Tom King is a guy with a funny story. Before becoming a professional comic book writer, he was a CIA agent, was in the counterterrorism unit for a short time in Iraq, and shortly after his first child was born, he quit his job to write his first novel, A Eleven Crowded Sky.
In DC Comics they must have seen the talent of King, who shortly after began to work in the comic industry, in his first comic as a professional screenwriter, in the series Grayson. A spy comic that seemed to fit like a glove with King's past.
The comic had a fairly good reception - partly thanks to the excellent drawings by Mikel Janín from Navarra, current superstar of the Deceite publishing house -, its plots breathed fresh air, and people began to look at Tom King as a value to follow closely . From there he went on to publish his first author comic in Vertigo -The Sheriff of Babylon- and shortly afterwards made the leap to Marvel Comics.
Currently, King is a highly recognized author: he has been writing the main Batman collection - DC's golden goose - for a couple of years and has even won the 2018 Eisner Award for best writer, along with Marjorie Liu.
But what no one expected when King signed for Marvel back in 2015, is that he was going to write a work of the depth of The Vision. This 12-issue story took everyone by surprise, and for good reason. A little-known author and cartoonist –Gabriel Hernández Walta- telling us the story of a second-rate member of the Avengers. Who could be interested in that?
The seemingly perfect and exemplary Vision family. | © Marvel ComicsThe Vision had not had a memorable role in the Marvel Comics continuity for a long time - there were the excellent comics with his wife, the Scarlet Witch, but that was more than 30 years ago - so the new limited series of the son of Ultron is not exactly that he raised many expectations. But Tom King took it upon himself to shut everyone's mouth.
This miniseries was gaining in popularity with each new issue published. Far from reading the typical superhero story, we find an interesting study of what it means to be human, to have feelings, and the need to fit in a society that takes you for a freak.
The high school life of an adolescent syntezoid | © Marvel ComicsFor a "normal" person this can be more or less complicated, but when it comes to an android things get very complicated. We are facing a manners, psychological history, a slice of life where we follow the daily life of a middle-class American family in an urbanization, with their house, their garden and the typical gossiping neighbors who welcome you to the neighborhood with a tray of hot cookies. The Vision has "created" his own family, and now he has a wife and two teenage children, all of them Synthezoids - artificial humans - like him. All they want is to fit into society and live a normal life. What could go wrong?
Gabriel Hernández Walta's drawing may not be the most suitable for a superhero comic with great battles and spectacular scenes, but here it fits like a glove and manages to capture the expressiveness of the protagonists with great accuracy, always pivoting between coldness and warmth. in a near perfect balance. And then there are the incredible covers of Mike Del Mundo, the perfect wrapper for a story that we can easily classify as a modern classic. A Instant Classic of manual.
The covers of Del Mundo are another of the great attractions of this comic | © Marvel ComicsBest of all, it is not necessary to have read any Avengers comic, nor do we need to know the character's 50-year history to fully enjoy a work like this. Things like this are what make reading this type of comics worthwhile: the creators demand very little from the reader, and in return they give a few hours of consistent reading and the sea of entertaining. Something almost impossible to achieve in the current Marvel and DC publishing lines, where practically everything is interconnected.
To this day, Tom King continues to dazzle critics and the public with other limited series such as Mister Miracle, but if you want to read the great bombshell that this former CIA agent turned into a comic book writer meant to stardom, do not hesitate to take a look at "The Vision." A different reading that escapes from the superheroic stereotypes, and a wonderful starting point towards the particular universe in Marvel Comics cartoons.
Amazon | The Vision 1. Visions of the Future
Amazon | Vision 2. Little More Than A Beast
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