New Brevoort Formspring

I think it has been two things:

1) In the 1970s, when the Vision was at his most popular, his story was brought to an acceptable “finish” when he and the Scarlet Witch got married. From that point on, he was no longer the isolated loner, could not be, nor could he be struggling Spock-style to come to terms with his emotions. In essence, his story, his conflicts, reached a point of definitive resolution, and that stalled him out as a character–he’d appear in AVENGERS, but in a sort of neutral position, being a part of the team and going on adventures but without any life story of his own transpiring. And then he and Wanda were written out of AVENGERS and so they didn’t have anywhere for their story to continue on a regular basis. The efforts of various creators to address these problems ran into difficulty as well, at least partially because…

2) …the zeitgeist of the times had moved on. The Vision was perfectly positioned to capitalize on the spirit of the era that he was birthed in–again, very much like Spock. He tapped into the same fan interests. But those interests changed over time, and what had been considered cool was supplanted by other things that were considered either more cool or more modern. This, in part, is why so many creators over the years have approached the Vision as being “a toaster” as opposed to a character. In the zeitgeist of the times, an android came to mean something different, and that is what those creators keyed into (in particular as regarded Vision’s relationship with the Scarlet Witch.) When the people making the stories treat the character as being no different than a Quinjet, how can you expect the readers to become attached to him?