Vision & the Scarlet Witch - The Saga of Wanda and Vision

Many American comics can be summarised as "great art, wretched stories" but Steve Englehart's career turns that on its head. For my money, he was the best comics writer of the 1970s and this achievement is made more emphatic by the fact he was rarely paired with really good artists. True, he was well-served by Brunner and Colan on Dr. Strange, Rogers on their brief Batman run (both utterly definitive takes on the characters), and a still-learning George Perez on his last few Avengers, but for the most part he had to work with competent but dull workhorses like Sal Buscema, Dick Dillin, Bob Brown, Herb Trimpe and Al Milgrom, or eccentrics like Frank Robbins. And despite all that, he STILL managed to produce what many readers of a certain age consider the best ever runs on Captain America, Avengers and JLA, and very fine work on other titles too.The same problem is emphatically revealed in the Vision and Scarlet Witch "maxi-series" (originally published as a 12-issue stand-alone run in 1985-86) compiled here, along with extra material. The story, which covers Vizh and Wanda's move to suburban Noo Joizy to settle and raise a family, is perhaps the sweetest, most charming thing Stainless Steve ever wrote. The focus is largely domestic, and the story of Wanda's pregnancy largely unfolds in - for comics - real time, most issues/chapters taking place a month after the previous one and involving key holidays such as Thanksgiving and MLK's birthday. The plot is inventive, the characterisation wry, the drama convincing and the scripting witty. Englehart clearly loves these characters - as was obvious when he was writing their earlier adventures in Avengers, ten years earlier - and the world he builds around them. The writing lacks the depth and subtext of his best seventies work, but its style, sophistication and wisdom are streets ahead of the flood of dreck that characterised most Marvels of this vintage.And this despite some of the worst art comics art you'll ever encounter. The guilty man is Richard Howell. Howell's a competent if basic visual storyteller, in the banal house style Jim "Lurch" Shooter tried to impose on Marvel, but that's about it. He has no flair, no gift for invention, and no sense of mood. His anatomy is sloppy and he draws the most hideous faces I can recall seeing in comics. His Scarlet Witch has a face like a half-melted Barbie who's been squashed up against an anvil. Character expressions are frequently at complete odds with the dialogue they're speaking. You end up wondering if Howell had ever actually seen a human face when he drew this book. Let's be as kind as possible. Howell's art looks like the work of a right-handed ten-year old using his left hand to copy Sal Buscema. To be fair, the book also includes an issue of West Coast Avengers which crosses over with the maxi-series. This is drawn by Al Milgrom, who very thoughtfully draws as poorly as Howell, so the change isn't too jarring for the reader.Art that bad would usually merit no more than a two-star rating, but I'm still giving the book four, and if almost anyone else had drawn it, a five would be more than likely. That's how exceptional Englehart's writing is here.Let's take a quick look at what else this generously filled book contains. It kicks off with a much earlier Englehart story, from 1975's Giant-Size Avengers #4, in which the Vision and the Scarlet Witch, along with Mantis and, err, a tree, tie the knot. This story attracted a lot of criticism from fans at the time because of the alleged sloppiness of the art from Don Heck. It is a bit rough looking, but this is probably because Heck had to pinch-hit for an ailing Dave Cockrum and draw the whole 30 page story over the course of a weekend. That's an almost superhuman task and while it understandably looks hurried, Heck's storytelling - in a complex, wordy tale packed with exposition - is clear and dynamic. The real problem lies with the sloppy inking by John Tartaglione, an inker whose name should rank only just behind those of Jack Abel and Vince Colletta in the Hall of Inking Ineptitude. Anyway, that may be an academic point, as this story is the climax of an immensely intricate cosmic epic that had then been unfolding in Englehart's Avengers for over two years. Those already familiar with it will know it backwards and everyone else will be wholly and justifiably bewildered.The book then moves on to the 1982 Vision/Scarlet Witch four-issue mini-series. This neatly inverts the Englehart/Howell dynamic. The story this time is by Bill Mantlo, Marvel's most adequate writer of the era, while Rick Leonardi is the artist. Mantlo's work is bland and forgettable, and an almost textbook example of the generic pablum Shooter felt Marvel should be producing. Leonardi, by contrast, produces some really interesting visuals. After a slightly wobbly start (you can see him improving issue by issue), he not only demonstrates all the competence that eluded Howell, but shows himself to be an inventive draftsman with a real gift for mood and atmosphere, with an appealing style broadly similar to the "realistic cartooning" of Michael Golden or Pat Broderick. If Leonardi had illustrated the maxi-series, we'd be praising it as a masterpiece. What a missed opportunity.The book is rounded off with a few pages of archival material of the kind comics fans love and which once again show that Marvel are better at producing archival books than DC.Overall, a recommended item for fans of this kind of thing, but don't blame me if Howell's art does your crust in.

Lets start with the fantastic Alex Ross cover art, from his 'timeless' series - it was definatly a factor when buying this! Aside from that after watching Disney + 'wandavision' I wanted to collect the main storylines and this book has a great amount of content. I give it 5*

Excellent.

I bought this because as a kid I had two Marvel favourites, The Vision and Iron Man, a Ghost and and an armoured clad Knight. The idea of the vision has stayed with me and has suggested that the intellectual basis of the stories were far more advanced than the almost "Crayon" artwork, absurd body shapes beyond Schwarzenegger and bizarre backgrounds. Now there is a but, it was a long time ago and quality assurance was a different thing then and although some of it looks like cave paintings compared to today, when I was eight years old the Vision was the best.