‘If You Prick Us Do We Not Bleed?’: Marvel Comics’ Vision: Director’s Cut Re-Evaluating What It Means to Be Human

Leah Henderson

doi:10.5204/lthj.1640

Abstract

Vision: Director’s Cut (2017) is a short comic series about Vision, a lonely robot Avenger superhero who builds his own robotic family out of his desire for love and happiness. The story focuses on the Vision family as they struggle to lead a ‘normal’ suburban life under Vision’s tutelage. As beings of artificial intelligence (AI), they are subject to social ostracism and abuse by a neighbourhood that refuses to accept them as part of the human community. In doing so, Director’s Cut enters into the long-standing literary debate about humanness versus monstrousness, what it means to be a human, and who gets to dictate the definition. The storyline is a contemporary science-fiction rendition of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), which dramatises the dangers of trying to artificially create a human life. Both texts are in agreement that once these beings are created, because they are sentient and self-aware, then they ought to be treated with dignity, respect and equality. Director’s Cut is additionally comparable to Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice in exploring the act of vengeance by the traumatised outsider, and how said acts ironically prove their humanness because revenge is a motive inimitable by any other life form.

Highlights

Vision: Director’s Cut (2017) is a short comic series by Tom King and Gabriel Hernandez Walta, distributed in six volumes
As beings of artificial intelligence (AI), they are subject to social ostracism and abuse by a neighbourhood that refuses to accept them as part of the human community
The comic works through the theme of otherness through the Visions as conscious synthezoids socially rejected by their community, and how this leads to a critique of human exceptionalism

Summary

Introduction

Vision: Director’s Cut (2017) is a short comic series by Tom King and Gabriel Hernandez Walta, distributed in six volumes. This includes the discussions of ‘pre-eminent justice’ in which Vision engages with his family, and questions of both whether murdering a synthezoid is a crime and whether a synthezoid can be held responsible for murder These legal questions are related to the broader authorial intentions of Director’s Cut, which can be explored through a comparative analysis to canonical texts, Shelley’s Frankenstein and Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. The loneliness of both Vision and the creature in Shelley’s novel is caused by their rejection from a mainstream society that distrusts and fears them for their physical appearance and artificial construction. These are significant character transformations that argue their true humanness because vengeance is a distinctly human trait inimitable by other life forms

Contextualising the Scene: What Is the ‘Vision’ of Vision

Crime and Punishment

The Merchant’s Pound of Flesh

Shakespeare Continued

Conclusion