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Avengers
Icons: The Vision
Marvel Comics mini series review by: Jamie
Tarquini
Writer: Geoff Johns
Pencils: Ivan Reis
Inks: Joe Pimental (& Albert on #4)
Colors: Chris Sotomayor
Letters: Paul Tutrone
Covers: Brian Hamberlin
More
info:
http://www.marvel.com
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“Ghosts
and Gremlins”
I have
been starting to get down on the Marvel Icons series lately.
First I was getting all of them, but after a while it seemed
as if most of the stories really didn’t have much substance
or have any affect on the characters. I decided to give The
Vision a shot because I haven’t read much from writer
Geoff Johns and the Brian Hamberlin covers knocked me over.
Now that this four-part story is over I can say that it gave
me what I was looking for, but it moved all too quickly.
The Vision
is a member of the Avengers who is unlike any other being
on Earth. He is not human, nor is he a robot – well,
not exactly. He is a “syntheziod,” a robot that
has other abilities (such as being able to change its density)
and it constantly strives to become more human. In this story
he is without any of his fellow Avengers but is instead joined
by Derek, a young boy, who wants to help the Vision restore
his memory and stop the being known only as the Gremlin.
This Gremlin
is supposedly the one responsible for planes crashing during
WWII, and this creature may have killed Derek’s grandfather
during the war. The story leads them on a mission to find
the youngest relative of Phineas T. Horton (the creator of
the Vision) for help but the Gremlin is always one step ahead
of them. And what is the Vision’s relationship to this
Gremlin anyway?
Anyone
who has read the origin of the Vision knows that it is long
and complicated, but Johns manages to bypass all of the confusion
and just keep what we need to know and even gives us a good
explanation of how his powers work. The plot is a good one,
but the story seemed to start off in the middle of it. Not
until issue two do we understand why how Vision lost his memory,
and it (like a lot of the story) is inferred so the reader
must grasp the ideas from the images without the use of captions
or a narrator. This isn’t so bad if you are reading
all four issues at once but it made the story much more difficult
when reading them one at a time. It also made the story read
very quickly. You can easily get through this from beginning
to end in twenty minutes, which is an expensive way to spend
$12.00.
All of
Johns’s characters have truly genuine motives no matter
what outlandish predicament they end up in. The action is
intense, some scenes were often twisted, and Johns makes the
ending worthwhile. All of the plotlines are sewn up nicely
and the Vision gains something from this whole experience
– although you’re gonna have to read it to find
out what!
I must
say that the art from Ivan Reis was amazing, although it was
the cover to #1 that sold me on this book. Reis did a fabulous
job of the settings, which were all over the place. He rendered
the 1939 World’s Fair, modern day Queens, airports,
Penn State University, and the city of Philadelphia all perfectly.
My favorite images where of the Vision phasing through objects
because as he went through them you could see every bit of
his metal frame underneath, which was quite eerie. Even creepier
was watching the Gremlin take control of other humans, which
was something resembling the aliens from “Independence
Day” only with robotics. The art wouldn’t have
looked the same without the excellent work with the colors
by Chris Sotomayor. The tan palate to the 1939 sequence was
key, and the otherwise bright colors stood out on the ominous
and dark backgrounds helping with the sense of surprise when
the Vision phases in your face out of nowhere.
I don’t
think that Marvel is preparing a compilation of this series
yet, so if you can find The Vision in the bargain bin at your
local shop it may be worth picking this up at a discounted
price. I just felt slightly shortchanged being able to read
this entire story in less than 30 minutes. If it had a little
more substance I would have rated it higher on the banana
scale. If nothing else The Vision is a solid story with some
damn good artwork that at least deserves a flip through.
Jamie
Tarquini has visions all the time - and sometimes they talk
to him.
Visit his website at http://www.pmpknface.com
or drop him an email at: pmpknface@hotmail.com
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