A Vision of Being Human: “Am I normal?” – radical eyes for equity

A Vision of Being Human: “Am I normal?” – radical eyes for equity

A Vision of Being Human: “Am I normal?”

“Am I normal?” Vin asks his sister Viv as they lift off the ground to leave school for home. Vin and Viv are the synthezoid teenagers of Virginia and Vision, the superhero associated with Marvel’s Avengers. This question comes after Vin is confronted during class in the first issue of Vision:

Vision: The Complete Collection (9781302920555): Walta, Gabriel Hernandez, King, Tom: Books - https://www.amazon.com/dp/1302920553/

This rendition of Vision (vol. 2, 2016), award-winning and critically acclaimed, sits behind the Disney+ series WandaVision by providing important and substantial backstories for Wanda and Vision but also because the Disney+ series and the twelve-issue comic book series share a framing: The normal American Family.

While WandaVision expands the stereotypical nuclear family trope through pastiche, Tom King (writer) and artists Gabriel Hernandez Walta (issues 1-6, 8-12) and Michael Walsh (issue 7) ground the philosophical questions running through the narrative around Vision’s synthezoid family living in Arlington, VA with the children attending Alexander Hamilton High in Fairfax, VA in the traditional family trope.

Visions entire family, not just Vin, are obsessed to the point of existential dread with their goal of being a normal family (see also Normality in Sayaka Murata). King repeats motifs and phrases around normalcy and the condition CONTINUE READING: A Vision of Being Human: “Am I normal?” – radical eyes for equity

On Reading and Comic Books: A Journey from 1975 to 2021 (and Beyond) – radical eyes for equity

On Reading and Comic Books: A Journey from 1975 to 2021 (and Beyond) – radical eyes for equity

On Reading and Comic Books: A Journey from 1975 to 2021 (and Beyond)

She was born in November 1963/The day Aldous Huxley died/And her mama believed/That everyone could be free

“RUN, BABY, RUN,” SHERYL CROW

The summer of 1975, I was diagnosed with scoliosis and fitted with a form-fitting plastic body brace anchored with aluminum rods and spanning from my pelvic bone to my chin. This was a hell of a way to start my ninth grade at Woodruff Junior High.

I would wear that brace 23 hours a day, gradually weaning myself off the support as my vertebrae both (mostly) repaired their disfigurement and eventually stopped growing; this meant I wore the brace for much of my high school experience as well.

My childhood and teen years were a contradiction of Southern racism, ignorance, and bigotry warmly wrapped in the blanket of my loving and doting working-class parents. My scoliosis was a significant financial burden on my parents (who never flinched at the medical care it required), but it also in some ways broke their hearts.

I was a skinny and very anxious human, deeply self-conscious and introverted CONTINUE READING: On Reading and Comic Books: A Journey from 1975 to 2021 (and Beyond) – radical eyes for equity