This was the first issue to slip, arriving a month late. Due to last issue’s cliffhanger, no tie-ins take place between these 2. Well, none that I have, anyway, I dunno. Which made for some immediate problems with publishing, since you had comics taking place after this being published before it. Whoops! Here’s yer back cover:
I bet Thor is back just in time to make these dummies stop fighting each other. Page one is a weird splash of everyone gawking at Thor with black bars across the top and bottom like you’re watching the widescreen version? For some reason? Was that a way to save time on a late book, not drawing & coloring the whole page? Anyway, then they get on with it.
DID everybody think he was dead? I never saw it addressed anywhere that anyone knew or bothered to find out where Thor had been all these months. Doom told the FF he saw Ragnarok happening when he was trapped in Hell (Long story!), but that was the month before this event started, I have recently learned. Did Reed put it in his newsletter?
Well, that’s fun. What’s going on inside the building Iron Man smashed Captain America into?
Mark Millar’s cro magnon jerk Cap from the Ultimates has firmly arrived in the prime continuity. But don’t worry, he’s only in the main Civil War series, he’s still a good character elsewhere, despite other writers having to try desperately to mitigate or justify his raging idiot persona here. At any rate, that audio attack puts down all the unregistered heroes, and the pro-reggers are about to mop up when Hercules drops an oil tanker on Iron Man and it explodes. Suddenly, the anti-reggers can move again, and fighting resumes. Herc pops up out of the rubble and tells Falcon to get Cap, but he’s already on the way, and he, Cable and Cloak are arranging for a teleport out when…
Bill Foster’s prominent placement in this story and most likely also in The Other despite his being a D-lister explained at last. Someone had to get killed to up the stakes, but in a true half-measure, they just gave a guy you’d never heard of some screentime so they wouldn’t have to murk a more useful asset in the middle of the story. All sizzle, no steak. For my part, I don’t think I’d ever seen Goliath before this series, and I was far from alone. So, while Thor murdering a hero was “shocking,” Mark Millar’s favorite word, it also wasn’t exactly shocking. He didn’t kill Sue Storm or anything. Just poor ol’ Goliath.
In saving the unregistered gang from being annihilated, Sue shatters the FF. What a twist. Ho hum. But wait, here’s the good bit:
Aw, wookit how sad the poor Watcher is! Yes, folks, it’s not the real Thor. Back at Avengers Tower, operations are being performed on “Thor,” as a shaken Hank Pym reveals what’s going on to Peter Parker: They cloned Thor and brainwashed and programmed said clone. Hank says Tony had been holding onto a strand of Thor’s hair since the very first meeting of the Avengers. This was bananas. This was the last straw, coming in the middle of the series. Marvel really let this get published. How does this not tarnish the reputations of Tony, Reed & Hank permanently, forever, period? Hank was having a psychotic break once and accidentally slapped Jan, and now that’s all he’s known for, but these three idiots made an unstable clone of their “friend” who proceeded to murder their other friend and tried to murder a whole passel of their other friends, and we’re just supposed to roll with that? “Hey, everybody makes mistakes?” When this stupid event is long over, when the heroes all kiss and make up, when Thor is really back, they’re still the heartless, soulless monsters who cloned Thor. That doesn’t go away. This should be something they can never come back from. Instead, it’s more or less not mentioned again. The clone will pop up as a villain in Thor comics years later, but by then, he’s just the evil Thor clone (Named “Ragnarok”), you’re not supposed to think about where he came from. This simply should not have been published. These characters are tainted forever. But Mark Millar had to have his shocks, and between his popularity and Marvel’s attempts to be edgy and transgressive in the 2000s, I guess it was deemed worth the risk. Well, Hank says he just can’t understand why their Thor clone would commit murder, and staring at it, Peter wonders aloud if they’re on the right side here. Oh my gosh, Spider-Man having 2nd thoughts? Who coulda seen that coming? Who could possibly have predicted such a TWIST? But if you think the Thor thing painted the pro-reg side in the bad light, buddy, let’s go look at the anti-reg team’s fearless leader:
Captain America is now a frothing-at-the-mouth lunatic who doesn’t care who dies in the process of winning his war. And how does he win his war, exactly? Whether you think registration is a good idea or not, Cap’s plan makes zero sense. This entire story turns on the premise that Captain America thinks he can get a federal law repealed by punching Iron Man in the street! He’s reduced to an absolute dumbass in service of the plot! Captain America is a perpetually enraged, heartless idiot in this comic, because if he’s not, there’s no story. Shameful, really. There had to be a way to do this better. One way would be getting a good writer to do it. I recall at the time a lot of people being surprised Bendis didn’t helm this one. I sure wish he had. Character is his entire deal, I feel pretty confident he could’ve come up with a read on Cap that would give this story the conflict it needs without tossing out his entire character. And I bet he wouldn’t have made the big brains into ghouls who clone their dead friend, either. As the heroes leave, they’re watched by a guy in a ski mask with wide, deranged looking eyes. Then we go to the funeral of Bill Foster who, due to the plot, is inexplicably unable to shrink down, and has to be buried at giant size. This is a tremendously stupid thing a friend of mine started making fun of the moment I told him I was re-reading this nearly 20 years later, it stuck out so bad to him. We find out Tony Stark paid for the extra-sized burial plot, because he feels all bad and stuff. Hey, maybe don’t play god with a dead god, stupid!
That cop analogy has aged like MILK. Also love her son having this old toy of an armor Tony’s been wearing for like a week.
And look, Reed Richard is getting all Joe McCarthy! I LOVE this comic! Blah blah blah, Sue & Johnny leave in the night, leaving the kids with Reed, as her letter ends pleading with him to “fix this” so they can be a family again. Which, again, feels like a half-measure. “We’ll break up Reed & Sue! It’ll be shocking! But we’ll do it in a way where it’s for sure not permanent.” And, indeed, it lasts exactly as long as Civil War and not one month longer. Whomp whomp. But this issue’s not done being stupid yet, they saved the best for last!
Yeah, man, I was pretty much ready to check out after this. Also, this is not temporary, this tepid Suicide Squad riff will get its own series as the new Thunderbolts comic after this is over. So the pro-reg team has now cloned their dead friend, leading to the murder of their other friend, built a prison to house all their friends who won’t register, and now employ villains to hunt them down. None of this is about registration anymore. Like, their side is not “pro-registration.” It’s totally gone off the rails. And for that matter, Captain America is no longer opposing registration. He’s now fighting his own private war against Iron Man, and who cares who gets hurt? Marvel sold this event as “both sides have some good points, it will be hard to pick a side,” but the actual delivered product is “both sides are awful morons.” And they’re your heroes! Also, when this was released, I made note of how Bullseye is drawn with the same deranged eyes as the person in the ski mask a few pages back, head titled at the same angle and everything. Which makes the fact that it wasn’t Bullseye, uh… strange…