In this twelve-issue limited series, Vision and the Scarlet hand in their A-cards and lead a suburban life in Leonia, New Jersey. But they can't leave their superhero lives behind! Sound familiar? Some storylines from here inspired the Disney+ series, WandaVision, but it's not a straight interpretation of the series, so the comic serves as inspiration-only. As for the comic itself, you're getting superhero soap opera at its finest. Thanksgiving family drama! Adultery! Coma! Pregnancy! All against the backdrop of humans with extraordinary abilities.
As a publisher, Marvel has always excelled at pushing the status quo. This time, Steve Englehart uses the couple of Vision and Scarlet Witch to push just what exactly a super-comic can look like! There's the typical bad guy-good guy fight in pretty much every issue. But they tackle problems unique to the two of these Avengers. There's a storyline where they face bigotry in their neighbors, ones who aren't okay with living next door to a gypsy and an android. There's another storyline where they face retribution from the Grim Reaper, disgusted that the brainwaves of his brother were used to give the Vision life. Though it doesn't stem his own bigotry, you learn that Vision really is human, despite his differences.
I'm not gonna lie, this reads like a Marvel comic from the 80s'. It's dense, and it took me a long time to read through it. The first half especially has so much backstory to explain, you have to read all this background just to read the story. But by the halfway mark, the series finds its stride, devoting each issue to some annual holiday. The episodic nature of the story makes it feel like a sitcom, sometimes. No matter what happens to them, the emotional core remains the relationship and love between Vision and Wanda. In the Mardi Gras issue, for example, Wanda questions whether Vision feels as strongly for her as he used to, now that she's gained pregnancy weight. The Enchantress seduces him to steal a jewel, but by the time all's said and done, their relationship is stronger than ever.
If you take nothing else from the story, it's that, in a world of synthetic androids that can change their density at will and mutant witches that can alter the probability of the world with spells, a romance, love and even a marriage between the two isn't so impossible either. When Wanda is put under a knockout spell, she fights it by asserting herself. Not as Wanda Maximoff, not as Wanda Magnus, but as Wanda period. She is her husband's wife first; she's taken his last name, and nothing can change that.
If you have the patience for the dense backstory that's a part of nearly every issue, you'll be rewarded with a unique super-comic that's not afraid to push the boundaries, move forward and change the status quo of decades' worth of stories for these two characters. Something that Marvel does exeedingly well.
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