I just finished Civil War #1. I’m slightly less than impressed.
Fenris, I know why Captain America’s decision seemed out of character. It’s the same reason that everyone in that books decisions seemed out of character: lousy heavy handed writing. This book was as politically subtle as a Mallard Fillmore strip.
We’ll use the good Captain as the example here. His decision makes sense because it really was the only choice he had. [spoier]He was asked rather baldly to hunt down the heroes that don’t sign on.The head of SHIELD asks “Nobody you can’t take down, right?” Tough choice there. May as well of told him that they were going to make him a prime sentinel[/spoiler]
This read like it was written in a weekend right before the deadline. It was written like Millar knew what he wanted to do with the ending, and just wanted to hurl every character in the Marvel universe to that ending as fast as possible. This isn’t an event. It’s the marvel equivalent of the Star Wars prequels: a desperate attempt to regain fading relevance and make a buck or two while doing it.
There’s no real explanation of the characters decisions. They just make them. The ones that agree with the law do so because the law is a good thing. Those that don’t do so because the law is a bad thing. I guess Millar figures the writers of the individual titles will get around to filling in the details later.
If this is Marvels attempt to keep up with DCs Identity and Infinite Crises, they are going to have to work much much harder.
I don’t agree with this at all. The reasons Cap, Iron Man, and their respective posses have chosen the sides they have is shown in earlier issues.
[spoiler]For Cap, the Superhuman Registration Act is a violation of personal liberty, just one step on the slippery slope to fascism. If you are familiar with Cap’s character, you know he stands for the American IDEALS, not the American government.
For Iron Man, the the Superhuman Registration Act is a neccesary evil, something should be agreed to out of pragmatic concerns. He wants to see as few superhumans get hurt, killed, or their lives ruined as possible.[/spoiler]
The kicker is that neither side is entirely wrong or right. It’s not the Freedom Fighters of Truth & Justice vs. Nazi Gov’mint Toadies anymore than it’s Law-Abiding Citizens vs. the Dangerously Out-of-Control Militia. Both sides have good reasons to support and not support the SRA. It’s a very grey issue.
Bolding mine. For me, this is part of the problem. The main title for the event is the driving force. It has to provide the bulk of the important stuff and leave the individual books to color in what happens between issues of the main book. I know about Iron Man’s reasons because I read the Illuminati special and have been reading about it in Spider Man. I shouldn’t have to buy that many books just to keep up with the main title.
We can use their last event as an example. The main “House of M” title was great as it was entirely self contained. You could read the separate titles if you want, and it provided some depth if you did, but you didn’t have to buy 85 separate titles just to keep up with the main story line.
Unfortunately, the writing is not up to the task of making this a grey issue. As I said about Captain America’s decision, it didn’t seem out of character because it was out of character. It wasn’t. Even if you factor in his belief system, that still leaves the massive problems that he has had with SHIELD ever since Fury left. The decision was square with his beliefs. It seemed off only because it was written so poorly. There was no grey area in the choice he was given. He was Captain America so he’s “supposed” to go help hunt down those Supers that don’t sign up for the plan.Yep. That’s some great subtlety there. In fact, the whole scene on board the helicarrier ripped most of the subtlety from the book.
This issue drew a line between two groups of super heroes, but to me it didn’t do a good job of explaining that line.
The earlier books set the groundwork for Civil War. If it all unfolded in CW, everyone would be complaining over how suddenly the characters made up their minds, how artificial it all seemed, etc. I think the background for this conflict was set up very well – from Disassembled to House of M to the New Warriors fiasco all built the story into Civil War. The Avengers crumbled from the inside out, to be replaced by a new team made up of such luminaries as a mutant vigilante (Wolverine), an ex-mercenary (Luke Cage), and an agent of HYDRA (Spider-Woman). There’s a breakout at the Vault which unleashes dozens of superpowered criminals on New York City. Matt Murdock is outed as Daredevil and imprisoned. Most of the world’s mutants were depowered, and the government surrounded the X-Mansion to “protect” the remaining mutants. The governments is making back-alley deals with the likes of Helmut Zemo. Lots of kids lose their lives during a battle taped for the New Warriors’ reality tv show. You see this steady progression as the heroes fall apart and the pressure builds. It’s not like everyone woke up one day and were like, “Oh noes, superhuman registration act!!!1!!!”
Just a niggling point:
I agree that it seemed to escalate unnaturally fast, but I don’t think that Cap was conscripted to work with SHIELD because he was CAPTAIN AMERICA. I think Hill expected his cooperation because is — and has been — a long-time freelance agent of SHIELD. That she doesn’t know Rogers’ values — or doesn’t care — any better speaks to a Henry Gyrich butt-headedness that I’ve seen written into the character from the outset.
I’m a little late to the party, and I’m confused…and that’s an understatement.
The ending of Infinite Crisis was a letdown (not the Alex part, but the rest). What happened to Doomsday. Did I miss a panel? Were a couple of pages stuck together? And on the hero splash page, I saw three Marvels, one in a white, hooded costume. I must have missed an issue of something, somewhere. And what’s the deal with the Spectre? I seem to recall his resurrection and that he was once again bound to a mortal, but I’m light on details.
Anyone have a cheatsheet on what happened (above and beyond what is in this thread)?
Tomorrow I start Civil War. Does the Spiderman issue come before or after the Civil War issue?
He got KO’d by the two Supermen. Yeah, kinda anticlimatic after the build up in VU.
Nope. A lot of that stuff hasn’t happened yet. See also the new Atom and J’onn in his all-new, all-ugly costume. I’m assuming Jesus Marvel will appear in the upcoming Trials of Shazam!
Nabu (the entity that empowers Dr Fate) provoked the Spectre into a rage that God couldn’t ignore any longer. This went down in the day of Vengeance Special, so I’m not surprised if you missed it. God bound him into Crispus Allen, a Gotham cop recently murdered in the pages of Gotham Central.
The Spectre stuff was the least well-handled of the megaevent, IMHO. I mean, it was well-done, but if you didn’t read DoV, you wouldn’t know what was happening. The others seemed to be clearer from the IC mini alone.
Yeah, there’s not really a lot of people with clean reps on this new team, are there?
Does the public at large know that Wolverine is a killer? Everything else aside, it’s gotta be hard when Cap’s reputation is the only thing that makes people coperate with you.
**
My guess is that Hooded Marvel is Billy. Remember in the DOV special, they said that unless Billy hung out at the Rock of Eternity to anchor it, it’d fall apart again. So I’m guessing that Billy is the new Wizard (note the pajama flap on Hooded Marvel’s uniform that matches the flap on Billy’s Captain Marvel uniform) and that the guy in red is Freddy with a promotion from Jr. to Captain (which would get rid of the annoying CM3 name (it sounds like a gas additive: New from Cononco; our new special unleaded ethanol, now with carborartor-cleaning CM3 added!) and it gets rid of the “Can’t say my own name” thing that bugs post-Golden Age fans.
My only real complaint with this set-up (If I’m correct) is that Junior has always had the best uniform of the lot of 'em. I’d propose that Hooded Marvel keeps the white outfit, Mary gets the Blue outfit and Junior gets the Big Red Cheese outfit.
Remember the Molten Man? He’s Molten Man part two (essentially)
Some guy who was such a nerd in high school that even Peter Parker picked on him did some sort of nano-armor vibranium dealie that went bad and turned him into a nerdy Molten Man look-alike. And he hates Peter Parker more than Spider-Man so he smashed Aunt May’s house down.
…On three different message boards I have asked what was up with the Hulk and the answer hasbeen “Oh he’s doing the Planet Hulk stuff.”… which… is an answer of sorts… but how on Earth would I know what Planet Hulk IS if I obviously didn’t know what the Hulk was up to at all in the first place.
But…but…but…Molten Man is cool! He’s photogenic! He’s got half the powers of the FF! He’s in all my fanfic that I want to get published!
As for Planet Hulk, I mean, duh! Look at the name: Planet. Hulk. Clearly it’s about a planet of Hulks that travel around the galaxy having wacky adventures and occasionally raining down like green death on other helpless planets! Easy!