WandaVision: 'White Vision' Was Almost Not White at All in the Comics

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COMIC LEGEND:

Marvel overruled John Byrne's original plan to have the "White Vision" not be white.

STATUS:

False

Yesterday, I wrote about how John Byrne addressed the plot from Roger Stern's Avengers run where Vision essentially took over the world by having the world's governments dismantle Vision and wipe his memories.

The Vision was then rebuilt, only now he was all white...

Reader Rob H. recently reminded me of an interesting interview Byrne did with Dwight Zimmerman for Comics Interview #71 about Byrne's thoughts behind the changes in the Vision (this is really sort of neither here nor there, but hey, it was interesting and it sort of applies, so here ya go)...

Zimmerman: With the Vision you're making a real radical move, literally you're taking him apart.

Byrne: Yes, literally. That was fun, I've always wanted to do that.

Zimmerman: What's in store for Wanda -

Byrne: Oh, poor Wanda.

Zimmerman: -now that she's effectively married to a stranger?

Byrne: Yeah, she's got this guy that's programmed to know that he's her husband. Well, maybe I should go back a little bit and explain why I did what I did. I've always been bothered, first of all, by the idea of the Vision marrying the Scarlet Witch. In the issue that just came out I have one of the characters saying that her brother-in-law was very offended when he founds out, he said it was like somebody marrying a toaster or a blender or something. Actually I was the brother-in-law, that was my first reaction. That was a signal issue of THE AVENGERS, you know - the Scarlet Witch marries a toaster and Mantis marries a tree. I don't know what we're saying in that issue, so I wanted to get rid of that, that had always sort of bothered me.

I'd also never liked the idea of the Vision being the original Human Torch, that seemed to come out of left field, especially when there were several stories before it that seemed to be the lie to it. Toro attended the Torch's funeral, for example, and then Ultron is supposed to have found the Torch where the Mad Thinker and the FF left him. So I decided....fifteen years ago it seems, when I first got into comics, I was going, "Can I do a story that puts the lie to that?" They kept saying, "No, you don't do THE AVENGERS," And then finally I was doing THE AVENGERS. My whole reason for doing WEST COAST when Howard asked me to do WEST COAST, I said, "If the Vision and Scarlet Witch can become permanent members then I'll do the book." Wanda has always been a favorite character of mine. And he said that was fine. Mark Gruenwald's eyes lit up at that point, he said, "Now you can do that story!" And I go, "Yeah, that's right, I can!" So we started working on it.

I don't know when this will be coming out, I don't know how much I want to give away...not that it really matters, the kids will buy the stuff anyway. We find out that the Vision is not the Human Torch. I am bringing back he original Human Torch, he will be with the West Coast Avengers for about a year. And poor Wanda is going to be going quite nuts, I plan a nervous breakdown for her. It's terrible to do these things to the characters. Terrible stuff is happening with the Vision, some terrible stuff is going to be happening with her kids - that's already started - and Wonder Man is now revealing that he's been in love with her all along. The premise there being that the Vision had Wonder Man's brain patterns, so if it was logical for the Vision to fall in love with Wanda, it has to have come from there. You don't program emotions into somebody, where did the Vision's emotions come from; they must have come from Simon's brain patterns.

So poor old Simon, he came out of whatever that he was doing being dead for about nine years - real world time, there and a half minutes Marvel time - (laughter). He came out of being dead and here was this woman who was everything he had ever dreamed of, and she was married to a toaster. So he was holding himself back and being a gentleman about it, but now he's pursuing her. The twist is that he has refused to let them put his brain patterns back into the Vision. He says, "The last time I was dead, this time I have a choice, I don't want somebody walking around with my head. I had adjusted to it, but I had adjusted to it sort of by force of not having any choice in the matter."

Anyhow, a while back, Byrne's original design for the White Vision popped up online and it is interesting that Byrne notes on the design sheet that the Vision was NOT meant to be white originally!

The brilliant colorist, Matt Wilson, did a bit where he colored the Vision based on Byrne's original listed colors. Here it is...

Some people were confused as to why the change. Someone asked Byrne on his message board if he was told by Marvel to change the look, but Byrne explained that he just made the change on his own.

Thanks to Dwight Zimmerman and John Byrne for the information and thanks to Matt Wilson for the awesome coloring bit! And thanks to Rob for the suggestion of the Zimmerman/Byrne interview!