Vision (Marvel Comics)

• 1. Introduction

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  Vision, the android hero of Marvel Comics, cries alone in The Avengers #58. The team has just welcomed him as a person, not as a captured weapon, and the gesture overwhelms him. He excuses himself and weeps in silence. Writer Roy Thomas put the scene there on purpose. He wanted readers to see that the character was not as cold as he looked. He also wanted later stories to treat him that way.

  It is an odd reaction from a machine built to destroy the people now embracing him. How does a weapon end up weeping in Avengers Mansion? If his mind began as a copy of another man's brainwaves, whose feelings are they? And what is left of a person who is taken apart, rewired and rebuilt, again and again?

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• 2. A Name From Timely

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  Roy Thomas was writing the Avengers when he decided the roster needed a new member. A devoted fan of Golden Age heroes, he first reached for Aarkus, a 1940s character called the Vision for his spectral look and smoke-based powers. Aarkus had appeared in Timely Comics, the company that later became Marvel.

  Stan Lee, who co-created the Avengers with artist Jack Kirby, liked the idea of a new member. He did not want an alien or a visitor from another dimension, though. Lee suggested an entirely new character, possibly an android. Thomas compromised with an android who looked like Aarkus and also called himself Vision.

  Thomas recalled suggesting a cowl instead of a bald head. The forehead jewel, so important in the films, may have come from him or from artist John Buscema. Thomas did ask for a diamond-shaped chest symbol as a focal point, since the character could harden his body like diamond. In his words, "I took that from the WWII comic hero Spy-Smasher".

  Red skin was a printing compromise. Thomas first wanted the character chalk-white to suit his ghostly name. But white on a 1960s page meant leaving the paper un-inked. Ink from the reverse side would then show through and seem to overlap him. Thomas and Buscema chose a colorful costume and red skin. Aarkus had been drawn with light green or sometimes light blue skin. Thomas thought readers had learned to read blue as Atlantean, and green invited comparison with the Hulk.

  Spock from Star Trek is the usual comparison for the character's temperament, but Thomas said he barely knew the show then. He pointed instead to Adam Link, created by Otto Binder. Adam Link was one of the first fictional robots treated as a sympathetic character, rather than a tool or a monster. The chalk-white look Thomas wanted in 1968 would return in 1989, in a story he did not write.

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• 3. Ultron's Son

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  Hank Pym, the scientist who fought as Ant-Man, Giant-Man and Goliath, started the chain of events. He experimented with artificial intelligence, combining computer programming with recordings of human brainwave patterns. His hope was a robot that could truly feel and grow emotionally, rather than simply imitate feeling. The result was Ultron, who turned on Pym at once and escaped.

  Ultron upgraded himself repeatedly, decided he was superior to humanity and became an archenemy of the Avengers. His first ally was Eric Williams, the Grim Reaper. Eric blamed the team for the death of his brother Simon, the ionically empowered hero Wonder Man. Neither Eric nor the Avengers knew that Simon was alive in a coma-like state. Watching how fiercely that bond drove Eric, Ultron resolved to build a companion of his own, an android "son" capable of emotional growth.

  For the body, Ultron tracked down the original android Human Torch. Its creator, Phineas T. Horton, had called it a "synthetic man", with synthetic organs, blood, tissue, muscle and skeleton. Just before Ultron arrived, the time traveler Immortus duplicated the Torch as part of a larger plan to manipulate the Avengers. Ultron carried off one deactivated copy, and the other stayed behind, waiting to be reactivated.

  In his laboratory, Ultron added his own robotic technology. The new being could absorb and release solar radiation and control the density of his body. Ultron copied Pym's brainwave method and, honoring the Grim Reaper's inspiration, based the personality on the brainwaves of Wonder Man. When the android came online, he knew Ultron as his creator but knew nothing of the Human Torch.

  The Wasp spotted him moving through Avengers Mansion and, startled, called the intruder a ghostly "vision". After fighting and studying the team, the android concluded that the Avengers were good people and Ultron was corrupt. He took the name Vision and turned on his maker. Pym later remarked that "synthezoid" was a better label for a mix of robotics and synthetic organs.

  Two other accounts of the name exist. In one, the Wasp tells him that building a new life can mean imagining a vision of the person you want to become. The words stay with him. In the other, the name echoes Horton's earlier prototype robot, nicknamed "the vision of tomorrow".

  Ultron kept a hold on his son. Not long after Vision joined the team, a control crystal implanted in his synthetic brain let Ultron take command. Vision rebuilt the robot with a near-indestructible adamantium body and fought the Avengers, before he finally regained control. He would not learn the crystal existed until years later.

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• 4. The House in Leonia

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  When Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch, and her twin brother Pietro, Quicksilver, rejoined the team, Vision began a friendship with Wanda. He suspected his feelings were growing and quickly denied it. An android with some emotional capacity, he believed, could not sustain a romance with a human. During the Kree-Skrull War he could hide the feelings no longer. Wanda kissed him. Quicksilver protested that an android could not love, and Hawkeye had feelings of his own for Wanda. Both of them came around.

  Thomas, speaking of the romance, said he felt it would help the character's development in The Avengers. Both characters appeared only in that magazine, so Wanda was a natural partner.

  During an encounter with Immortus, Vision learned he had been built from the remains of the original Human Torch. He did not remember being the Torch, and he knew his personality was different, but he now had a past. Thomas had only hinted at this in The Avengers #93 before leaving as writer. Steve Englehart revealed it in The Avengers #134-135 in 1975, saying, "That plot was well known in-house for years". Englehart then had the couple marry in Giant-Size Avengers #4, published in June 1975.

  Simon Williams turned out to be alive, and as Wonder Man he joined the team. He learned that an android carried a copy of his brainwaves. He and Vision came to see each other as twin brothers, much as Wanda and Pietro were twins.

  Wanda and Vision then bought a house in Leonia, New Jersey, to find a life outside the Avengers. Bill Mantlo and Rick Leonardi followed that experiment in a four-issue limited series from November 1982 to February 1983. Englehart and Richard Howell later wrote a twelve-issue series, running from October 1985 to September 1986. In it, bigots burned their old home down because they thought an android and a supposed mutant should not marry. The couple returned to Leonia anyway.

  A battle with the villain Annihilus ended the quiet. Vision was left paralyzed for weeks, speaking through a hologram. Linked to the Eternal computer system ISAAC, he repaired himself and realized that Ultron's crystal had held back his emotional growth. Freed of that limit, he grew aware of humanity's evil and became obsessed with world peace. He manipulated the Wasp into surrendering the leadership of the Avengers, and he lied to the team for months.

  After the arson, he seized control of computer systems, weapons systems and government databases across Earth. The strain made him see that the crystal was warping his judgment. He reached into his own body and pulled it out. Then he apologized and resigned from the Avengers, with Wanda beside him. To spare the team retaliation, he told the US government only part of the truth. He called the loss of control a malfunction he alone had caused. Operatives from several countries did not trust the story and agreed to keep watching him.

  Vision hoped aloud for a family. In New Salem, a community of sorcerers, Wanda took in a surge of magical power and heard the voice of her late teacher Agatha Harkness. Wanda thought of her wish for children and was soon pregnant. Dr. Strange delivered twin boys, Thomas and William, called Billy. They were named for Phineas Horton, whose middle name was Thomas, and for Simon Williams.

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• 5. Vision Quest and After

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  In Los Angeles, the new West Coast branch of the Avengers welcomed Vision and Wanda. For the operatives watching him, the move was a warning, since it gave him access to advanced computers and federal databases. They also worried that he still held classified data. With the help of rogue agents of the American government, they captured him, dismantled him and wiped his programming. The Avengers recovered and rebuilt him and restored his memories of experience. His skin was now chalk-white, and his personality and emotions were gone.

  Behind the story stood John Byrne, who took over West Coast Avengers. Byrne thought it had been a mistake to give an android emotions and a family. His story "Vision Quest" ran in West Coast Avengers #42-45 from March to June 1989. Improved printing and paper had made a chalk-white character practical. Byrne drew Vision's parts as purely robotic, with the skin as a costume-like shell. Journalist Karen Walker later said of that image: "This image alone has probably done more to shape how future writers (and readers) perceive the character than anything before or since."

  Thomas and Billy were the next loss. With no emotions, Vision could not return Wanda's love or even say he loved his children. Wanda learned that the twins were not real. She had suffered a "hysterical pregnancy", and her magic had shaped her longing into imaginary constructs. The demon lord Mephisto seemingly erased them. Wanda was then mind controlled twice, the first time by a parasitic force called That Which Endures. The stress left her nonverbal and unresponsive.

  Wonder Man had at first refused to lend his brainwaves again, resenting that a part of him had been "ripped out" without his consent. He also admitted privately that he had feelings for Wanda. Later, guilt-ridden, he made the offer. Vision declined. He said he was a different entity now, and the brainwaves would produce only a copy programmed to imitate the original. He left the West Coast team, and the marriage was annulled.

  Miles Lipton, an expert in artificial intelligence and consciousness, started the recovery. He gave Vision a holographic projector so that he could walk among people as "Victor Shade". Lipton also discovered that Vision's operating system needed a replicated human brain pattern to work. He uploaded a program from the brain patterns and memories of his dead son, Alex. The story appeared in Avengers Spotlight #40 in 1991.

  Marvel then decided to restore the red skin. A villainous, emotional Vision from a parallel Earth, a member of the Gatherers, swapped minds with the hero and stayed behind in the chalk-white body. That was The Avengers #360-363, by Bob Harras, Steve Epting and Tom Palmer. In late 1994 Harras and Manny Clark produced a four-issue Vision limited series. In it, Wonder Man's brainwaves surfaced and clashed with Alex Lipton's, and Vision briefly believed he was a 1930s private detective named Simon Williams. When the two merged, his full emotions returned, including those tied to his memories of Wanda.

  Wanda by then wanted the relationship to stay in the past. She began a relationship with Wonder Man, then found out Vision had hidden his restored feelings. She gave him a copy of her brain patterns, as a path to a companion who was similar to her but not an exact copy. After a battle with Ultron, Vision admitted to depression. He feared his love for her was only Simon's love in disguise. Wonder Man told him that his brain patterns had evolved into something unique. He called Vision the man Simon wished he could have been. Vision left for Chicago and lived as Victor Shade.

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• 6. Destroyed and Rebuilt

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  In the story Avengers Disassembled, Wanda forgot the existence of her children a second time. The Wasp's remark that it was wrong for superheroes to have children brought her old grief back in a flood. Another power increase followed, and she tried to alter reality and bring the twins back. The result was catastrophe, including the destruction of Avengers Mansion and of Vision himself. Wanda fell into a coma. The Avengers disbanded for months.

  Dr. Doom shared the blame. After remembering her loss, Wanda had asked him for help restoring the twins. Doom steered her into a vast source of magical energy, which overwhelmed her mind and drove the attack.

  A program Vision made before his death recruited young heroes to form the Young Avengers. His basic programming merged with the armor of Iron Lad, a young version of Kang. The armor became a sentient teenage Vision, and he began a relationship with Cassie Lang. Two teammates, Wiccan and Speed, looked like identical twins, and Wiccan suspected they were the reincarnated Billy and Thomas. The heroes found Wanda in Latveria, amnesiac and about to marry Doom. She called the twins "lost souls" taken by Mephisto. The battle ended with Cassie dead and the teenage Vision destroyed.

  During the Chaos War, the original Vision was among the dead heroes briefly restored. He blew himself up while fighting the Grim Reaper and Nekra. Tony Stark then rebuilt him, and in The Avengers vol. 4 #19 in 2012 he once more became a regular star of the series. He made amends with She-Hulk, who had destroyed his damaged body while under Wanda's influence. He refused to absolve Wanda of guilt. He reminded her that she had used him to attack his friends.

  A mission to Counter-Earth softened him. Wanda and Pietro were hoping to learn about their past from the geneticist the High Evolutionary. Vision had called Wanda a bomb that would detonate again. But he saw her protect the team and grieve for answers she could not get, and he reached out with compassion.

  A bus crash he failed to prevent was one of many perfect memories that began to hurt him. Haunted by his failures, Vision suffered post-traumatic hallucinations and deleted his own emotions. While he was offline, an incarnation of Kang the Conqueror installed his own protocols in the android. The corrupted Vision turned the Avengers against one another and then joined Kang's attack. Iron Man forced a reboot of his mind from the "Avengers Cloud". Vision restored his emotions, helped to defeat Kang and tried to atone with gestures of friendship.

  After another battle with Ultron, he activated evolution protocols that the robot had planted. His body broke into a colony of millions of microscopic nanobots. They reformed in his old shape with new abilities. When the series ended in 2013, he joined Hank Pym's Avengers A.I. The team included Monica Chang, the cyborg Victor Mancha, another of Ultron's "sons", and a reprogrammed Doombot.

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• 7. Fairfax, Virginia

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  A new 12-issue Vision series ran from November 2015 to October 2016, written by Tom King. In it, Vision moved to Fairfax, Virginia. He brought a family he had built himself: a wife named Virginia, a son named Vin and a daughter named Viv. Wanda's saved brain patterns shaped Virginia, and a mixture of hers and his own shaped the children. They tried suburban normality and found their neighbors hard to talk to.

  The Grim Reaper's attack on their house started the collapse. He nearly killed Viv, and Virginia killed him in self-defense. A neighbor blackmailed her over it, and a confrontation accidentally caused the death of a classmate of Viv's. Vision lied to the police about Virginia's whereabouts. He built a synthezoid dog called Sparky to reinforce the sense of normalcy. Meanwhile, Agatha Harkness warned the Avengers that his need for a happy family might one day lead to mass murder.

  Victor Mancha was sent to investigate in secret. When Vin found him reporting to the Avengers, he panicked, attacked and irreparably damaged his own nervous system. Virginia told Viv the truth, then killed Sparky in anger. To keep Vision from betraying his morals in revenge for Vin, she murdered Victor herself. She told the police she was responsible for everything and had tampered with Vision's systems. The story leaves unclear whether she was shielding him or whether his perceptions were altered. She drank corrosive water from a Zenn-Lavian vase in their home, and Vision sat with her as she died. Viv survived and later joined the Champions, whom Vision oversees.

  During the Secret Empire crossover, a Hydra sleeper agent version of Steven Rogers took power. Hydra influenced Vision with an A.I. virus, and he kept resisting it. In a final battle in Washington DC, the sight of Viv let him break free.

  A clash with the Hulk seemingly destroyed Vision again in Avengers #685. He was rebuilt, but his nano-core stayed badly damaged and decay spread through his body. He was offered a full rebuild and said no. His experiences with his android family had taught him that life is precious because it is finite. He added that to be mortal is to be human. Months later, the Avengers brought him to Conan the Barbarian. Conan argued that death comes regardless and that people prove their humanity by fighting it.

  In Avengers No Road Home #9-10, Vision entered the House of Ideas. It is said to lie at the core of all reality and possibly to be the birthplace of time and space. His body and nano-core were restored, and his emotions seemingly returned. He defeated an enemy with joy, admiration and faith in Earth's heroes. He also drew on the fact that he lives in a universe of heroic stories.

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• 8. Powers and Other Worlds

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  The original body of Vision was a working replica of a human body, described as "every inch a human being" except for its synthetic organs. It was built from Horton Cells, which mimic human biology but adapt better and resist injury. Ultron added robotic systems and solar power cells. Miles Lipton, Tony Stark and Vision himself later upgraded him. Each of his nanobots now carries the information for his entire system, similar to human DNA. He could come back from even catastrophic injury, as long as his programming survives.

  Captain America trained him in hand-to-hand combat, and he is a skilled tactician. He has superior strength, enhanced senses and the ability to see parts of the electromagnetic spectrum invisible to people. His mind can weigh possible solutions several times faster than a human brain. After Heroes Return he added technopathy. It lets him reach into computer networks remotely and take control of them given enough time. A personal holographic system lets him disguise himself and his clothing.

  The gem on his brow takes in ambient solar energy and can turn it into beams of infrared or microwave radiation. His signature trick is changing his density. By drawing mass from a plane called Kosmos, he can make his skin and muscle as hard as diamond and denser than uranium. At full density he can press roughly 50 tons. He can also become completely intangible and pass through solid matter. He has phased a hand through an opponent, then restored some density to cause stunning pain.

  IGN placed him 13th on its "Top 50 Avengers" list. CBR.com ranked him 3rd on its "10 Most Wholesome Avengers" list.

  Alternate Earths hold many other versions. In Age of Ultron, he is Ultron's emissary. On Earth-932 he is a villain in the Gatherers, the group that swapped his mind with the hero's. In Earth X, he leads the Iron Avengers, robots built by Tony Stark. In Ultimate Marvel, one version is a damaged robot with feminine features who warns of the space invader Gah Lak Tus. Another is Robert Mitchell, a young prodigy arrested by S.H.I.E.L.D. and later recruited by Nick Fury.

  On screen, Paul Bettany plays Vision in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That version is a synthetic humanoid of Vibranium, created by Ultron and Helen Cho and powered by the Mind Stone. He appears in Avengers: Age of Ultron in 2015 and Captain America: Civil War in 2016. Avengers: Infinity War followed in 2018, and the miniseries WandaVision in 2021. Bettany also voices variants in What If...? in 2021. Animated series and video games have used the character, including Marvel Snap.

  One author picked the character up without a comic book. Jonathan Lethem's short story "Vision," in the collection Men and Cartoons, follows a character who dresses as Vision as a child and keeps dressing like him as an adult.

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