In every installment of Abandoned Love we will be examining comic book stories, plots and ideas that were abandoned by a later writer without actively retconnng away the previous story. Feel free to e-mail me at brianc@cbr.com if you have any suggestions for future editions of this feature.

Today, we look at the fascinating way that Tom King represented Vision's history with the Scarlet Witch during King and Gabriel Hernandez Walta's brilliant Vision series. I believe my pal Mordechai said I should write about this issue back when it came out. I might be misremembering, but I figured I'd just toss out credit in case that did happen.

Anyhow, it all starts with the Steve Englehart, Richard Howell and Frank Springer maxiseries, Vision and Scarlet Witch, where, in the final issue, the Scarlet Witch gives birth to twin boys...

A few years later, the Vision and Scarlet Witch have joined the West Coast branch of the Avengers. John Byrne took over writing duties on the series (from Steve Englehart, actually) and right away, in West Coast Avengers #42 (by Byrne and inker Mike Machlan), Byrne throws things for a loop by having Vision kidnapped...

The Avengers search for Vision, who was apparently kidnapped with the help of their former teammate, Mockingbird, who is oddly flippant about the whole thing (I believe that she is sort of covering up because she feels stupid that she was taken advantage of to hurt her teammates, but it is still weird). During all of this, we get an interlude in West Coast Avengers #43 where the governess for the twins discovers something shocking...

At the end of the issue, the Avengers find the Vision but, well, it isn't good...

During the next issue, while Wanda is freaking out about the Vision, she gets a distress signal from the governess and they check it out and well, Wanda is not happy to learn that the governess claims that the kids just vanished...

The next issue, the Vision returns, but his personality has been altered and he no longer has feelings for Wanda...

That same issue, Wanda gets a new governess and, well, guess what happens?

Two issues later, there is another new governess and, well...

Finally, in Avengers West Coast #51, the villain Master Pandemonium shows up and he steals Wanda's twins and claims that they are the missing pieces of his soul. We get the horrific sight of the dude having two little babies as his hands, which continues into the next issue. Imagine what the early days of the Comics Code would have said about THIS? Luckily, the Code was relaxed a lot by this point!

Finally, he's defeated, but the kids are now gone, as Agatha Harkness explains...

That's some bleak stuff right there. A lot of it boils down to a thought that Byrne had that he later described as how Vision, when it boiled right down to it, wasn't a human like the rest of the Avengers and shouldn't be treated as such. If his entire personality could be downloaded to, like, a thumb drive, then how could he be a person like the others? He is, in effect, a toaster compared to them.

Okay, so let's see how that is handled years later in the pages of Tom King and Gabriel Hernandez Walta's The Vision...

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Gabriel Hernandez Walta was the main artist on the series, but Vision #7 had Michael Walsh as the guest artist, along with the regular colorist, Jordie Bellaire.

Okay, so the issue takes a look at the history of the Vision and the Scarlet Witch, and there's a great meta-commentary throughout where there is a joke about a talking toaster (two toasters are sitting next to each other. The first says to the other, "Do you ever feel empty?" and the other replies, "Oh my god! A talking toaster!").

Here, King reveals that despite the children seemingly not vanishing until the "missing Vision" crisis led to Wanda being distracted, the Vision actually knew BEFORE that point! Wanda does not take that well...

It's a fascinating new wrinkle to their relationship. It doesn't actively reject what we saw in the Byrne issues, but instead adds a little bit to it, but it does ostensibly "abandon" that Wanda doesn't know what was going on with her kids, as Vision had told her beforehand. Of course, it was something she was not yet ready to here.

The issue also shows a scene we didn't see in the comics, with the "new" Vision and his kids...

Vision #7 was a great example of how to alter details just enough to be interesting without drastically changing anything. It was a really good series.

If anyone else has a suggestion for a future Abandoned Love, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!