Lit-Level Comic Writing

While I’m an avid comics reader and a believer in the medium, I guess I’m also guilty of a little bit of self-hate. I can tell because when I first read Tom King’s comics, I thought to myself This guy is too good for comics. That’s a weird thing to say if you think comics are great. I suppose what I was thinking is that King writes with a depth one expects more from an Oscar-nominated screenwriter or a bestselling author. His Batman work has been really popular, lately. I’d put his recent Batman Annual 2 up with Busiek, Miller, Dini, or O’Neil as some of the best single-issue writing I’ve ever encountered. That’s why I picked up this book. 

The Vision is about Marvel’s Vision, the robot/human guy played by Paul Bettany in the MCU. He was created by Ultron (bad guy) for evil, but he decided to be good and he joined the Avengers. In his quest to be normal and “human”, he created a family. He’s got a wife and two high-school aged kids. They live in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. (It’s worth noting that Tom King used to work for the CIA, so he’s familiar with the area.) No matter how they try, they don’t fit in. It seems like the harder they try, the more they stand out.

As you might be able to tell from the subtitle of the book, this book is a drama about what it means to be human. It’s about prejudice. It’s about the lives we try to carve out for ourselves, despite whether they’re realistic or not. “Little worse than a man,” is a line from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. King uses lines from the play at some key moments in the book.

While I think the book is good, it’s too good for me to enjoy because the drama hits so hard. Nonetheless, I would recommend it for thoughtful comic readers. If you plan on buying it, there a gorgeous hardcover that collects the whole run (this is just part one). If you’re all in, grab that so you get the whole story and something that looks good on the coffee table.