Funny Books: It’s A Horrible Robot!!! [Avengers #57]

Funny Books is back, and ready to piggy back on that sweet, sweet Avengers gravy train. From now until the premiere of Avengers: Age of Ultron, Funny Books will take a look back at some of the Avengers’ most important moments.We’re inching ever close to the film release, which makes it the perfect time to spoil the newest Avenger, The Vision!

Now for those who don’t know, The Vision is a long time Avenger, as well as a member of the proud legacy of trying to add lame robots to your superhero team. To be fair to the Vision, he does get a cool entrance:

Which he then ruins by totally peeping on Hank Pym and The Wasp fighting about something. Let’s say…Congress?

Still, in the grand Marvel tradition of unnecessarily dramatic, the Vision burst into the Wasp’s pad and she yet again names another Avenger:

We also get the first example of the Vision’s admittedly confusing power set, phasing:

Janet, you’ve hung around an actually God most of your life, a robot phasing through a wall should not freak you out this much!

But then the Vision breaks down like so many Red Tornadoes.

The Avengers take the Vision for analysis, where writer Roy Thomas (1968) adds the most confusing thing about the Vision, his status as a “Synthezoid.”

God, glug, glug, alright, what’s a –hic- “Synthezoid” you might ask? A robot is an artificial being. An android is a robot disguised as a human (ex: Terminator). A cyborg is a half-human, half-robot (ex: Robocop). The Vision is a little harder to pin down, but he’s basically a robot with bio-synthetic skin and organs. A synthetic man if you will….except for the times he’s just a robot, cause comics, LOL.

But who would be evil enough to make such a confusing being!?

Oh yeah, Ultron.

Ultron had built Vision to destroy the Avenger (which is basically the Red Tornado’s backstory) and if that failed, to lead them to his secret layer so he could destroy them. The thing about Ultron is that you can’t beat him head on. He’s a super intelligent and indestructible immortal being. The only way to beat Ultron is to trick him into beating himself, much like the Vision did in Ultron’s final attack: