As a sort of coda to my recent posts on Charlie Brown, Lucy, and
the football routine, I want to look at reference/homage to it in Tom King's
and Gabriel Hernandez Walta's 2016 run of Vision, which has just
been released as a hardcover collection. Lots of comics (The Boondocks, Foxtrot)
and t.v. cartoons (Phineas and Ferb, Steven Universe) have paid
homage to the football routine, not to mention the seemingly endless political
cartoons that have used it.[1] King and Waltra’s two-page
spread in Vision #4, (pages 70-71 in
the hardcover), though, succinctly articulates the greatness of the football
routine in Peanuts. These two pages
of Vision likewise encapsulate the
eerie defamiliarization of the “human” that makes Vision such a great comic.
For those who are not familiar with the work, Vision (2016) places the synthezoid member of the Avengers in the
suburbs of Washington D.C., where he attempts to build a normal life by
creating a wife (Virginia), two children (Viv and Vin), and a dog (Sparky), all
the while commuting to work as an advisor to the President of the United
States. Things do not turn out as the Vision
hopes. Many people die; the Visions do not access the American Dream. In short,
the comic is tragic. It is also brilliant. The Visions do not get what they
want. Charlie Brown never kicks the football and the Visions never become
human. Instead, they turn the desire to be human on its head.
I have argued in previous blog posts that Charlie Brown does not
actually want to kick the football; he values the routine and his complicity
with Lucy. In that way, he does not fail to kick the football. He continues to
try to kick the football; he succeeds in trying. The same can be said for the
Vision. If his family does not succeed in becoming typical Americans, they
succeed in trying to live their lives in the way they want to. The scene where
Vin and Viv practice trying to kick a football encapsulates this success.
Viv holds the football and Vin runs up to kick it. But Vision does not faithfully follow the
Charlie Brown and Lucy routine. Vin becomes both Charlie Brown and Lucy as he
tries to kick the football. Viv becomes both Lucy and Charlie Brown as she
holds the football. We can see this in the first panel on page 70. Viv, holding
the football, paraphrases Charlie Brown’s thoughts about trying to kick the
ball. She says, “I will do it again. Reluctantly. But it will have the same
result.” To cite just one example among many, Charlie Brown says to Lucy on
October 1, 1989, “You say you’ll hold it, but you’ll pull it away, and I’ll
kill myself!” Note that while Viv is holding the football as Lucy does, she is
outwardly reluctant to continue the routine, as Charlie Brown is. Vin replies
to Viv, “Your problem Viv, is that you do not trust.” Vin sounds just like Lucy as he says this, but note he is
about to run toward the football, just as Charlie Brown does year after year.
Even as the practice a fundamentally human routine (who doesn’t know that Lucy
holds the football and convinces Charlie Brown to attempt to kick it?), they
get it slightly wrong. There is something off about it. Vin is both Charlie
Brown and Lucy. Viv is both Lucy and Charlie Brown. It is in this offness,
though, that Vin and Viv show that they have a more-than-human knowledge of the
Charlie Brown-Lucy football routine. Both Charlie Brown and Lucy are necessary
for the routine. They both must have a desire for Charlie Brown to attempt the
kick. They both must have a desire for him to miss the football. They both must
have a desire for the routine to continue.
As Vin and Viv continue, Viv says, “This is the seventh time I am
preparing this game, Vin. The ball has not moved. You have not kicked it. You
have not earned my trust.” Charlie Brown and Lucy performed the football
routine 43 times in nearly 50 years; Vin and Viv might be trying to replicate
those attempts in one afternoon. As he runs toward the football, with Charlie
Brown-like posture, Vin speaks more words that sound like a synthezoid Lucy. “Trust
is the ability to believe without evidence. It is an act of faith. The highest
form of cognition.” The next panel shows a close-up of the football, held in
place by Viv’s finger. Vin continues. “Understanding and embracing faith moves
us closer to humanity.” This definition of “faith” fits both Vision and Peanuts. It is not religious belief that constitutes the basis of
faith. God is not necessary for faith. Faith can be any unearned act of trust.
Lucy has not earned Charlie Brown’s trust, but she does have his faith. The
Visions are not trusted by any members of their community. They do not even
have a rational belief that their lives will turn out well. But they do have
faith. They continue. They act in ways that show their faith, absent of any
trust. They go to school. They receive cookies from the neighbors, but since
they do not eat, they throw the cookies in the trash after the neighbors leave.
They do not trust in humanity—their own or anyone else’s—but they do have faith
in their approach to humanity. They will keep running toward it.
As Vin reaches the football, Viv does not pull it away. Instead,
Vin “phases” through it. As a synthezoid, he can change the space between his
molecules so that his foot passes through the football, which never moves. In
essence, he pulls the football away from himself. Viv asks, “Why do you keep
phasing?” and Vin replies with a Lucy-like laugh, “Hahahahahaha.” He continues
to laugh as Viv throws the football at him, which phases through his head. She
says “It is not funny. . . .It is sad.” Things then degenerate into a semantic
argument. Vin tells Viv that she is “sad” because she believed him. She replies
“I am not sad. I am discontented.” At this point they are interrupted by their
father. Vision contains many passages
about the meanings and connotations of American human language, such as Vision’s
and Virginia’s discussion over whether it is better to say, of friendly neighbors,
“They seemed kind,” or “They seemed nice” in issue one.
It is also Vision who sets up the the questions of truth, faith,
and humanity that Vin and Viv try to work out in their version of the football
routine. When Virginia reaches the conclusion that the phrase “They are nice”
is both the correct phrase and a meaningless phrase, Vision says, “To assert a
truth that which has no meaning is the core mission of humanity.”( I wonder if
he says “that which” because he does not fully understand the grammatical rules
for the uses of “that” and “which” and thus uses both.) He then makes
contrasting statements, articulating first the evil vision of his creator,
Ultron, and then of his own vision. “The
pursuit of a set purpose by logical means is the way of tyranny; this is the
vision of my creator. Of Ultron.” “The pursuit of an unobtainable purpose by
absurd means is the way of freedom; this is my vision of the future. Of our
future.” Tyranny flows in a straight line through logic. Freedom winds through
the unobtainable and the absurd. The Visions are free. Charlie Brown and Lucy
are free.
And the Visions dog is named Sparky, which is, of course, the
nickname of Charles Schulz. (I do not mean to claim that any of these similarities
are intentional, as, for example, Sparky’s name came from a reader’s contest in
the letters page of Vision.) In at
least one sketch, though, Sparky bears some resemblance to Snoopy.
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