This is Foggy Ruins of Time, a feature that provides the cultural context behind certain comic book characters/behaviors. You know, the sort of then-topical references that have faded into the “foggy ruins of time.” To wit, twenty years from now, a college senior watching episodes of "Seinfeld" will likely miss a lot of the then-topical pop culture humor (like the very specific references in “The Understudy” to the Nancy Kerrigan/Tonya Harding scandal).

Today, based on a suggestion from longtime reader Mik B., we take a look at a coffee commercial parody featuring the Vision.

Right before Secret Wars, the Vision suffered a complete systems shutdown when he was exposed to a mysterious force field created by Annihilus. Then new member of the Avengers, Starfox, turned to the world computer from his home world, Titan, to help Vision recover. That world computer, known as ISAAC, secretly messed with Vision's head and convinced Vision that the Earth was in great peril and the only way to possibly save the planet was to essentially conquer the planet himself. Of course, the Vision couldn't just attack the planet, he had to instead take the system down from within. So when he was awakened from his "coma," the Vision quickly decided to take control of the Avengers by pushing to be made the chairperson of the team. He then expanded the Avengers into two different teams (an East Coast branch and a West Coast branch) and pushed the President of the United States into allowing him a high security clearance.

Part of the Vision's plan also involved the public being on his side, so in Avengers #246, the Vision and his wife, the Scarlet Witch, decide to fly back from their visit with the President in a commercial flight.

As part of his attempts to prove himself to be a "man of the people," the Vision orders a cup of coffee, which he normally never does. This achieves the effect he wants to, as he overhears a nearby passenger relating to the Vision for ordering the same type of coffee that the passenger orders...

It's an important moment in the development of the Vision on the road to his ultimate heel turn on the rest of the Avengers (they realize he has been corrupted and they help fix him), but it is also a clever parody of a then-famous coffee commercial.

In the 1970s, the coffee company, Yuban, had a long-running series of commercials about a wife being shocked that her husband agrees to a second cup of coffee since he never does at home. She then realizes this is because the coffee she serves at home is not as good as Yuban...

The wife's shocked reaction is just like the Scarlet Witch's.

Said reaction was also parodied in Airplane, where a woman is shocked when her husband orders a second cup of coffee on the plane since he "never does that at home." When he then gets violently ill, the joke goes to the absurd degree as she notes to herself how her husband never gets sick at home, either...

The joke, of course, is that the woman is way too invested in her husband's day-to-day actions.

Thanks for the suggestion, Mik!

If anyone else has a suggestion for a future edition of Foggy Ruins of Time, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!