the whole series exposes, to me, flaws in its pacing, and a general overwroughtness that trivialized what I interpreted as its themes.