Comic: "Young Avengers Presents #4: The Vision"
Published by: Marvel Comics
Written by: Paul Carnell
Artist: Mark Brooks

Reviewer: Max Burbank
Posted: 5/13/2008

Plot: Catch up with the ‘new’ version of the vision and discover he is absolutely the worst take on the character ever as he dodges kidnapers from A.I.M and indulges a repulsive teenage crush on team mate ‘Stature’ cause I guess really dumb superhero names are a turn on for synthezoids.

Review: Is Craptastic a word? If it wasn’t, it is now, because there isn’t another word to describe this dip in the comic book cesspool.

I don’t read Young Avengers because it has the stupidest title of a team comic book since New Mutants, and I was younger then. I picked this particular book up because the Vision is one of my all time favorite Marvel characters. He’s had major ups and downs depending on what writer is handling him and sometimes he’s been pretty annoying, as when he was happy peppy disembodied West Coast Avenger vision taking over all the worlds computers. Also, there was a really dumbass period where his costume, every bit of it was white. I have a PVC action figure of the all white Vision of which I’m very proud, because it commemorates something so stupid design wise, it’s hard to believe it happened.

Despite what bad writers have done to him over the years, the Vision is friggin’ awesome. He’s got a very cool power that nobody else had until Kitty Pryde ripped him off, plus he’s a machine that wants to be a man, a sci fi trope that has endless possibilities as proven by the huge number of talented writers that have addressed the topic of artificial intelligence over the years. Add to that his integral placement in the Marvel Universe. His body was a prototype for the original WWII Human Torch, tying him to all the Invaders era heroes, which include Cap and the Sub Mariner. He was created by Ultron, tying him to a brilliant but mostly poorly examined marvel Greek tragedy, in that Hank Pym is Ultron’s ‘Father’ and Ultron is always trying to kill him, which is why the female Ultron built was called ‘Jocasta’. It’s all very rich and ucky and Freudian. As if all that weren’t enough, he was married to the Scarlet Witch, tying him to both the whole Mutant end of marvel and her one time mentor Dr. Strange. He could be the lynchpin of the whole damn Marvel universe!

Instead, this version is tied to the muddiest, most convoluted, most annoying thread in all of Marveldom, Kang. Time Travel stories are always a mess and I won’t try to explain this one. Suffice it to say, this Vision has the old Vision’s programming and memories, and a body built by and a brain based on and “Iron Lad” who was in the Young Avengers and is good guy Kang in one part of the time stream and had to go back to being bad guy Kang in another part so that all sorts of stuff still happens. I hate time travel stories, and “Iron Lad” is a name SO dumb, and no offense to gay people, SO GAY, it must have escaped from the 1950’s Legion of Superheroes.

Old school Vision got ‘killed’ in the ‘Avengers Disassembled’ story arc, which had some good stuff in it and I really enjoyed at the time it came out. It also had some really bad stuff, and viewed historically as near the beginning of the mess Marvel is in now, it should be retiled “Marvel disassembled and reassembled as a huge, steaming pile of crap”.

Thankfully, the whole idea of ‘killing’ a machine is ridiculous, so it will be very easy to wipe the new Vision off the map and bring back the old one when Marvel eventually wakes up from it’s multi year bender, goes to AA and says “My name is Marvel Comics and I am an alcoholic slash drug addict and I have so many amends to make it’s going to take a friggin’ generation.”

Overall rating:
(Scored on a 0.5 - 5 pickles rating: 0.5 being the worst and 5 being the best)