Comic Book Retro Spotlight: The Vision in Avengers#194

While Andrea and I are watching VisionQuest over on Disney+, I thought I might take a look back at my first encounters with the Vision in Marvel Comics.

For most of Dave-El's kidhood, I was a DC Comics fan. But the DC Implosion of 1978 left me with more comic book coin than actual DC comic books to buy.

So I began sampling comics from Marvel. 

Below is my first issue of Avengers, issue#183 from February 1979 which would've been my first exposure to the character known as the Vision.  

But the focus of my post today is Avengers#194 by David Michelinie, George Perez and Joe Rubinstein from January 1980.   

What makes this issue so unique is that absolutely nothing happens.

I mean, nothing in the sense that there's a villain who poses a threat and the heroes have to fight the villain and stop the threat yadda yadda yadda.

This issue is what the title of the story suggests: an interlude between crises as the heroes who make up the assembled Avengers deal with life and stuff.

And nowhere is that introspection more deeply explored than with the Vision.  

What follows is an exploration of the Vision's vast and varied powers as well as an introspection on the meaning of life, identity and the concept of the self.

George Perez does such a great job delineating this sequence and Joe Rubinstein's inks are a perfect match for George's pencils.

Jocasta is part of the cast for VisionQuest and she was part of the narrative in the Avengers back in 1980 as well.  

It was about this time that my foray into Marvel began to wane as DC was beginning to recover from the desolation brought on by the DC Implosion. 

George Perez himself would be moving over the DC in a few months to draw Teen Titans and Justice League of America. 

Also I was now a somewhat older teenage Dave-El approaching high school graduation and with other things to spend my money on besides comics.  

The season finale for VisionQuest dropped yesterday but Andrea and I are about a couple of episodes behind right now. 

My write up on that will be in a few weeks in a Tuesday TV Touchbase.