But, hint by hint, what have we been watching actually happen during the Vision’s stint as chairman? Spoiler alert: I’m telling you below. First, there is an internal struggle within him, as man, as machine, as the conglomeration of former identities that make up who he is, as chronicled in my August posts of the Englehart era. The Vision uses computers to take over the defense systems and missile silos of the world’s super-powers, the Soviet Union, the United States, and the other nuclear powers such as China, India, and France. (This is all before SUPERMAN IV, which I’ll probably never bother to watch, and is a much better realized story.) He plans to abandon his physical body and become a “cloud data” intelligence. In the process, he discovers the Thinker’s old experiment in artificial intelligence, Quasimodo, hidden as a cyber presence, in one of the earliest comic book depictions of the Internet, which had not become a fully-realized entity such as we know today. Their power...

NOT ANOTHER COMIC BOOK IS COMING IN 2012!!!! Like the INTEGR8D SOUL page on FB for more!!! And this blog and more new material are coming out as a book in spring of 2012, INTEGR8D FICTIONS. 1984 Expansion Period, Part Two After a mammoth cross-over with a demonic invasion in THOR, the Avengers assemble, East Coast and West Coast for the first time, to confront his plan to steal energy from Earth’s rotation itself in AVENGERS #250. Roger Stern writes: There were a couple dozen Avengers or former Avengers at the time, and I had tried to limit the number of active members in any given issue, just to avoid writing crowd-scene comics. I had plans for most of the characters who didn't have their own books, but every time I turned around, another writer was glomming onto one or more of them for a miniseries, often for someone other than The Avengers editor. The West Coast Avengers was my solution to that. The original plan was to establish a second branch of the team in Californ...

The mystery woman known only as Mantis traces the steps to places in her memories, asking questions and attempting to find people she remembers, throughout the Vietnamese capitol of Saigon. To her increasing despair, she is told she could not have been at one house when she thought; it was built but two years ago. No one in her past can be found. What future, then, awaits this woman, if everything before her now-deceased lover was a lie? Hawkeye the Archer asks the Vision about her story even while helping Thor and Iron Man in their support of her quest. He tells of the finely-attuned, mystically-aware, aloof adventuress who came here, swearing angrily that the Libra of the Zodiac crime-lords is not her father, while he told her of the Priests of Pama, who he found while blindly staggering away with her in his arms after her mother’s murder by her uncle. The mystery of the Star Stalker and the arrival of Kang the Conqueror both further suggest she is someone...

ACT FIVE: Origins and journeys outside time! Original Vision The Swordsman is dead...soon to be buried. The woman he loved, martial arts mistress Mantis, questions her decisions, regretfully, and asks to take his body to Viet Nam for burial. The Avengers, Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, kindly, supportively join her. While the Scarlet Witch needs to stay and study with her mentor, Thor asks her love, the synthezoid known as the Vision---to her dismay; “no, Vision, please don’t go with that man-trap---no matter HOW sorry she seems!” she thinks. He declines; three times now, including their recent battle with Kang the Conqueror, he has frozen in battle and is “no longer a credit to the Avengers.” On this account, however, Iron Man and the rest insist he is wrong. Thor points out Wanda will be sequestered; he will be alone. In solidarity with his team mates, he reluctantly agrees, without realizing his love Wanda’s fears. The Swordsman’s funeral is held in the g...

Sponsored by Integr8d Soul Productions. Order "Devils and Angels" or "Puzzle Girl" in black ($13 plus shipping) or white ($11 plus shipping) by sending money and message (size, color, design) to luelyron@gmail.com for PayPal, or write there for the address if you want to send a check! Devils and Angels is the cover to D'n'A: The Mountain, our b & w comic! It's only $3.25. Act the Fourth: Death of a Swordsman by Lue Lyron By AVENGERS #128, it’s apparent that everyone feels they need someone else. Scarlet Witch: needs this new teacher to take over her life, risk her life, challenge her powers and her fundamental doubts in her abilities to recharge between hexes more quickly, and establish a relationship with nature (at the same time that her science spawned boyfriend seems to flake). Vision: this android---this man---needs to tell Scarlet Witch, Wanda, he loves her, and needs to tell Mantis he admires her, and needs some as...

I'll have a new piece together quickly, but in this space, I'm going to simply say I came to see Englehart's romantic quadrangle storyline in the form of a five act play. The first act begins with the Human Bombs attempting to assassinate the Vision, inflaming Wanda's mistrust of human kind and increasing her sense of isolation and identification with the Vision. Then the Swordsman and Mantis are introduced through the next scenes, earning their place in the Avengers. The second act centers around Mantis' identity mystery and sets up the rupture in existing relationships and possibility of a new one. The third act embodies the conflict as it rears its head. Wanda also begins a new, deep, and isolated relationship: with her new mentor, Agatha Harkness. This is where my next piece picks up. The fourth act features a tragedy. The fifth act resolves like a traditional comedy: with marriage! After these next three pieces, I'll be lucky to keep...

This Marvel character probably needs and deserves an introduction. His costume design, in patterns of perfect order, symbolizes his logical nature, while his colors utilize all the primaries save blue, which is always present in the costume of some Avengers team mate, among whom he has lived his publishing life mostly, in ensemble. He's probably the most iconic Avenger who's never had his own ongoing series or cartoon, which makes the Avengers comic title the home of most of his personal story. His demeanor is frankly spooky for a superhero. He's very much the thinking person's character, though. You might be pleasantly surprised so outlandish an appearance masks a very human story, in a satisfying speculative fiction way. Creation Did an evil robot create the Vision? Well, I wouldn't call Roy Thomas or John Buscema malevolent mechanoids, but that is how they told the story of Ultron-5's son in Avengers #57. His strange origin is important for the reason ...