We could be looking at so many more tie-ins if I had them. Iron Man, Wolverine, FF. But I didn’t take the bait to buy the entire Marvel publishing line because of this. I stuck to what I was already buying. Well, sort of. I signed back on to ASM for this, knowing what was coming. So New Avengers and ASM were the only tie-ins I had for the first issue. That would not last. Here’s this one’s back cover:
Jim Steranko does one design-y SHIELD cover, and instead of taking the lesson “We should do more challenging covers,” Marvel has spent the intervening 60 years going “That cover was cool, we should reference it.” We open on the Vulture and Grim Reaper chained to a pillar under the caption “Captain America goes underground,” Vulture complaining Cap broke his nose. Where’d he get the chains?
Using Grim Reaper is stupid, considering his whole deal. Also, the idea that Cap and his squad are suddenly stopping every villain in the world in 72 hours begs the question “Why don’t they do this all the time?” Civil War is the comic that dares to ask all the questions whose answers make your comics worse.
It’s the 2000s, gotta have that gratuitous and unnecessary butt shot. Meanwhile, at the Baxter Building, Reed & Sue have a 2-page conversation that makes it clear they will wind up on opposite sides of the conflict. Quelle surprise! That’s the kind of “shocking twist” that anyone could see coming if they know Millar.
JJJ saying heroes are ok if they register is the kind of revisionist history “I was always saying this” thing he would do. Points for that. I try to be fair!
Happy Hogan! Couldn’t tell you the last time I saw that guy. Next, it’s 24 hours later, and we see Patriot of the Young Avengers being brutally taken down by SHIELD goons in a helicopter for “trying to stop a mugging.” One wonders if the mugger was apprehended, or just the guy trying to stop him. Soon, the entire team is being loaded into a transport, but we see this being watched by Luke Cage and Daredevil via a monitor, and Luke says Cap & Falcon are there in disguise. I would like to know Luke’s reaction to this Daredevil A) Not being Daredevil and B) Being Danny Rand, which is probably obvious to Luke. Did Danny tell him? We’ll never know.
Wiccan is able to teleport the entire van to one of Nick Fury’s 33 secret safehouses around the world, which… I’m not sure how he could have sent them to a place he doesn’t know, but that’s the least of this series’ worries.
Love all the exposition. These safehouses will be featuring prominently in the series Secret Warriors in a year or two. Weird Cable is there. I don’t know if I believe anyone there would even know him. X-Men is such an insular world. Well, they may know him from when it looked like he assassinated Professor X that one time (Don’t worry, it was his evil twin, Stryfe, and the professor didn’t die). Anyway, yeah, I think everybody better see this.
Regardless of the relative merits of this storytelling decision, JJJ falling out of his chair is pretty good. Well, there it is. The biggest bombshell of this whole series, delivered in only issue 2. It makes you think even crazier things must be coming, but that’s incorrect.