It's our yearly Comics Should Be Good Advent Calendar! Every day until Christmas Eve, you can click on the current day's Advent Calendar post and it will show the Advent Calendar with the door for that given day opened and you can see what the "treat" for that day will be! You can click here to see the previous Advent Calendar entries. This year, the theme is a Totally Tubular 80s Christmas! Each day will be a Christmas comic book story from the 1980s, possibly ones that have a specific 1980s bent to it (depends on whether I can come up with 24 of them).
The drawing for this year's Advent Calendar, of Miami Vice Santa Claus giving out 80s presents, like a Rubik's Cube and a Sony Walkman, to four superheroes with the most-80s costumes around, is by Nick Perks.
Each day, a door on the calendar will be opened (once opened, the door will feature a panel from the featured story)...
Here's the story for Day 6, "Batteries Not Included," from Christmas 1985's Vision and Scarlet Witch #7 by Steve Englehart, Richard Howell and Frank Springer.
This is the final bit of our Fred Van Lente Day CSBG Takeover, as Fred Van Lente is the one who picked this story! Fred's a fan of this maxiseries, which took place over a calendar year in the Marvel Universe, much like The Long Halloween would later do in the Batman Universe. So pretty much every issue revolved around a holiday of some kind (including the infamous Martin Luther King Jr. Day mention in #8)
The issue opens with Vision heading to Avengers Mansion, where then-new member of the Avengers, Namor, is sparring with Captain America and they think that the Vision is there to wish them a Merry Christmas, but in actuality, he wants to know about the Human Torch, the android whose body the Vision believed he was currently occupying (it turned out to be not true and then true again over the years)...
Meanwhile, the very-pregnant (don't ask) Scarlet Witch is teaching her new witch pupil about the mystical origins of Christmas...
The Vision has a big battle with the Toad, of all people, and at the end of it, the Vision realizes it doesn't matter where he's from, all that matters is that he is the Vision! He returns to spend Christmas with his wife...
Wanda's pupil, though, heads out and discovers that Wanda's sister-in-law, Crystal of the Inhumans, is having an affair!!
DOES ANYTHING IN THIS COMIC SCREAM 'TOTALLY TUBULAR 80s'?
The whole concept of the maxiseries of the yuppie superhero couple moving to the suburbs screams 1980s. The Crystal affair (and possible divorce from her husband, Quicksilver) has a lot of 80s-era specific aspects to it, but it is ultimately a timeless concept (dissatisfied wife finds comfort in the arms of another).
Happy Fred Van Lente Day, everyone!