I am a Jew?: the Merchant of Venice and posthumanism in Tom King and Gabriel Hernandez Walta’s the Vision

Abstract

Abstract

King, Walta, et al.’s limited series The Vision (2015–2016) is the story of Marvel Comics’ artificial ‘synthezoid’ and his newly created family as they attempt to forestall the destruction of their perfect suburban life by pressures both within and without. A significant intertext for this series is Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, which is repeatedly quoted by the characters, contrasting the position of the Vision family to that of the character of Shylock. Using the lens of Shakespeare reception studies, this paper argues that while Vision is ‘raced as posthuman’ (Lavender III, 2011) and suffers discrimination from human society, he can never be wholly allegorised as or identified with the Jewish Shylock or, indeed, into being a member of any of the other groups which he and his family are paralleled with. I argue that ultimately King, Walta, et al.’s depiction of the Vision and his family is a tragic one. Their posthuman bodies are irreconcilable with human society and problematise the classical humanism which undergirds both the morality of Shakespeare’s play and much contemporary science fiction.