The Vision, Volume 1: Little Worse Than A Man by Tom King
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The Vision decides to live a normal human life, and so builds himself a family and moves to the suburbs.
The writing was pretty great. Tom King creates these narrative frames for each of the different stories. For example, in one story the Vision is going through all the times he can remember saving the world. The entire world. And it lends an interesting perspective to the story as most anything will seem petty when you consider that we’re talking to someone who has singlehandedly saved the world 37 times. Rather than being straightforward comics, pictures with word balloons, King writes layered stories where you have the action in the panels and then some other, additional point he’s making or thread the story follows.
I liked this comic quite a bit, and I think it had a way of talking about social issues in nuanced fashion, which seems to be something that’s hard to find in comics at the moment. The Visions are not members of a minority group. They are non-human, sentient beings who live in the same home as their creator. They are objectively correct about everything, however they are trying to live in a world of subjectivity.
There’s a way in which the writing could be seen as heavy-handed, you definitely feel the presence of a writer on this book. However, what’s happening is a nice break from a lot of the other comics I’ve read. Where a lot of comics right now are making bold statements, this one is asking scary questions, and we’re watching the characters work out their answers to those scary questions.