by Chris Shields
This series highlights pages from my collection of original comic art that depict Washington, DC monuments and buildings. As a long-time Washington DC resident, it is always exciting to see the extraordinary town depicted in comics.
Why did Tom King include Washington, DC in The Vision?
In an article on Marvel.com Tom
King mentions: "Vision tries to be ordinary. That effort is the most
ordinary thing he does. So, in trying, he succeeds; and such success is
extraordinary, so as he succeeds, he fails. Hopefully in that roundabout
something true comes out".
Panel 1 & 2: The Oval Office and White House
Tom’s
use of the White House visit is to contrast with Vision's “ordinary” life, by showing his Avenger access and importance by talking directly to the
President in the Oval Office. He wants a normal life, but this is most
certainly not a normal day at the office.
In the Director’s cut which is available to read on Marvel.com in
issue #1, you can see Tom’s script in the back showing that the use of
the White House and Oval Office was specified in the script and part of the
storytelling process
Why is Gabriel Hernández Walta the perfect artist for this series?
In
the Marvel article, Tom talks about how in his pitch for the series
that it was “Breaking Bad Vision”. Adding… "Once we had the “Breaking
Bad Vision” pitch I couldn’t say that was the pitch or else that would
spoil the whole “Breaking Bad” part, which I wanted to be a shock. So
people looking at the first images of the book and reading the first
solicitations were just seeing the “Vision creates a family,” thing and
they, like my buddy, thought that was a little lame. The whole thing
sounded like it might be a stupid comedy of stupid manners, robots doing
silly human things; basically Urklebot for the Marvel Universe.
So
the first and biggest challenge was—and is—showing the high stakes of
this series, showing that something horrible was happening here,
something haunting. This is where the narrative voice came from, the
voice of someone who knew what was coming—who knew about the “Breaking
Bad” pitch—and was telling the audience what you’re seeing here is not
Urklebot, but is the start of something horrible, something haunting”.
This is why having Gabriel Hernández Walta drawing and inking the pages
helped to sell this haunting aesthetic.
Photos from a recent event at the Washington, DC Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library on July 12th, 2026, Tom King was the guest of COMICTROPOLIS: Lights, Panels, Actions. The event was moderated and hosted by writer David Betancourt. The author showing the Vision art to Tom King (who owns two pages from the series).
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| photo by Shawn Martinbrough |
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