Avengers Assemble Annual (2013) #001
May. 1st, 2015 10:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
baihu posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
scans_daily
Hey guys been a looooong time since I've posted or browsed here. So glad to see some familiar faces still around, I missed you guys.
Anyway the Avengers 2 movie made me morbidly curious as to how Vision (and Wanda for that matter) was holding up in 616, if at all. There's a shit ton about what Wanda's been up to, but barely anything about Vision during all this time so, glad I found this issue.
(Forgive me if my choice of scans or the sizes are odd, I haven't done this in a while)
So Vision, the original one, is finally back in one piece. No missing emotions or whatever. I don't know the specifics, frankly I'm fine just accepting that he's back.
So they have to fight Sunturion (Dearborn), who is the company mascot to Roxxon like Iron Man is to Stark Industries.
He was experimented on by Roxxon to get the powers, but now the powers are killing him. Dearborn feels that Roxxon betrayed him because he sacrificed his own personal life to become the Roxxon mascot, and Roxxon claims they can't help him.
He has microwave powers, can alter density like Vision, and teleport. Dearborn runs away after Vision can fight him while he's phased.
Vision manages to track down Dearborn who is creep-stalking his ex-wife.
Vision manages to talk Dearborn down, and he accepts help from the Avengers to try to analyze his condition.
You know, it's phenomenal just how horrible of a support network the Avengers really are. Carol found that out years ago.
Anyway the Avengers can't figure out a way to help him because Roxxon claims they lost Dearborn's medical records of the process. He goes ballistic and flies off to melt more Roxxon factories.
Turns out Roxxon was still using the same process on new volunteers unaware they would die eventually.
Dearborn manages to scatter the volunteers and but Vision does somme thingy with his solar gem to absorb Dearborn for a while. But Vision uses that energy to melts the conversion machines, releasing Dearborn, and leading to Roxxon figuring they have to cut losses.
Aw! Just...d'aaw!
Personally I don't think Vision could/should reconcile with Wanda, because at this point I think she's just flat-out toxic; but at least he can connect with his kids. That's a bit of happiness he deserves right?
And about MCU Vision, if you haven't watched the movie yet, it's pretty awesome what they've done with Vision. Definitely feels like a fresh start for the character, and he got a heck of an origin and power upgrade. Paul Bettany's British accent certainly helps to make him immediately relateable, the guy's got mad charisma going through all that make-up. But he also nails the whole detachment from worldly matters feel. I think it's finally a version of Vision that actually seems to balance being uncannily human but unmistakably alien. It's just a shame he isn't in more of the film.
I am also leaving this here:
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Date: 2015-05-01 02:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-01 02:52 am (UTC)It's like, fine I can accept them being a couple is over and done with.
Except writers insist on keeping that potential reconciliation alive, or pressing the issue for what I assume is for more drama, or for another good excuse for a reality shatter.
It keeps coming back to the cycle of nonsense over and over again of her being emotionally damaged/manipulated, than reality gets turned into her bitch, and lo and behold Vision is often the first casualty cause duh.
I just think her character, with the current powerset, the current history, and the current style of making her that apparently easy to emotionally manipulate and/or possess, is a toxic influence on the whole damn Marvel universe. She's the almighty reset button. Hell, even Wiccan's shaping up to be one with that legacy on his head.
Just depowering her down to a manageable level that doesn't require a world-shattering saga would be nice. So should we finally get a writer to handle her story issues, the threat of a reality collapse isn't an actual thing.
Also the other kid is Tommy aka mini-Quicksilver.
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Date: 2015-05-01 03:52 am (UTC)Byrne took the "Hey, the Vision is a lot like Spock from Star Trek" thing Roy Thomas and Co. started and decided to switch it over to "Hey, the Vision is a lot like Data from Star Trek" since it was the late 1980s and TNG was popular.
Other writers just... did what they could. I've posted pages from the Busiek/Perez run where Wanda realizes that the Vision has the emotional connection to his old memories. He just didn't want to hurt Wanda anymore. But by this point, he doesn't want Wanda to hurt him anymore.
http://www.comicsbeat.com/unassuming-barber-shop-age-of-ultron-vision-and-spock/
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Date: 2015-05-01 05:42 am (UTC)Now the modern interpretation is that he was always a Spock-like character, which I feel doesn't gel. Even if we downplay the over-the-top nature of any character written back in the 90s, Vision was pretty emotional. Where was the whole detached robot machine is his main character trait thing coming from?
Which is why I'm looking at the MCU Vision and saying, I finally get it. I finally get how a character can be uncannily human yet alien. How can something be both friendly and warm, yet also have a machine-like detachment with the world. It's like, finally, Vision is actually the character everyone thinks he should be.
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Date: 2015-05-01 04:23 pm (UTC)(As an aside, I'd completely forgotten how Romance Comic-ky those Vision and the Scarlet Witch covers were.)
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Date: 2015-05-01 05:54 pm (UTC)https://40.media.tumblr.com/f06ae317e08fb980e3582c5aaab38bf2/tumblr_nnok14Cyw71qdcj3zo1_1280.jpg
I've been posting scans like this to Tumblr now that there's a bunch of Vision fangirls pouring over from the MCU. This one is getting popular, HA.
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Date: 2015-05-01 02:36 pm (UTC)They tried to do that in The Children's Crusade, at least reducing the scale of her powers so she could only warp reality locally rather than on a planetwide basis (and helping to get her back on somewhat stable footing psychologically as well). Then she got souped back up for the Avengers vs. X-Men series and Remender's Uncanny Avengers.
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Date: 2015-05-01 06:01 pm (UTC)Granted they have their own lives/families, but Tommy might appreciate hanging out with Wanda more since he's from a broken home.
And yeah I read Avengers vs. X-Men, I guess it was too much to ask for Wanda to do the responsible thing and maybe put a power-limiter on herself while she was using the Phoenix force to undo M-Day right? Right?
I swear it feels like they building to a point where Wanda has another breakdown and Wiccan's forced to do something because he can probably out-reality-warp Wanda.
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Date: 2015-05-01 06:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-01 07:08 am (UTC)And now he'll be primarily noted as Wiccans robot spiritual father.
There's really nothing much for writers to build on when he feels like a gimmick.
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Date: 2015-05-01 08:16 am (UTC)Hank Pym managed to recover pretty well from being stuck in a rut.
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Date: 2015-05-01 08:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-01 09:06 am (UTC)It seems to me like he'd fit in well as an older, wiser AI who has grown more mature in understanding of both humans and artificial life. So many young AI around nowadays....
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Date: 2015-05-01 09:15 am (UTC)The problem with AI is that it's tech, it's not experience that comes with age, it's obsolesce. And given his history, his understanding of human life is going to be...a little...skewed, to say the least. The new AI don't have to deal with magic offspring, that's for sure.
I don't know, do the new AI characters have an hang-ups about the human thing? I feel like the human thing is really passe , like it's not even that big a deal anymore in the grand scheme of things.
The only thing I've seen him in is peripherally in Avengers vs X-Men, AFTER the big Why You Suck speech at Wanda in #0. Nothing actually worth noting. He and Wanda trade bitter quips when fighting against Phoenix Five...followed by Wanda getting distracted when he gets shot down one page later. Freaking. Soap. Opera.
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Date: 2015-05-01 09:45 am (UTC)And it doesn't hurt that Vision was made at a higher tech level than many later ones.
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I don't know, do the new AI characters have an hang-ups about the human thing? -
Generally I think not, but *interacting* with humans may still be a challenge to them. Vision's a foot in both worlds character in my view....
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Date: 2015-05-01 07:32 am (UTC)If he is so human that it doesn't matter. then him being a synthezoid is an irrelevancy and should never be mentioned any more than he's right handed. And that makes him no different from any other character.
If he IS human, but doesn't realise it, either deliberately or accidentally, then he'sa walking angst generator and that can get very dull long term.
If he can never a human, then he is, in the memorable words of ST:TNG "He's a toaster" and is seen as disposable.
Usually they went for the middle option, a guy who is VERY human, but who agonises over the fact he isn't, or the first option where he's just another guy with superpowers and weird speech bubbles.
Now they seem to default to the third.
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Date: 2015-05-01 07:46 am (UTC)Maybe that's what they have to do for the comics, seriously. I always thought the whole actually needing another person's brain patterns to learn emotions thing a pretty hokey method, I'm still surprised they just reused that to get him operational again. Emergent AI might have worked as an in-universe reboot for him and remove that plot-handicap.
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Date: 2015-05-01 12:09 pm (UTC)I've always thought there was room for such a thing, a get together session for the various non-organic human(-ish) entities in the MU; Vision, Quasimodo, Machinesmith, Douglock (when he was around), Jocasta...
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Date: 2015-05-01 12:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-01 07:03 am (UTC)Not sure how to put it, but it just feels like a cheap excuse that lessens the characters involved (although Pietro is being a total jackass there) and absolves the writers of any blame in the matter.
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Date: 2015-05-01 09:37 am (UTC)Alas they literally went with 'he got better'.
Also while Pietro was being an asshole, he finally let go of his hate for Vision because it's just too damn long to keep that hate up.
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Date: 2015-05-01 09:08 am (UTC)I´d say your comment on the movie is pretty spot on, but can be extended to just about every character: "[[Character X]] was very well done, wish they got more screen time." But that's what you get with so many main characters. I'd love to see a director's cut that just adds another hour of characters just talking to one another :P
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Date: 2015-05-01 09:25 am (UTC)Ultron definitely needed more screentime too. I think the Bruce/Natasha thing was given way more screentime than it needed to, considering it really wasn't important to the plot (but possibly important to Civil War or the other movies, who knows).
And oh Pietro, how I wanted more angry Slavic big brother comedy from you! Dueling Slavic vs British accents, it would have been glorious!
Why he got repaired
Date: 2015-05-01 10:12 am (UTC)When Magneto and Quicksilver was waiting for the Avengers and X-men to arrive in Genosha, thinking they were coming to put down Wanda like a rabid dog. Magneto knowing he couldn't stand against the combined power, and having no allies left to call.
Waiting like that for someone to come and take his familiy was much like his childhood I imagine.
So I think later, when he and Cyclops went to Avengers mansion during the Joseph incident, and he seemed really distracted and not paying attention? In my headcanon, he was using his powers to kickstart Visions self-repair systems down in the basement. He has had enough time with Vision to analyse how he works, and the powers to influence his sysetms.
Vision is an Avenger who Magneo is entirely confident is no threat to him. While actually being quite powerful against other opponents. He could be depended on to back up his family, which also happens to be Magnetos family.
In the human/mutant conflict Magneto is expecting, Vision is neither, but would come down on his familis side if anything threatens them.
Their clash later on would in my headcanon be staged.
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Date: 2015-05-01 11:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-01 09:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-02 12:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-01 10:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-02 06:08 pm (UTC)Kind of agree, but any character can have a redemption arc from "bad" past stories, it's just that editorial/new writers haven't taken Wanda down any new territory to atone or even really acknowledge a lot of past actions. Kinda in the way I still want Reed Richards to atone for lingering crap from Civil War.
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Date: 2015-05-12 05:58 pm (UTC)This also seems an appropriate time to mention that Speed looks alarmingly like Quicksilver, especially now that Magneto's not in his genetic makeup...