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Thursday 16 February 2017

The Vision, Volume 2: Little Better Than a Beast Review (Tom King, Gabriel Hernandez Walta)


Vision’s brother Victor visits but brings complications with him, forcing Vision to make some hard choices about his family. 

The Vision is one of those books that occasionally crops up like Saga that everyone goes gay for but totally baffles me as to its appeal. The second and final book in this series is a slight improvement over the first but it’s still only mediocre at best. 

I couldn’t get past how contrived the events of the first book were. Virginia does things that shouldn’t have been escalated in the way they were - the drama felt completely forced. This trend continues in the second book with Victor doing something terrible for seemingly no reason, which gives us the conflict and the story in the process. 

Not only that but this title is almost humorously self-important and dark with its ridiculous deaths and Shakespearean quotes. I mean, Victor on some kind of robot heroin - are you kidding me!? It just takes itself so damn seriously that it makes it hard for me to read with a straight face. 

That said, the ending was surprisingly moving and I liked the way Tom King left things for Vision - I hope Marvel keep it that way for him for a while rather than have it self-contained to just this book. And I loved Mike Del Mundo’s covers which are easily the best art this series has to offer. 

Tom King’s writing isn’t bad, it’s just the story has a number of flaws I couldn’t accept. Gabriel Hernandez Walta and Michael Walsh’s art isn’t terrible either, it’s simply not that amazing. Everything’s pretty much acceptable which is why I wonder what everyone else is losing their shit over - it’s an ok title, but a masterpiece? Come on. 

The Vision, Volume 2: Little Better Than a Beast is a marginally better book than the first and ends the series well though a lot of the lead-up to it is silly and melodramatic. Obviously if you’re a fan of the first book, you’ll love the second, but for readers yet to take the plunge, I’d say to beware the hype and not expect too much from this title.

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