I am soooooo glad this dumb series is nearly over. It’s just the… everything else that we have to deal with now. Well, and also this issue. And if you’re expecting a satisfying conclusion, don’t! Back cover:
Well, this is it. For all the marbles. If Iron Man wins, registration remains the law of the land. If Captain America wins… registration remains the law of the land. This is the central stupidity of this entire event to me. Captain America is trying to physically fight legislation. Captain America is an absolute idiot. Cap could’ve used his importance to American culture to campaign for repeal, to go on a media blitz rightfully telling the American people how imprisoning people who don’t want to be cops is wrong, to lead by example. Registration is the will of the people, he could have changed public opinion to fix it. Instead, he’s been acting like a big dumb baby. Will the big dumb baby triumph?
It would have been a lot more entertaining if Iron Man yelled “Avengers Assemble” to his guys at the same time.
Some dork in SHIELD is outsmarting T’Challa, which is utterly unacceptable, and the anti-reg forces are seconds from being trapped in the prison, so Cloak teleports everyone out. Everyone, even Dagger and T’Challa, who were in a totally different room. How? Shut up, that’s how. So Cloak dumps the entire fight into the street outside the Baxter Building.
Whatever! The Suicide Squad, uh, I mean the Thunderbolts are all beating the crap out of Captain America, who should not be going down so easy, and then Namor arrives with an army of Atlateans. TWO foreign leaders are now involved in this terrorist attack on US soil. This should be World War III. But because this is a stupid comic by people with a juvenile grasp of politics, it won’t be an issue.
Hope Robo-Thor doesn’t kill everybody! During this event, Captain Marvel somehow returned from the grave. He didn’t really, tho. Just a cheap stunt, breathlessly marketed via a comic called Civil War: The Return as a huge Marvel star coming back from the dead. Then it turned out to be Mar-Vell, who’s not exactly a huge star, pulled through time to the present before he died. And then his “Return” turned out to only be half the comic, just a setup for a new Captain Marvel #1, and the rest of it was about the Sentry. Then that Captain Marvel comic lasted all of 5 issues before revealing the truth about him, which I think will come up later, but which is a very stupid copout. Whomp whomp. Thrilling stuff. Well, it’s pandemonium as nameless Atlanteans clash with generic, nameless heroes created for the Initiative. Meanwhile, Iron Man and Captain America manage to get to each other. But, as Vision disables Tony’s armor, Cap says this time…
You were fighting dirty last time you big dork! Has being 90 years old finally affected your memory?
Ok!
Yes, yes, we all know about “You’re no Jack Kennedy.” Weird lack of impact in that hit. Elsewhere, Captain America is wailing on the defenseless Iron Man, eventually shattering his helmet. Tony asks what he’s waiting for, tells him to finish it.
Yes. After 6 and a half issues, alleged brilliant strategist Captain America suddenly realizes fighting Iron Man in the street is a danger to the public good. Duh. Alleged brilliant strategist Captain America sees that the people, who have supported registration the entire time, are willing to fight him on it. Duh! And he just gives up! Could you write a worse ending? Like, on a dare? I don’t know. And if Cap had somehow avoided these blindingly obvious realizations? If his side just won the fight, what does that look like? After successfully defeating Iron Man, does Cap’s team march on Washington, hold Congress hostage until they repeal the law, subvert American democracy? Seriously, what’s the endgame? How do you fight an idea with your fists? Why did no one bother to think about this while developing this asinine turd of a story? This is such an embarrassing comic for everyone behind it. It reveals either A) A truly childish grasp on politics, or B) A cynical disregard for telling a good story while in pursuit of a profitable one. Or both! Maybe both. But, yes. All this pain and sadness, the death of Bill Foster, the dragging of two foreign monarchs into an international incident, the massive property destruction and public endangerment, it was all for nothing. The anti-reg side was never actually fighting for anything, and their boss realizes it, and that’s that. Utter. Garbage. Now, with ⅓ of this issue left, it’s time to start closing things down. First, Punisher picks up Captain America’s discarded mask. What does that mean? Crazy things, that’s what. Then, narration in the form of a letter from Reed to Sue begins, saying it’s been 2 weeks since the big dumb battle.
Those are your new official Avengers. Not the New Avengers, tho. More on that later. And the Texas… whoever-they-ares.
I mentioned Omega Flight during the Collective arc of New Avengers. How that team ends up being mostly Americans and one alien instead of, you know, Canadians, like in the real world, editorially, is beyond me. “Canadian’s premiere superteam! Featuring 2 Canadians!” And yeah, look, there’s an underground team of Avengers, and Spider-Man’s changed suits again. Why? Oh boy, will we see.
“Giving offenders a second chance.” Bullseye is criminally insane! Lady Deathstrike is called DEATHSTRIKE! Venom is a soulless mercenary! It’s not like when Cap took in Hawkeye, Vision and Scarlet Witch, a bunch of mixed up people who’d fallen in with the wrong crowd. These are unrepentant mass murderers! And guess what, Uncle Sam puts Norman Osborn in charge of them all! Yes! The whole premise is disgusting.
In reality, the best is more or less behind us. 2000-2005 is kind of a new golden age for Marvel, but it’s over. Now we’re in the endless cycle of events and repercussions. The scrappy, freewheeling, “try anything” spirit of the 2000s begins marching toward a company controlled by marketing again, trending toward safer material and expensive crossovers. There’s still plenty of good comics, but a lot fewer really inventive ones. I have noticed, in my life as a reader, Marvel comics reversing on a pretty dependable cycle. 1960s: great. 1970s: terrible. 1980s: great. 1990s: terrible. 2000s: great. Not perfectly lined up by decade, of course, and not without exceptions in every case, but surprisingly dependable. And you know what that means as we head toward the 2010s. But the thing is… So far the 2020s ain’t so hot, either. At any rate, the end. And doesn’t everything Reed & Tony say make sense? How could it have gone any other way? Again, what does it look like if Cap wins? Not for the last time, this is a whole Marvel event hinging on the idea that two equal sides are fighting, and it’s up to the reader to decide who’s right, when one side is CLEARLY WRONG. But, hey, at least it’s over. Sort of. This is far from the end of the Civil War block. We got fallout to cover. And that’s just the beginning.
Lucky for me, I think this is the final Mark Millar comic on the blog. Civil War, naturally, inspired the 3rd Captain America movie. Loosely. Mark Millar has this truly remarkable track record of getting his material adapted to film… very loosely. His comic Wanted, about a guy finding out he’s part of a secret supervillain organization, became a movie, but with no supervillains in it, dramatically reworked, barely his story. The Ultimates has an outsized influence on the MCU, but it’s definitely not his story. His utterly terrible Wolverine comic Old Man Logan, about an old Wolverine in a post-apocalyptic future, loosey-but-barely-at-all inspired the movie Logan. No inbred cannibal Hulk children or blind Hawkeye driving a car in that movie, as I recall. Civil War, the movie, is better than this tripe in every single way. Better story, better character motivations, better ending. But it’s still Civil War. Millar and John Romita, Jr. will originate Kick Ass a year after this, a relentlessly grim, cynical, dark piece of crap comic that somehow translated to a campy comedy movie. His comic Kingsman becomes the movie Kingsman, sort of. It happens over and over. It gives him the chance to say his stuff is perfect for Hollywood, and yet the things Hollywood makes don’t really look like his stuff. He was able to use that track record to sell his creator-owned catalog to Netflix in an unprecedented deal that has so far netted them not a single hit adaptation, presumably due to his increased involvement. His material only hits in Hollywood if someone else fixes it. It’s a weird career. But I do believe he’ll not darken my doorstep anymore. So I got that going for me, at least.