Synopsis
Avengers Assemble Annual #1 synopsis by
Rob Johnson
Rating:
Vision is wandering the streets of New York in human guise. He returns to Avengers Tower, drops his disguise and floats up through the floors. On the way he passes Carol Danvers helping Jessica Jones-Cage move more boxes of her stuff out, and complaining that she never sees her since she had a baby and got married, and she and Luke left the Avengers. Vision soothes baby Danielle with the colours of the solar jewel on his forehead. He says he learned the trick bringing up his own children. Which surprises Jessica because she never knew he had any. Vision says he doesn't, and leaves.
Carol finds him looking at images of Billy and Tommy of the Young Avengers. He tries to claim that he was just reviewing Avengers cases that happened while he was out of commission. But she suggests he ought to contact them, because supposedly they are reincarnations of his dead twins. Vision shouts that the twins were never real. They were a fiction created by his ex-wife Scarlet Witch. The 1st of many cruel things she did to him. (An image shows him being torn apart during Avengers Disassembled.)
Carol calms him down and he apologises. He also comments on the other Vision that existed while he was 'away'. And how that version of him was able to show emotions, even love. Unlike himself now. (Carol hints that his rage indicates he's not as emotionless as he claims.)
Their chat is interrupted by Iron Man alerting them to a problem at Roxxon HQ. It's under attack by 1 of their own employees, Arthur Dearborn the Sunturion. He can take Iron Man's repulsor blasts and avoids Captain Marvel's attack by letting her fly through him. Vision successfully fights him while matching his changing density. But Sunturion vanishes in a flash of light.
Dearborn had given Roxxon warning before he attacked. That and the Avengers interference meant that the building was mostly empty when Sunturion trashed lots of it. But CEO Todd Hamilton was still in there. He claims that Dearborn's living energy form is starting to break up. Roxxon tried to find a cure, but today he told Arthur that it was hopeless.
Tony Stark is suspicious, knowing the company's dubious past record. He accuses Hamilton of giving up on Dearborn because Roxxon just didn't want to spend the money to save him. Hamilton doesn't deny it, but says the Avengers must stop Sunturion anyway before he hurts innocent people.
Iron Man calls in Giant-Man and Quicksilver to help. He also has Cannonball, Living Lightning and Monica Rambeau on video-links. Tony Stark and Henry Pym will try to invent a way to stop Sunturion teleporting, while Pietro and the 3 on video will use their speed to whiz round Roxxon sites looking for him. Vision will wait to confront Dearborn when and where they find him.
Stark reminds them that Arthur is a good man. But since Roxxon turned him into the energy being Sunturion his job at the corporation has been his whole life. Now that Roxxon is abandoning him to die, he has nothing left.
Before going on the hunt Quicksilver takes time to goad Vision by likening him to Dearborn. He hated the android for marrying his sister Wanda. He didn't believe then that Vision had the humanity he professed at the time. Pietro's glad to be proven right, even though it doesn't matter anymore now that Vision and Scarlet Witch are apart.
Vision tells Stark he's going to follow a hunch. He flies to where Dearborn's ex-wife lives with her new family, and finds Arthur watching them. Dearborn tells Vision she divorced him even before he became the unhuman Sunturion, because he was in reality married to his job already. Vision sympathises, and advises Arthur to let the Avengers help him.
But Arthur reveals another reason he is attacking Roxxon. They gave his powers to a woman some time ago, but she turned against them because she discovered they had bad motives. But Sunturion killed her for the company, which he now regrets. And he now realises she was right.
Sunturion and Vision now fight, while Vision continues to try to persuade him to stop. Until Arthur sees he's frightening his wife and her family. Then he reverts to human guise and asks for help.
Vision takes Sunturion to Giant-Man and Iron Man for study. While their machines whirr away he asks them why they left it so long before reanimating him after he was destroyed in Avengers Disassembled. They say that rebuilding his body would have been easy, but they worried about how to restore his personality. It was thought safer to let his internal systems heal themselves. Then the Young Avengers' Vision appeared and they thought maybe he had Vision's personality. Meanwhile lots of stuff got in the way (from House of M to Avengers vs X-Men).
Now Sunturion pops up and asks them if they've found a way to save him. But Stark says they've only managed to confirm that he's dying. They'll need more time. But it's time Arthur doesn't have. Dearborn says that Roxxon themselves must have reams of data on him. But Stark counters that Roxxon claim their data was all destroyed in the battle against his female replacement. Sunturion doesn't believe it - Roxxon wouldn't give up trying to save him if they didn't know how to replace him.
Feeling angry and betrayed he tries to teleport away. But Stark has sealed the lab against the microwaves Arthur uses. So Sunturion just blasts a hole in the wall and teleports through it.
The Avengers track him to Roxxon's New Jersey factory. Sunturion again gives the employees a short time to evacuate before he attacks. Giant-Man, Iron Man and Vision turn up with Captain Marvel and Quicksilver. But they can't stop their opponent blasting a hole in Roxxon's wall.
But this wasn't just any wall. Arthur has exposed a lab where Hamilton is overseeing the creation of a troop of Sunturions. Dearborn asks the volunteers if Roxxon has told them that the process will eventually kill them? And from their response we can deduce they haven't.
Sunturion breaks their links to the machinery and urges them to flee. But he goes after Hamilton personally. While Quicksilver helps the subjects escape, CM tries to save the CEO. But Sunturion just teleports her to space. Giant-Man and Iron Man prepare to use a portable version of the microwave blocker that might be able to contain Sunturion's energies.
But Vision beats them to it. He has been studying Arthur's microwave radiation, and he now uses his solar jewel to absorb Sunturion into himself.
Stark says they can't legally attack Roxxon, or stop their research. But he'll use publicity to force them to hand over the data so that he can work on a way to save Arthur. (They all assume Vision will be able to restore the energy he absorbed.)
But this isn't good enough for Vision. He unleashes the microwave energy to destroy the machinery that creates Sunturions. And at the same time recreates Dearborn.
Suddenly Hamilton announces that the data on Arthur has miraculously been found. He asks Dearborn to come back to them, and they'll find a way to cure him. Stark accuses the CEO of needing the only existing Sunturion now that he can't make others. But to Vision's surprise Arthur agrees to go back to work for Roxxon, the only family he knows.
Later Vision says he's leaving the Avengers to find himself. And the 1st thing he does is visit Billy/Wiccan in the home he shares with his boyfriend Hulkling.