Civil War?!?

Image copyright Marvel Comics 2006

Alright, today’s topic is Summer Comics Events Extravaganzas. Our Target: Marvel Comics “Civil War”. This “Event” is officially reaching it’s dirty revisionist claws into almost every title Marvel Comics publishes, either directly or indirectly via a monstrous ad campaign. This is the place to be this summer according to Marvel Comics.

The premise is simple. A Second Tier group of heroes (New Warriors), who also happen to star in a “Reality Show”, make a mistake. While taking down a group of criminals in Stamford, Connecticut, a villain uses his explosive powers to (seemingly) commit suicide and kills 60 children in the process. Immediately, the public blanches and superheroes are all viewed as “babykillers”. To quell the upswell of public dissent against them, some heroes go public in support of a federal registration amendment which would require any person with extra-normal powers to unmask and subsequently register with the government, and in effect become an agent thereof. The “Civil War” ignites when some of the heroes, including Captain America, rebel against the act, seeing it as a violation of their civil rights.

Ok, apart from ideas borrowed from J. Michael Straczynski’s “Rising Stars” and Brian Michael Bendis’ “Powers”(remember there are only seven basic plots), this is still a fertile row to hoe. With echoes of current events such as civil rights debates as well as blind scapegoating, this “event” is not so much direct commentary on our world as it is a paralleling of it. People are frightened and angry after a traumatic disaster, having no real target they can attack, they lash blindly at whatever they feel has justified itself as a target.
Sound Familiar? or maybe I’m just over-simplifying?

Anyways, highpoints include artist Steven McNiven’s beautiful pencils on the “Civil War” mini-series. Plotwise, Robbie Baldwin, aka. Speedball, the surviving member of the New Warriors, gets dumped on big time as he has been incarcerated for his participation in the Stamford Disaster. Now, Powerless, and publicly demasked, he finds himself victim to the brutality of guards and prisoners alike in the maximum security prison in which he is interred. He is offered amnesty if he’ll register, but sees this as an admission of guilt. Watching as Speedball simultaneously resists the notion of being a criminal while adjusting to the hard facts of prison-life makes for good reading. Spiderman’s “coming-out” and the resulting reactions by his boss and former publisher J. Jonah Jameson are well-played, if not highly original (Alex Ross’ “Earth-X”, anyone?). Marvel has worked hard here, pulling and manipulating from a variety of sources to fuel a story guaranteed to make even the most jaded and cynical fan-boy (re:me) salivate.

Overall, blatantly entertaining and sensationalistic, but not really the knives-deep, over-the-top, groundbreaking event that it could be. At least, not yet. It hasn’t finished. Also, factor in that I will not be buying all the “titles” in this event. I’ve been burned before by Marvel. This “event” covers something close to a hundred books and dips in and out of as many titles as possible becoming as close to a true “crossover” as anyone could hope for.

There’s a lot of good art and a lot of good writing going on here, I just worry about the fallout. You have to ask what happens afterward? Or better yet, How do you get Spider-Man back in the mask? In an industry who’s number one rule is “No one stays dead forever.” you know it’s only a matter of time before the House of Ideas will try to “put it all back”. Let’s just hope they invest a little more time here than say, our efforts at rebuilding Iraq or Afghanistan? Because, in the end, the story of how it all gets fixed could be just as compelling as how it all got broken.