Can a hero live a normal life? The answer to this question is considered occasionally by various writers and often concludes with a resounding “no.” This book seems to ask a similar question, “can a synthezoid live a normal life?” But by the end of this book, you’ll realize that the true question is “why would a synthezoid want to live a normal life?” More importantly, “what is normal?” I was enthralled by these questions, which made The Vision #1 my easy choice for Book of the Week.

This article contains no plot spoilers for The Vision #1

Story, Writing, and Philosophical Questions

The Vision’s incredible history of heroics is all but ignored in this story that is more about exploring humanity than about the action that characterizes a superhero story. Before Secret Wars, the Vision served the world as a member of a few Avengers teams, working with Avengers A.I. to guide synthetic heroes before joining the Uncanny Avengers (Unity Division) to save the Counter-Earth. A build-up of emotional events proved too much for our solar-powered android, which resulted in a decision to wipe his own emotional memory to alleviate the strain of feelings. This storyline contained a deep message about escaping from your fears but the follow-up in the All-New All-Different Marvel is even more important to understanding the Vision and ourselves.



The plot of this book is an interesting mix of setup and progress, explaining the creation of the Vision’s artificial family while investigating how these synthezoids interact with the rest of the world. In his duress, the Vision has created a family for himself (rather than going through the trouble of building one with other people) while he serves as Avengers liaison to the White House. The family seems normal but as artificially sentient beings, they don’t understand the nuances of the world; the “why” behind human actions remains a mystery to be explored in a series of hyper-intelligent conversations throughout the book. The first is a discussion spurred by Mrs. Vision, who cannot understand why people use the phrase “they seem nice” rather than “they seem kind.” In this two-page debate alone, we see deep analysis of how modern language has degraded to rely on ironic interpretations of descriptions. While the argument is interesting (and I recommend you dissect it as much as possible), more interesting is the Vision’s summation: “the pursuit of an unobtainable purpose by absurd means is the way of freedom; this is my vision of the future.” In just that one line, the intent of the writer is clear – we are meant to look at the absurdity of our actions in an effort to better understand the unachievable goals of perfection that we have set for the world.

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