Unintended Consequences

First Look for January 04, 2018

In The Vision #5 and Justice League #51 we see some of the unintended consequences of superhero life. Vision’s attempt to be normal caused his wife to hide the result of her self defense against the Grim Reaper and now not only is he dead, but others as well. On the DC side of things, the defeat of Darkseid caused damage to space-time, the ramifications of which are only now starting to be seen. Both issues are quick reads with Vision being a bit more intense with a lot of psychological and emotional impact.

Vision #5

The Villainy You Teach Me by Tom King and Gabriel Hernandez Walta. Published by Marvel Comics 2016.

In this issue, the seeds planted throughout the series so far are finally beginning to bear some sour fruit as the police show up at the Vision’s home. Detective Matthew Lin drew the short straw and got to confront Vision and while the synthezoid goes down to the station peacefully, its clear there’s some serious tension as we see Vision mentally listing off the times he’s saved humanity.

While he’s being questioned, Virginia tries to pretend everything’s normal at home but starts to lose it.

In all, there’s really not much more action in this issue but there’s a whole ton of psychological and emotional stress, just as I’d imagine would happen if anyone in my family had to visit a police station. The crux of the issue and what the whole story arc has lead up to is the decision of Vision when questioned about whether his entire family was at home the night Kinzky was murdered. The reader knows what really happened but Vision has limited knowledge of what went on and the only real fact he has is that his wife was in fact not home. And I find it telling that the most human thing we see Vision do so far in the series is to lie to the police.

The emotion of the situation is clearly presented visually, through dialog, and thought bubbles. I can easily see how this series won the Eisner. King and Walta really knocked this title outta the park.

The Vision #5 is part of my planned comics reading for January 2018.

Justice League (New 52) #51

First Impressions by Dan Abnett and Paul Pelletier. Published by DC Comics in 2016.

This issue is the result of events that happened 5 years earlier when the League stopped Darkseid and shut down the Mother Boxes. This ended up breaking space-time and causing a bunch of fractures where the different universes could bleed into each other. It also created opportunities for evil entities to mess with Earth Prime.

While the setup and specifics are a bit confusing, this is a fun issue. The main idea is to prepare the things for Titans Rebirth and to introduce Robin to the Justice League. The fights are kinda random with Schrodinger Hounds, Mammoth (who I saw in Titans Hunt), and Bron Wox all kinda thrown against the heroes for the simple purpose of fighting. And it is kinda just a bunch of clever dialog lines and witty exchanges intermingled with punches, shuriken, and ring generated objects. Fun but the action doesn’t seem purposeful.

I did like the hints that someone powerful is watching the heroes and preparing to strike but I get the impression this is gonna be a slow burn where things are gonna be a long time developing. I think my biggest issue is that this seems so far outta place after the previous Justice League issues that immediately preceded this one – in those, the team just finished with the Darkseid War, but this clearly is more tied to Titans Rebirth than that story line.

May bottom line is this is a good issue but a bit outta place for me.

Justice League (New 52) #51 is part of my planned comics reading for January 2018.