Avengers Origins: Vision #1 Review

by Andrew Hurst, CMRO Contributing Writer

Avengers Origins: Vision

Issue #1

Written by Kyle Higgins & Alec Siegel, Art by Stephane Perger

Published: January 2012

With the Avengers movie coming out next year, I completely understand Marvel’s initiative to update and refreshes their top character’s origins with this line of “Avengers Origins” comics, but Avengers Origins: Vision is a great example of how to completely squander a great opportunity.

The story starts off great with a creepy, cold awakening of Vision — at this point only referred to as the Creation — where his creator, Ultron, teaches him his soul purpose: destroy the Avengers. What follows is the flattest, most over done robot story I’ve read in a comic book in years. Robot is created, robot learns how to kill, robot learns about love, robot turns on evil creator and discovers acceptance. The issue seriously skims by that fast. It took me less than two minuets to read the whole 30 pages of story. The small drama between Jan (Wasp) and Hank (Ant-Man) is more intriguing than anything having to do with vision in this title.

If this issue we part one of a longer origin story, I could be much more lenient and see where things go, but selling the fans such mediocrity at such a high price is unacceptable. One-shots can be really good and have great stories, but this script was just lazy.

The only bright side of this comic is Stephane Perger’s beautiful art. Her style captures the frigid, robotic mood of the narrative wonderfully, and the odd panel placement gives it an alien feel that is very welcome.

It’s just wrong for Marvel to charge $3.99 for a comic like this and deliver next to nothing. I picked up this issue because I wanted to learn more about Vision, and all it ended up doing was giving me a bad taste in my mouth. This was the first of the Avengers Origins comics I’ve bought, and it’s likely the last.