This article contains spoilers for VisionQuest season 1 episodes 1-2.Speed has arrived! Years after Tommy Maximoff and his twin brother Billy seemed to disappear after their mother Wanda dropped her hex in WandaVision, VisionQuest reveals that Tommy somehow lives, now as a Scottish man called Thomas Shepherd (Ruaridh Mollica). The second episode of VisionQuest shows us how this happened, as the drowning of young Thomas allowed for Tommy Shepherd’s spirit to find a new host, not unlike the way Billy Maximoff’s spirit found a home in the body of the late Billy Kaplan (Joe Locke) in Agatha All Along.That’s really weird. And, to its credit, VisionQuest doesn’t shy away from the weirdness. But TV can only go so far, even Marvel TV with a Disney budget. Comics are so much weirder, which means that the story of Speed outpaces VisionQuest when it comes to bizarre decisions.cnx.cmd.push(function() {cnx({playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530",}).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796");});The Terror of the Baby HandsAnyone who needs evidence of comics’ appetite for weirdness need look no further than the cover to 1989’s Avengers West Coast #52, written and drawn by John Byrne. There, you’ll see supervillain Master Pandemonium standing triumphant over the California-based team of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, including Vision and the Scarlet Witch. Master Pandemonium has a ridiculous name and he’s dressed in a ridiculous outfit, complete with flowing red sleeves and a horned mask that lets his curly black hair peak out from the top. But such things are to be expected among supervillains.The unusual thing about Master Pandemonium are his arms, specifically what he has in the place of his hands: two young boys, turned green and monstrous. Even more absurd are the variations of that same scene inside the issue, where Master Pandemonium has two normal young boys at the end of his arms.Those boys are Tommy and Billy, the twin sons of Vision and Wanda, and everything about them is weird. Vision is, of course, a synthezoid, an artificial human being made from the body of the Golden Age Human Torch and implanted with the “brainwaves” of Simon Williams a.k.a. Wonder Man, long dead by the time of Vision’s first appearance in 1969’s Avengers #57. Make no mistake: Vision is a wonder, a complex android capable of thought, self-awareness, and even emotional depth, as demonstrated by his love for Wanda.But Vision cannot reproduce, so when Wanda gave birth to a pair of twins in 1986’s The Vision and the Scarlet Witch #12, questions were raised. And those questions went mostly unanswered. Chalk it up to the power of love, chalk it up to a miracle, chalk it up to Wanda being a witch. Somehow, a synthezoid got her pregnant—with twins, no less!The Devil’s DueEventually, an explanation for the miracle did come, in the story leading up to Avengers West Coast #52. When Wanda used her magic to make the twins, she inadvertently stole fragments of Mephsito, the Marvel Universe’s version of Satan (you saw him played as just a regular dude, for some reason, by Sacha Baron Cohen in Ironheart). The magic-user Master Pandemonium wanted to use those fragments to gain power, but he in fact drew Mephisto’s attention. Mephisto absorbed those fragments back into himself, thereby wiping Tommy and Billy from existence.Or so we thought. The first signs of something strange happened in 2005, with the arrival of the Young Avengers: a group of teen heroes arrived to take the place of the Avengers, who had just been defeated when a crazed Wanda turned Vision into a bomb. Initially, the teens all mirrored members of the original Avengers, with Patriot mimicking Captain America and Asgardian mirroring Thor. However, as the storyline went on and we learned the secret behind the team (they are adolescent heroes assembled by a teenage Nathaniel Richards, to stop his older self, the time-traveling villain Kang the Conquerer), the heroes began to take on new identities.In particular, Asgardian revealed that he wasn’t from Asgard. Rather, he was a magic-using boy called Billy Kaplan. Moreover, Billy had hex powers like those of Wanda Maximoff. And with good reason, because it turns out that he is Billy Kaplan… sort of.Billy and Tommy did disappear when they were reclaimed by Mephisto. Furthermore, Agatha Harkness (a kind, if mysterious, old crone in the comics, not the sassy woman we know from TV) wiped all knowledge of the twins from Wanda’s memories as an act of kindness. But when Mephisto died again, as all Marvel characters eventually do, his soul shattered and Billy and Tommy’s spirits when free again. However, Wanda had no memory of her children and could not reclaim them, so they had to wander between the dimensions as lost souls.Weird RebirthThat is, until they found M’Kraan. M’Kraan looks like a palette-swapped version of the X-Men character Phoenix, and with good reason. She’s the living embodiment of the M’Kraan crystal, a gem of unbelievable power. So great is M’Kraan’s power, that she was able to sense the spirits of Billy and Tommy and give them homes. Billy’s spirit was reincarnated as the son of Jeff and Rebecca Kaplan, while Tommy reincarnated as the son of Frank and Mary Shepherd.Billy’s magical powers allowed him to not only join the Young Avengers as Asgardian/Wiccan, but also allowed him to realize the truth about his identity sooner. The same couldn’t be said of Tommy, who was captured by scientists and held captive as soon as his powers manifested. When Vision and the Young Avengers learned about a teen with superspeed being imprisoned, they went to rescue the boy. But even though Tommy has white hair, like his uncle Quicksilver, and has superspeed, like his uncle Quicksilver, and otherwise looks like Billy’s twin, it takes everyone a long, long time to realize that he is indeed the reincarnated Tommy Maximoff.But how did M’Kraan know to look for them? Why, it’s simple. M’Kraan was created by Billy and Tommy in the future, who extracted her identity from the M’Kraan crystal and sent her to the past to find them. Simple!These days, there’s no question about Tommy’s identity. He dresses in a green lightning bolt costume (again, like his uncle Quicksilver) and fights alongside his family under the (unimaginative) superhero name Speed.We’ve already seen Thomas Shepherd use his powers a bit in VisionQuest, so he’ll probably become Speed at some point in the show. But will this Speed’s story ever be as strange as that of the Speed in the comics? We can only hope.VisionQuest streams new episodes every Wednesday on Disney+.The post VisionQuest: Tommy Maximoff’s Story Is Even Weirder in the Comics appeared first on Den of Geek.