The Anthony and Joe Russo-directed The Electric State — an adaptation of author Simon Stålenhag’s graphic novel set in the post-robot war 1990s — is loaded with pop culture references. Besides the monacled Mr. Peanut robot (voiced by Woody Harrelson) and a giant Sonic the Hedgehog-looking mascot-bot, there’s the cache of antique collectibles peddled by smugglers Keats (Chris Pratt) and ‘bot sidekick Herman (voiced by Anthony Mackie), including Cabbage Patch Kids, Big Mouth Billy Bass, G.I. Joe lunch boxes, and Masters of the Universe tie-in Zagnuts still in the original packaging.
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When Keats and Herm help Michelle (Millie Bobby Brown) on her cross-country trip to find her brother Christopher (Woody Norman), they arrive at Blue Sky Acres: a mall turned into a haven for the sentient robots exiled and cordoned off in the Exclusion Zone. As Perplexo (voiced by Hank Azaria) ushers the group into the mall populated by the likes of baseball ‘bot Popfly (Brian Cox) and postal service worker Penny Pal (Jenny Slate), they walk past a comic book shop.
A growling dog robot is seen reading 1990’s Avengers West Coast #56 (which would have been one of the last comics released before the robot rights movement and uprising that turned into a war that same year). While the John Byrne-drawn cover might suggest the return of Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch in Marvel Studios’ Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars — which the Russos are directing as their followup to The Electric State — this particular issue has a deeper meaning beyond “The Witch is Back” on the cover. (More on that below.)
On the spinner racks are volumes of the manga Baoh (about a teen boy turned into a bioweapon by a secret organization that then pursues him), Bio-Booster Armor Guyver (about a high school student who bonds with a biomechanical armor he uses to battle the Cronos Corporation), and Cobra (about a man who uses the T.M. Company’s futuristic technology to live a dream-like fantasy where he’s a Psycho-gun-armed space pirate).
These are all nods to the plot of The Electric State, where Dr. Amherst’s (Ke Huy Quan) P.C. reveals that Sentre CEO and tech mogul Ethan Skate (Stanley Tucci) has been using a comatose Christopher’s brain to power Sentre’s technology. Tech like the Neurocaster, a device which linked human minds to the mechanized drone bodies that helped humanity wage and then win their two-year war with the robots.
After the war, Sentre’s consumer Neurocasters used Neural Bifurcation™ to let customers connect to a network allowing their minds to be in two places at once — a feature that Michelle’s foster dad Ted Finister (Jason Alexander) used to live out a fantasy with Cindy Crawford in Las Vegas, while Chris transferred his mind into a Kid Cosmo robot (voiced by Alan Tudyk) to help his sister track him down at Sentre’s headquarters in Seattle.
Avengers West Coast #56 marked the beginning of “Darker Than Scarlet,” the culmination of the four-part Vision Quest arc that spanned West Coast Avengers issues #42-45. During Vision Quest, Wanda Maximoff’s husband — the android Avenger known as the Vision — was abducted and dismantled by Vigilance, an organization formed after the corrupted Viz tapped into every computer system on Earth and seized control of America’s nuclear arsenal.
Vigilance took Vision apart and erased his memory banks, but the robot was rebuilt as the emotionless White Vision. Shortly after, the Scarlet Witch learned her probability-altering powers allowed her to rewrite reality at will, powers she used to inadvertently create a fantasy where she was the mother to twin sons: Billy and Tommy, manifestations of her Hex powers. The loss of her husband and children drove the Scarlet Witch to villainy as part of a plot by the time-traveling villain Immortus, who had long manipulated Wanda’s relationship with the android.
Immortus’ involvement with another android — the Vision’s progenitor, the Jim Hammond Human Torch — also played a role in Avengers West Coast #56. In the four-page backup story titled “Reunions,” Captain America reunited with the android avenger who had been brought back to life by the Scarlet Witch issues earlier in Avengers West Coast #50. That issue explained that Vision’s artificial body was born from the Torch’s spare parts, making the robots “related.”
The Electric State is now streaming on Netflix.
