Viv Vision's Adolescence Is At the Heart of Marvel's New Series

Over the years, the synthezoid Avenger known as the Vision has helped his teammates win many hard fought battles to save the world. And yet, those challenges pale in comparison though to the struggles he's faced in a role that's seemingly mundane -- being a father to a family of synthezoids he created. In Vision, writer Tom King and artist Gabriel Hernandez Walta introduced the world to the Vision's wife and kids. The tragic tale ended by upending his happy suburban life and thrusting the Vision into an even more challenging familial role -- playing single parent to his teenage daughter.

In November, husband and wife co-writers Chelsea Cain and Marc Mohan and artist Aud Koch will take a deep dive into the familial dynamic between the Vision and his teenage daughter, Viv, when they kick off a new volume of Vision's adventures. The five issue Vision miniseries finds the titular character balancing superhero and family life while also dealing his daughter's growing rebellious streak.

CBR spoke with Cain and Mohan about the series, the dynamic between their two lead characters, the perspectives they'll follow, and the other Marvel heroes that Viv and Vision will cross paths with.

CBR: For your first comic writing collaboration, you're chronicling the next chapter in the life of the Vision and his family, What made this an appealing assignment for you both? What were some of your favorite elements from King and Walta's series?

EXCLUSIVE: Art from Vision #1 by Aud Koch and Jordie Bellaire.

Marc Mohan: For me, simply the opportunity to write for Marvel was a dream come true. I’ve been a fan for 35 years, and I’ll forever be grateful to my wife for letting me ride her coattails and help her to chronicle a significant chapter in the story of such an iconic character. I’ve done my share of writing, both as a film critic and, more recently, as a law student, but I’ve never written a comic before, and it’s both thrilling and a little scary to be doing it on such a big stage right off the bat. As far as Vision and Viv in particular, I was drawn by the opportunity to capture a father-daughter relationship and the challenge of putting a slightly new spin on the archetype of the android who just wants to be a normal guy.

Chelsea Cain: Here’s the thing about Marc. He is also an android who just wants to be a normal guy. So he and Vision have a lot in common. (Except for the v-necks. I’ve never been able to get Marc to wear v-necks.)

Marc “gets” Vision in a way that I do not. Just as I “get” Viv in a way that Marc does not. Marc is also a legit comics nerd, which saves me a ton of time on Marvel Wiki. He just … knows stuff. (Again, android.) Marc and I were both big fans of the King/Walta Vision run. Those 12 issues are a revelation, the kind of comic arc that comes along every five or ten years. We must never speak of it again. Anything we did after it would have to be different.

Page 2: [valnet-url-page page=2 paginated=0 text='How%20Much%20Will%20King%20%26%20Walta%27s%20Vision%20Run%20Affect%20This%20Series%3F']

Since the end of Vision, both the title character and Viv had played roles in the ongoing Champions series. In a recent issue of that book Vision revealed to a confidant that he intends to deal with his damaged nano-core, by allowing himself to die. Is that something that will inform the story you're telling? Or is that a story Champions writer Jim Zub will tackle over in his book?

Mohan: Our book isn’t meant to be quite as firmly entwined in current continuity, though certainly significant events from other books involving Viv and Vision will have an effect on our story. As far as the particular arc Vision is dealing with in Champions, that’s Jim’s story to tell.

Cain: We signed onto this gig two years ago. Turned in our first arc outline, turned in our first script, and waited... Obviously the MU hummed along, time passed, the Earth rotated around the sun a few times, and... here we are. Does our story work within continuity? Nope! You know why? Because all those other versions are actually Skrulls. I’m sorry you had to find out like this. Jim Zub’s book? All Skrulls. Jim Zub? Also a Skrull.

Let's talk a little bit more about your sense of your protagonists. What sort of place are Vision and Viv in emotionally when you pick up with them?

Mohan: We’re picking them up some time after the tragic events at the end of Tom and Gabriel’s story. Viv and Vision are investigating some nefarious doings in Manhattan. The one in Kansas. What they discover will send them on a globe-trotting adventure involving mad doctors, rebellious robots, teen angst, and paternal befuddlement. Old acquaintances pop up, some familiar, others less so. And maybe I’m not supposed to say this, but Mockingbird fans should know that everyone’s favorite canine from that series will put in an appearance.

Emotionally, Vision and Viv still have a fair amount of unresolved stuff from the end of the previous volume, and between all their superheroing and world-saving, they’ll have to deal with that too.

Cain: Viv is living with her father, undercover, in a crappy house in Kansas. Going to high school in Kansas. Her dad is overprotective. He won’t let her have an Instagram account. He treats her like a kid. They have to wear gloppy skin suits. She is trying to juggle her grief, being a good daughter, being a good superhero, and the ups and downs of being an eternal teen. Also, her dad’s extended family keeps showing up and trying to kill them. So that’s stressful.

I know a large focus of this series will be the dynamic between Vision as a single parent and his teenage daughter who is developing a rebellious streak. What's it been like writing that relationship? Seems like coming up with ways for Viv to rebel and how Vision responds is something that would be both a lot of fun and a little challenging

Mohan: Well, we are the parents of a 13-year-old girl, so coming up for ways for Viv to rebel and ways for Vision to seem utterly clueless has not been the most difficult part of writing the series.

Cain: Yeah. Marc was really good at those scenes.

What can you tell us about the perspective in Vision? Is this a series where we'll see things from the P.O.V. of both father and daughter?

Mohan: One of the key aspects of this series, for sure, is to give Viv a voice of her own and a sense of agency, an identity beyond being “Vision’s daughter.” If anything, the series is more from her perspective than his. In fact, maybe we should have called it “The Visions” or “Viv and Some Old Dude” or something like that. It’s probably too late to change it now, though.

Cain: I’ve always thought of this as Viv’s story. I’m really interested in the power of an unreliable narrator in comics and moving away from the assumption that every issue is canon, because when you have a dominant (male) voice telling pretty much everyone’s stories, and you’re saying that They Are True, it’s kind of problematic. It discounts the value of perspective. I bet Sue Storm’s memoir (I’m Standing Right Here: an Invisible Woman Speaks Out) would not line up exactly with Marvel canon, for instance. And from what I hear, she has tapes.

In terms of narrative construction, you’ll notice that Viv is the only character who has narration captions. We get inside her head. She is the storyteller. That means that everything else we see and read is through her lens, even if she’s not present.

Page 3: [valnet-url-page page=3 paginated=0 text='Vision%27s%20Marvel%20History%20Will%20Inform%20His%20and%20Viv%27s%20New%20Story']

Let's talk a little more about your collaborator, artist Aud Koch. I think she's a perfect choice in that her style has a similar feel to Gabriel Walta's, but it's also very much her own. What do you enjoy most about her style?

Mohan: Working with Aud has been great. She brings so much personality and emotion to Viv especially that it’s a wonder to behold. She’s got a really passionate approach and, obviously, the talent to back it up. Her instincts for laying out panels on the page and allowing for emotional moments to fully register are uncanny. And she draws a really cool version of [redacted].

Cain: I think she’s a really talented artist, which is why we wanted her on the project to begin with. I love the expressiveness of her work - she has a knack for capturing specific emotional beats. She is able to convey a wonderful looseness of body language that I think feels really fresh in comics. She has a natural sense of visual rhythm. She has an intuitive notion of how action plays out across the page. Not just physical action - but the emotional arc - she always hits that beat. It’s very much a fiction writing skill, and it’s hard to find in visual artists. I would love to read a comic that Aud both wrote and illustrated. I think it would be phenomenal.

Let's conclude by talking a little bit more about an important element in the relationship between a father and his teen daughter; their peers. Both Viv and Vision have some very interesting ones and you've hinted that some will appear. So what else can you tell us about your supporting cast?

Mohan: Clearly, when you’re telling a story about Vision that involved themes of family, you’ve got a lot of potential ground to cover. The previous volume demonstrated that, and we’ve tried as well to take advantage of the ways that Vision’s history connects to so many other legendary Marvel characters, from Ultron to the Scarlet Witch to the original Human Torch, hopefully in ways that make dramatic sense and aren’t just continuity call-outs for Marvel lifers (not that there’s anything wrong with a little bit of that, too).

We did manage as well to drop in a couple of characters of interest to Chelsea Cain fans, though I wouldn’t want to spoil anything in particular.

Cain: MOCKINGBIRD! I mean, hypothetically, she just seems like a really good role model for a female teen hero.