Vision Fact — November 2, 2026

Today's Fact

An android with a borrowed mind: where the Vision's feelings actually came from.

THE VISION'S MIND WAS STOLEN FROM A DEAD MAN — ULTRON BUILT HIM ON WONDER MAN'S BRAIN PATTERNS!

The Featured Fact

When the Vision walked into Avengers Mansion in Avengers Vol. 1 #57 (1968), nobody knew what he was thinking with. The answer arrived one issue later, in Avengers Vol. 1 #58 (1968): Ultron had stolen the recorded brain patterns of Wonder Man — Simon Williams, a hero the Avengers believed dead — and used them as the template for the synthezoid's mind.

Those patterns had been recorded in Avengers Vol. 1 #9 (1964), in the hour of Williams' apparent death, when the team preserved his brainwaves in the hope that he might one day be revived. Ultron raided that archive, lifted the missing memory tape, and poured a dead man's personality into the rebuilt android body he had prepared.

The borrowed mind explains the Vision's most famous moment. On learning the truth and being accepted as an Avenger in that same issue, the android shed a tear — proof that Williams' capacity for grief, loyalty and wonder had survived the copying. Wonder Man himself later returned to life, which made the two men something stranger than strangers: Simon regarded the Vision as a brother, and the Vision carried a version of Simon's inner life.

Why It's Obscure

A mind with a previous owner raises questions no recap page ever pauses to ask.

1964

The recording — In Avengers #9, the dying Simon Williams has his brain patterns taped by his teammates, who file them away as a memorial and a maybe-someday cure.

The theft

A tape goes missing — When the Avengers audit Pym's lab in Avengers #58, one reel is absent from its shelf: Wonder Man's. Ultron had taken it years before anyone thought to look.

1968

The reveal — Avengers #58 lays the mechanism bare in flashback, pairing the stolen patterns with the android body Ultron had rebuilt for his assassin.

Brothers

Two men, one template — After Simon's genuine resurrection, the two had to negotiate sharing a personality's foundations — a relationship Marvel has mined ever since, from the Grim Reaper's plots to Simon's later refusal to donate his patterns a second time.

Gallery

Comic art of the Vision and of Wonder Man, the man whose mind he inherited.

Vision shedding a tear in the classic Avengers panel — **Even an android can cry** — the celebrated closing beat of Avengers #58, drawn as the Vision learns whose patterns he thinks with and is welcomed onto the team anyway.

Vision in modern comic art reaching forward — **The synthezoid in action** — the Vision in modern colours, cape high and Solar Jewel lit, every inch the Avenger the borrowed mind helped him become.

Wonder Man Simon Williams comic cover art — **The donor, unaware** — Simon Williams, Wonder Man, whose recorded brainwaves gave the Vision his emotional core long before Simon returned to claim his own life.

Sources

Every fact on this page was checked against at least two independent sources before publication.

Bullpen Bulletins

Avengers Vol. 1 #58 — Marvel DatabaseSynopsis and credits for the issue that reveals the Vision's origin and names Wonder Man's brain patterns as its source.
Wonder Man: Powers, Enemies & Essential Reading — CBRTraces how Ultron borrowed Simon's brain patterns for the Vision in Avengers #58 and how Simon came to accept him as a brother.
Wonder Man — WikipediaRecords that Iron Man taped Williams' brain patterns in Avengers #9 and that Ultron later stole them to template the Vision.