(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 013, 1940)

The Vision! Solid second-tier Golden Age Marvel Comics super-hero who must forever languish in obscurity thanks to his much more well-known namesake! According to the story I just read and have no reason to doubt, Roy Thomas wanted to bring him back for the Avengers and was told no, and that’s why we have the very similar-looking android we all know and love who looks quite a bit like the extradimensional smoke man who far fewer of us know and love (and to be fair to Marvel editorial, having two Golden Age characters on the Avengers in 1968 would have been one too many. Plus this guy – in at least his mid-forties in human age at the time – would look like a real creep if he started dating the early-twenties Scarlet Witch).

As mentioned above, the Vision is from another dimension, and specifically from a place that is usually referred to as Smokeworld, on which he was a lawman of some description. He is brought to Earth thanks to the experiments of Doctor Enoch Mason, who was trying to contact the afterlife maybe?

Whether or not he comes from the spirit realm or merely a very portentious-sounding dimension, the Vision (aka Aarkus, Destroyer of Evil) is interested in law and order and the destruction of evildoers, and gets indulge in this as soon as he is on Earth as he stops some gangsters sent by the intellectually-insecure Brains Borelli to smash up Dr Mason’s laboratory. In doing so, he demonstrates a wide range of powers that but also annoyingly suggests that the only thing he is doing is casting illusions, e.g., he claims that he did not freeze the crook in the above panels but rather that he arranged for him to be frozen by a stray bit of equipment. This conceit is dropped in the Vision’s subsequent appearances, and thank heaven for that. Likewise short-lived is the Vision’s human form, in which he also goes by Aarkus.

As might be assumed from the fact that he comes from a place called Smokeworld many of the Vision’s signature powers involve smoke. Most dramatic of these is his tendency to appear from even the slightest wisp of smoke, such as that created by lighting a cigarette.

Finally, we must continue the tradition of noting when a character was a part of the public-domain-super-heroes-turned-Nazis group Battle-Axis (another Roy Thomas joint – that guy just loved putting the Vision on teams!). In contrast to some of his teammates, the Vision joins Battle-Axis not for any spurious ideological reason but because he is being blackmailed by Doctor Nemesis Death, who has gained control of the machine that allows travel between Earth and Smokeworld. Is that a good enough reason to become a Nazi or at least a Nazi collaborator? Probably not.