The Vision: Deluxe Edition Review

It’s rare that a comic gets heralded as an Eisner Award Winner, however, ‘The Vision’ by Tom King has managed to pick this up.

But does it deserve it?

Obviously, being a huge Batman fan, I know King from his rebirth run and whilst on the whole, it’s pretty good, there are still a lot of elements to it that feel well…a bit disappointing.

Throughout this review, I will be discussing The Vision in full detail to let you know if it delivers on the hype, or if like the Author’s other work, it feels like something is missing.

There will be heavy spoilers here, so if you don’t want to know anything going into the book then I highly recommend that you skip to the score.

For everyone else, let’s dive into The Vision: Deluxe Edition by Tom King.

I Had A Vision Of Love

We join The Visions as they try and fit in with a suburban neighborhood. The Visions are a synthetic Nuclear family created by the titular character himself and the story follows them as they try and calibrate to normal life.

On-premise alone this is pretty captivating but from the off the work really captures your imagination. The family are desperate to appear normal and in doing so appear completely alien. It’s a masterstroke that instantly provides many laugh out loud moments that will instantly have you able to relate with the work.

This is a piece about identity that feels ever more relevant in today’s social climate and those who have struggled to fit in in high school (and let’s face it, who hasn’t) will lap up the storyline in all its apparent blandness.

Eventually, things do heat up as the divide between The Visions and the population of their little town grows larger and this makes for a captivating read. Imagine Doctor Manhattan with a full family just like him and you’ll get the idea. It’s fascinating, unique and early on had me hooked.

The Villainy You Teach Me

What becomes apparent is that through their logistics, The Visions are not really capable of existing alongside the everyday normal population due to their supremacy.

One of the fearful neighbours who catches Mrs. Vision burying one of her thwarted enemies in the back yard sets off a chain of events that eventually leads to him murdering his own son and it becomes quite clear early on that love them or hate them, they cause despair.

All things spiral out of controlling and Vision ends up doing some sick and twisted things that are actually hilarious to watch play out due to the context of the Family still believing they are just doing what humans do.

It really works as an outstanding satire on our species and those with a dark sense of humour will find a lot of laughs to be had here.

“YOU DAMN TOASTER”

In the standout story of the collection we watch the original relationship between Scarlett Witch and Vision play out.

King does a fantastic job of cramming 40 years of history into just a handful of pages and it beautifully showcases how the things that initially tend to be a strong point in a relationship are often the things that end up breaking it.

This is mirrored in the present by the breaking of the relationship of Mr. And Mrs. Vision. The latter, who strives for perfection in her appearance of humanity, is soon hit with the contradiction that there is no perfection in humanity. The only thing perfect about humans is how perfectly flawed we all are. This makes a critical system failure start to creep in and she really struggles with processing all of the hypocrisy around her.

All Will Return To Normal

In order to find out exactly what is going on in The Vision household, The Avengers send in a spy in the form of Ultron’s other Son and The Visions brother, Victor Mancha.

Unfortunately, as he is still coming to grips with his powers, he accidentally kills The Vision’s son when the boy discovers what Mancha is up to.

This sends Vision onto a warpath that eventually leads to him taking the Avengers head on in the books first major action set piece. It’s outstanding to behold and really showcases just how powerful that The Vision is.

There are several twists and turns and ultimately the ending is a beautiful demonstration of just how human The Visions really were afterall.

It’s the perfect final chapter and instantly makes this book required reading.