"WandaVision" is delightfully strange, isn't it? But, believe it or not, the comics that may (or may not) have inspired the Disney Plus series are even weirder.
Take the Vision. Unlike most superheroes, you can't sum up his origin with a single phrase. He wasn't rocketed to Earth from a doomed planet, for example, or bitten by a radioactive spider. His origins are weirder and, moreover, refuse to remain static.
This part has always been true: Vision is a "synthezoid," an advanced android, who first appeared in "Avengers" No. 57 in 1968. Just like in the movie, he was built by the murderous artificial intelligence Ultron, who ordered him to kill the Avengers. As we all know, he joined the team instead. Voilà! Origin!
As for the Scarlet Witch, she has a convoluted back story that keeps changing every few years. It all started in "The X-Men" comics in 1964, when she and her twin brother first appeared as members of Magneto's Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Eventually they got fed up with the Big M, though, and took their act to the Avengers. At the time, the team seemed like a Supervillain Reform Society, so they fit right in.
And what does this have to do with "WandaVision"? Well, in the first place, it shows just how malleable the histories of these two characters are. The show can do just about anything and explain it away. In the second place, we're only scratching the surface of the weirdness that is Wanda and Vision in the comic books — together or separately. For example:
• Wanda had two babies, Tommy and Billy, with the Vision. It was assumed at the time that she had used her reality-altering power to create the babies. But they were later revealed to be creations of Mephisto, one of Marvel's chief demons. (He took them back.)
• Vision once built a family of androids — wife Virginia, son Vin, daughter Viv, unnamed green dog — and lived happily in the Georgetown suburbs. (Well, until dead bodies started turning up.)
• When Wanda "lost" her children, she went nuts. She changed the whole world to "House of M," where Magneto was essentially king of everything and mutants were top dogs. (It didn't last.)
• One time, Vision took over the planet's computers in order to run the world more efficiently. (Turned out to be a bad idea.)
• Another time Wanda went nuts, she whispered "no more mutants," and more than 90% of the world's mutant population lost their powers (and no more were born). That turned out to be a bad idea, especially for mutants who were flying at the time. (It's since been fixed.)
• For a time in the 1980s, Wanda and Vision were married, and lived in Leonia, N.J. (They're divorced now.)
See anything in these stories that might apply to "WandaVision"? How about "nothing is ever as it seems" or "Vizh and Wanda really want to live in the suburbs"?
The other thing to keep in mind, if indeed any of these stories are the inspiration for "WandaVision," is this: None of them ever end well.
