Vision: story of the android with a human heart from Marvel
In the beginning were the Human Torch and Aarkuus
In 1940, comics were doing quite well, and numerous artists were churning out supertizi and (few) supertizie as if there was no tomorrow. Timely Comics, now better known as Marvel Comics, will then enter the superhero business by launching the adventures of their first man in a suit: the Human Torch. The latter was nothing more than a syntezoid, that is, a robot built to be completely indistinguishable from a human being, being equipped with synthetic muscles, veins, and nervous system very similar to those of a person in flesh and blood. The creator of this wonder of the possible was Professor Phineas T. Horton, who did not know that his creation would then be so closely linked to the future of the world of comics.Riding on the success of the Torch, Timely will ask a duo of cartoonists who were perhaps the most spectacular duo of that decade, Joe Simon and Jack "King" Kirby to create some new characters for the publishing house. And so, the duo will listen to the proposal and will launch on the market the adventures of Aarkus, an alien policeman from a dimension parallel to ours called "Smokeworld", and endowed with bizarre powers such as teleporting through smoke, creating illusions and controlling the cold. . Through various vicissitudes, Aarkus will find himself fighting evil on Earth, and will be known to most people as "Vision".
The birth of Vision
Let's take a leap in time of almost thirty years: Timely Comics, which in the meantime has become Marvel Comics, has had a great success with audiences and critics, and the editor Stan Lee, decides that he can no longer be the one to write the scripts of most of the published series from the house of ideas, and choosing to delegate a little, leaving some series to trusted collaborators.Among these, Roy Thomas stands out, a great fan of 1940s comics, of which he has an encyclopedic knowledge (and a lot before you could fill the gaps with the internet!), who thus finds himself managing the adventures of the Avengers, the most powerful heroes on Earth. With great cunning, however, Thomas knew that all his work with Marvel would be under contract, and that every character he created would not be entirely his, and therefore he will find an interesting strategy for creating new characters: do a makeover, a characters already published by Marvel, in the 40s.
And so, in 1968, he made his first appearance on "Avengers 57" of 1968, The Vision, a dark and disturbing character, whose mysterious presence reminded the our friend Aarkus is far away.
Contrary to the first Vision, however, this version was a syntezoid, closely linked to three important figures: the first was the original human Torch, the second was Simon Williams, aka Wonder Man, a redeemed ex-criminal with energetic superpowers who died in a fight with the Avengers, and the third was the killer robot Ultron.
Ultron, he was a robotic creation of Hank Pym, aka Giant -Man, but he was rebe The side immediately to its creator dreaming of a world where robots could dominate the world, and will thus come to clash several times with his father, and with the group he was part of, the Avengers.
Ultron will be defeated a couple of times by the heroes, and licking his metaphorical wounds he will try a new plan: he will kidnap Phineas Horton, and he will modify one of the original bodies of the Human Torch, and he will write on it the memoirs of the late Simon Williams, thus giving life to his "vision of the future ": a sentient and very powerful robot, whose origins were those of the beginning of Marvel, whose past was that of a hero who hadn't made it, and whose future was the total defeat of the most powerful heroes on Earth .
Now, a small side note: over the years, the use of the original Human Torch body has always been a matter of contention among comic book enthusiasts and writers, and over the years a number have been invented embarrassing of more narrative solutions more or less happy to explain this choice. But know that what counts is that Vision still owes almost everything to the human Torch, and that's okay I would say.
Ultron, however, had not reckoned without the host, or rather, without the host : the mental schemes of Wonder Man, had given the "son", who will take the name of Vision, a strong sense of justice, which will lead him to rebel against the "Father" Ultron, who will come to betray and defeat in combat, also obtaining an offer to join the Avengers. Shocked by such confidence in something as strange and bizarre as him, on the face of Vision, who accepts the invitation, a single tear will flow, reminding us, that even an android can cry.
But now, after this whole story, we can ask ourselves, why is this syntezoid so dangerous?
To begin with, ours has a very efficient solar battery, which allows it to work for very long periods of time without ever getting tired, then it has super strength , invulnerability, the power of flight, the ability to launch heat rays, one of the most advanced computer minds on the face of the earth, and also can change its "density" (term not correct on a physical level, but in the comics this is described thus) becoming as impalpable as a ghost, or solid as a diamond, also managing to trade shots with heavyweights like Thor and Hulk. Furthermore, being technically a computer program, Vision is virtually immortal, as long as its memory banks are preserved.
Together with the Avengers, Vision will fight numerous enemies, from the most bizarre such as the Zodiac gang and the Circus of Crime, to the most frightening like the Lords of Evil, or the galactic empires of the aliens Kree and Skrull. And it will be during a war between these two races, that Vision will realize that perhaps he was not quite human, but was much more than a machine, as during the fight, he will discover that he has feelings for the company of the team Scarlet Witch, aka Wanda. Maximoff, endowed with enormous mystical powers.
An android with a human heart
The very humanity of Vision prevented him from even imagining what could arise from the relationship between a human and a robot, but Wanda, born a mutant and therefore always persecuted for being different, will reciprocate the feelings of her teammate, and, defeated the threat, the two will begin a tender love story. However, being in a Marvel comic, things won't be as simple as they seemed. Wonder Man's brother had in fact become the supervillain known as The Grim Reaper, and had become obsessed with the figure of Vision, which he saw as the only connection with his lost brother. In the meantime, however, Wonder Man had also returned from the dead, thus creating a sort of rather bizarre parental triangle, which will however have its resolution in the best way: Vision, will accept to have yes, a bit of Wonder Man inside him but by now he had managed to evolve and be a real person, and Wonder Man will disown the reaper, feeling Vision as his real brother (even though, deep down, ours had a big crush on the beautiful Scarlet).Also solved this problem, Vision and Wanda will get married, and will retire to private life in New Jersey, even coming to have two children: Thomas and William. Apparently, Scarlet's magic, combined with Vision technology, had managed to work a real miracle.
Everything seemed perfect, but tragedy was upon us: thanks to a malfunction of her systems, Vision will begin to devalue, dreaming of a world without more governments, but guided by a wise intelligence that could bring more control into the life of human beings: his. Connected to an alien supercomputer, Vision will become president of the Avengers, and will try in more or less subtle ways to manipulate his teammates, and the American government for his own ends, but after some time ours will be discovered, defeated, and repaired. .
But this will not be enough for some government agents, who had just seen a single being take control of all the electronic systems in the world, and thus decide to steal vision, and literally dismantle it. The Avengers will try to fix it, but without Simon Williams' humanity, Vision will be reborn as an emotionless syntezoid, sporting a pale white costume.
After dealing with this tragedy, Vision will bring down a 'other, when it will be revealed to us that his children were actually hellish demons, and therefore technically never existed. This will lead Scarlet to leave her husband, who was slowly beginning to prove again that he has not completely lost his humanity.
Later, Vision will meet the scientist Miles Lipton, whose son Alex was dead lately. Wanting to help the hero regain his humanity, Lipton will be able to insert Alex's mental schemes into the memory banks of vision, giving ours a full range of emotions, and thus bringing it back to its original state. Visione will be so happy to have his humanity back, that he will even come to take a human pseudonym, and thanks to a holographic projector that hid his features, ours, he will give himself to the practical study of the human race with the proper name of Victor Shade.
Obviously, having recovered her feelings will not be all roses, and Vision will find herself having to compete for Scarlet's attentions with Wonder Man, while the beautiful Carol Danvers aka Warbird (but better known today as Captain Marvel) had fallen in love with our favorite syntezoid. Eventually, Wanda will choose Simon, but she will stay on good terms with the Vision.
And you know how to say no? The show must continue, the tragedy, must only get worse: we will discover that Wanda's children were not actually demons, but magical constructs created by her crazy powers. The superhero community had managed to erase the memory of the twins in Scarlet's mind, but not permanently: recovered the memory, Wanda will give full use to her powers of manipulation of reality, coming to deliver hard blows to the Avengers, and killing also the Vision. For a while then, the role of ghost android will be taken by Jonas, a new entity that was none other than the memories of the Vision, fused with the consciousness of a young Nathaniel Richards, the supervillain called Kang.
This version of the character will fight evil along with other juvenile versions of the Avengers, in the group called with a lot of imagination "Young Avengers", but will then disappear into the limbo of the forgotten characters.
After some time, in fact, Tony Stark, alias Iron Man, will reconstruct the original Vision, with some improvements such as a body made up entirely of tiny super-technological nanites, and Victor Shade will return to ride alongside the most powerful heroes on Earth, even going so far as to lead his own personal formation of Avengers entirely composed by artificial intelligence, known as "Avengers: AI".
After this parenthesis, Vision will join a team of Avengers called "Unity Division", whose main purpose was to to be a bridge between the human world, and the mutant one, being a small group made up of both historical members of the Avengers, and historical members of the X-Men. Vision will be recruited to help his ex-wife Scarlet, and will succeed, but later decides to be tired of the hero's busy life, and to need a family.
And so, how Ultron before him, Vision will build a synthetic family: his wife Virginia, son Vin and daughter Viv. Wanting to be normal at all costs, when normality does not exist even as a joke, will be fatal to the heart of the Vision, which will find itself entangled in a series of tragedies, gossip, and tragedies that will gradually destroy his family. , killing Virginia and Vin.
Left alone with Viv, and taking his role as father very seriously, Vision will once again join the Avengers, with whom he will fight numerous threats such as time traveler Kang, and also cosmic beings such as the alien Grand Master. But what perhaps will be the greatest victory of Vision, will be against the goddess of the night Nyx, a challenge in which syntezoid will catalyze her being the link between the past of Marvel, and its future, the vision of a tomorrow, of a reality, which in its own words is not based on rules. But it is based on flying.
To know the fascination of Vision you can read the graphic novel Visions from the future
