ICYMI: Everything is Imperfectly Normal in ‘The Vision’ #1

The last few ICYMIs on this site have featured Scooby-Doo meeting Harley Quinn, the Justice League teaming up with the Creature Commandos, and a dude taking a cinderblock to the spine. In that context, inviting the new neighbours round to show off what you've done with the place might not really seem worth celebrating.

It's for that exact reason, though, that the opening scene of Tom King and Gabriel Hernandez Walta's The Vision #1 is interesting. This is the first issue of a new superhero comic trying to sell readers on a relatively minor character --- recent movie appearances notwithstanding. You might expect the first page to feature explosions, revelations, or at least a dead supporting character to spice things up a bit.

Instead, King and Walta give us a quiet suburban street, and a married couple bickering on a doorstep. "Behold George and Nora." With the exception of the Visions' levitating mailbox, it's all just so normal. And that's a pretty rare quality in superhero comics. When's the last time you saw Captain America pretending to be on his phone in the corner at a party, or Bruce Wayne breaking out the good china to impress prospective in-laws?

King squeezes everything he can out that juxtaposition; the constant narration boxes focusing on the mundane, the dialogue playing up the familiarity of the sitcom-style setup --- until the front door opens, revealing the family that The Vision has literally constructed for himself, and the veneer of normality promptly shatters.

Because we don't enter the story from his perspective, everyone's favourite synthezoid comes off as sinister. His politeness seems strained; the identical greetings of his family are eerie; and even the cool gifts from his fellow Avengers aren't enough to break the tension.

It'd be enough to give you chills even if the scene didn't conclude with some Vonnegut-esque detached narration letting us know how it all ends for our bickering couple: "Later, near the end of our story, one of the Visions will set George and Nora's house on fire. They will die in the flames."

And we've all had those kind of encounters with our neighbours, right?

Check Out Some Facts You May Not Know About The Avengers