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Popular Culture Review
them, and later still he had “a romantic relationship with the hex-casting heroine
called the Scarlet Witch that blossomed into true love and marriage"
(Marveldirectory.com).11
In Lethenvs ‘The Vision," both “The Vision'" and “The Scarlet Witch"’
reappear, but not in the way imagined by their comic-book writers and artists.
This story does not take place in a world populated by superheroes, rather, it
takes place in the here and now—the ordinary, not the extra-ordinary. “The
Vision," simply put, is an example of a realist narrative; it is a memory piece—
the actual event or “moment of the story" that the narrator, Joel Porush,
describes to us is the evening of one day. And yet the story itself is expansive.
We are provided with background information that helps us make some sense of
the situation. Porush describes a chance meeting with a childhood friend of his,
Adam Cressner, who had moved back to the old neighborhood. Their moment of
re-acquaintance is awkward: Cressner refuses to acknowledge that they are from
the same neighborhood or that they had gone to school together: “Possibly I
remember you," he says after Joel strikes up a conversation. His demeanor
seems as odd to the narrator as it does to the reader; however, like the narrator
we have the upper-hand: earlier in the story our narrator has told us about
Adam’s school-boy identity. As a kid, Cressner was taken by the comic
character The Vision and emulated him by smearing his face “with red food
dye" and wearing an imperfect replica of his superhero costume. He even talked
like the Vision: “Ultron-5 constructed me well"—spoken, our narrator recalls
“in the mournful monotone of a synthetic humanoid” (2).
Now grown up, Cressner is a professor of art history at Columbia and
he and his “paramour,'’ Roberta Jar, invite Joel into their home one evening to
join in a party they are hosting. The invitation is an after thought as they need
one more person to make fifteen—the number of players needed to play
“Mafia.” He accepts. The party is a low key affair and the game runs its course
with Joel being removed from the “village” early on. Not wishing to mingle with
the other guests, he finds himself in the library looking through the two
collections of Marvel history— Origins o f Marvel Comics and Son o f the Origins
o f Marvel Comics—that had been published in the early seventies.12 A young
woman named Doe, who he is attracted to, joins him and he has a short but
flirtatious conversation with her. It leads nowhere, but then it shouldn’t since her
character serves simply to provide Joel a reason to expose Adam’s childhood
obsession.
As the party draws to a conclusion, Adam suggests that since the night
is still early, those who can stay should. And Joel offers up another party game
they all can play: “I Never.” It is a drinking game and the idea is to make a true
statement “beginning with the words I never ’ (14). Anyone who has done what
has just been described must “confess” by taking a drink. As with all drinking
games, the object is to get the “worldly" to drink too much, embarrass
themselves and reveal secrets (14). And this indeed, is what happens. But as