{"id":29381,"date":"2025-11-10T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=29381"},"modified":"2024-02-20T18:38:38","modified_gmt":"2024-02-20T22:38:38","slug":"civil-war-interlude-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2025\/11\/10\/civil-war-interlude-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Civil War: Interlude 1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There\u2019s so much crap going on in Civil War. Like I said, I only bought a fraction of it, and I bought over 50 comics. And there were small bits of some of the tie-ins I wanted to talk about, but not the whole issue, so I thought, why not do a lil\u2019 grab bag post with just scenes from various books? And that turned into FOUR of those posts. So, then, here\u2019s Interlude 1, featuring moments from 4 different comics. First up, let\u2019s look at bits of FF 538 & 539. These issues came out before Civil War 4, and obviously, they\u2019re the first books on the blog I\u2019m looking at digitally. The future is here, in the past! I didn\u2019t buy them at the time, but I can take a look at them now pretty easily. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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FF in this moment is by J. Michael Straczynski, Mike McKone, a whole buncha inkers and Paul Mounts. The official inker is Andy Lanning, but it seems like every issue during Civil War has minimum 3 inkers. In 538, it\u2019s Kris Justice and Cam Smith. 538 mostly concerns Johnny Storm\u2019s hospital stay<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We have fun. Reed & Sue storm out (no pun intended), there are Komedy Bits of Ben trying entertain the comatose Johnny, then he tells him about how Thor\u2019s hammer landed in Oklahoma, then Sue comes back to relieve him. Out in the lobby, he sees a news report about how the Yancy Street Gang is making things hard on reporters trying to cover the conflict and also cops trying to keep people out of the fighting, so he pays his old pals\/enemies a visit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Yancy Street Gang was historically unseen. They would prank or harass Ben, but we never saw them. I don\u2019t know who first showed them, actually, but it probably wasn\u2019t here. Or maybe it was, who knows? Ben leaves the Yancy Streeters with more to think about, we cut to an FF-specific subplot that doesn\u2019t really matter for this, and then to \u201cDB\u201d taking Thor\u2019s hammer and disappearing in a flash. See, I told you this would just be quick looks. So, then, on to FF 539, which, as mentioned last post, is the fight from ASM 534 from Ben\u2019s perspective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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First, tho, we rewind to Cap planning the attack on the convoy, when the Yancy Streeters waltz right into Nick Fury\u2019s secret base, which seems insane. They say they have all the info the team needs to intercept the convoy, which, again, seems insane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Cut to the Thinker and Puppetmaster, who actually got going last issue, and their plan to use the heroes fighting over the convoy for their own nefarious purposes. They are the ones who told the Yancy Streeters the info they in turn gave Cap. Ok! They\u2019ve built a thing that\u2019ll let Puppetmaster use his powers to \u201ccontrol all non-powered people in the area\u201d when the fight happens. Uh\u2026 ok! We quickly find Ben having a sandwich nearby, worrying the Yancy Streeters are in over their heads, and then we get to the convoy, JMS making easy money with the same dialogue over the same scenes. Until people start sumping debris on the heroes, which I guess is Puppetmaster\u2019s doing, and then we find PM forcing a fighter pilot to shoot those missiles. I wondered where those came from. As the action proceeds as we saw, Ben happens to see Spider-Man zoom by wrangling his missiles, and that\u2019s how he literally wanders into the battle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So that\u2019s why Ben was hefting the truck in ASM. He helps people avoid getting blown up, is taunted via one of the regular folks by Puppetmaster, and then sees his buddy from last issue was injured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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With both sides trying to use this to recruit Ben, he rightly dismisses them all as crazy and announces he’s leaving for Canada, and he may not come back. To be continued. Just the most fun event ever!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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While all this stupid stuff was going on, Reginald Hudlin had picked up the somewhat obscure thread that T\u2019Challa and Storm had a brief romance when they were young. A chance meeting led to a lifelong connection. This was first mentioned waaaay back in Marvel Team-Up 100 (But I didn\u2019t cover it, of course, I was much stricter back then), then developed more in Christopher Priest\u2019s seminal Black Panther run. And now, Hudlin\u2019s leveraging it to have them rather suddenly get married. And at some point, it was decided their marriage would be a \u201ccease fire\u201d in Civil War, a chance for the combatants to meet on neutral ground where they weren\u2019t allowed to fight. So this issue had a lot of business going on. It\u2019s drawn by Scott Eaton, with inks by Klaus Janson and colors by the great Dean White, possibly making his first appearance on the blog. I think he\u2019s among the very best colorists of his era, and he\u2019s just getting started around this time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Real BET personalities and everything. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A whole buncha other people show up, including Goliath (I guess this takes place before he died, whoops, too late, I can\u2019t be expected to remember all this 20 years later), and Falcon wheeling in Isaiah Bradley, Patriot\u2019s grandfather and sort of the original Captain America, causes a stir. T\u2019Challa and Ororo chat elsewhere, then Xavier shows up, able to walk again (The amount of times he\u2019s been able to walk, lost it again, got it back again, etc is comical) to give Storm his blessing and well wishes. Then\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Cut to the Watcher appearing. It\u2019s one page before returning to Iron Man & Cap, it seems like a really bad cut.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I mean, did it look like I skipped a page? Bad story structure, I say. Also Scott Eaton putting the mask over Cap\u2019s nose is a rookie mistake he shouldn\u2019t be making. Cap responds to this by excusing himself and leaving. Tony then threatens T\u2019Challa like an idiot before also leaving. With that out of the way, the wedding can get on with it. We see Kitty excitedly wishing Ororo luck, various world leaders in attendance, the arrival of bride & groom, them having to go to the ancestral plane for Bast to blessing the wedding (There\u2019s one you don\u2019t usually have to do!), then zapping back to reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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People complained about this development. That it was out of nowhere and \u201cthey\u2019re only getting married because they\u2019re both African and that\u2019s racist!\u201d (Said various white people to the black writer of this book) But as someone fully in the tank for Priest\u2019s Black Panther run before this, them having a longstanding love for each other that could never be, a starcrossed love, that has now become possible was fine with me. It was only years later I read the actual issues leading up to this one and found their courtship so rushed, hamfisted and badly done that I began to see why people complained. But still, in principle, I think it\u2019s fine. And it stood for awhile. \u201cAwhile\u201d is the best most super-couples can hope for. Meanwhile, a villain called the Cannibal who can mindcontrol people has been haunting the proceedings, but he gets spotted by Dr. Strange and Brother Voodoo and bails.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Later that night, Ororo opens a wedding gift from Dr. Doom, who is drawn by Eaton referencing a statue that was released at the time, and I think that\u2019s funny. He suggests that, with their allies in disarray, maybe they should consider an alliance with him. That doesn\u2019t go well. But that\u2019s nothin\u2019 to do with us, and that\u2019s it for Black Panther. Finally, we have Civil War: Choosing Sides, a one-shot full of short stories, one of which is mildly of note to this blog, and the other of which is really bananas and must be mentioned. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This was one of many things rushed out the door to fill gaps as Civil War slipped off the schedule, and the entire publishing line suffered as a result. Some things came out in the wrong order, but others were held back for their respective issue of the main series to release, and Marvel couldn\u2019t just NOT sell comics that month, so they shoveled out a buncha filler, to be frank. First up, Marc Guggenheim, Leinel Yu and Dave McCaig tell us how Venom came to be part of the new Thunderbolts.The story opens with Mac Gargan on the phone in Port Washington, New York, seemingly negotiating some kind of movie deal when the oft-mentioned \u201cCape-Killer\u201d agents blast their way into his house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Gargan has the symbiote spread out controlling the guys, which is a pretty inventive use of it, leaving only one alive. He allows that guy to call in backup, then kills him, too. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Looooong foot on Radioactive Man!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I find this one a bit weird since this is not the creative team for Thunderbolts, but there you have it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there\u2019s a story about the new \u201cIrredeemable Ant-Man,\u201d a criminal named Eric O\u2019Grady who stole an Ant-Man suit and was starring in a book at this time. He has a little (ha) adventure in the margins of the convoy fight. Then here, of all places, Daredevil is revealed as Iron Fist in preparation for his EXCELLENT new Iron Fist solo series by Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction and David Aja. So good. Then USAgent gets shipped off to Canada to be part of Omega Flight, and then Howard the Duck has a typical Howard the Duck adventure. And then, the weird thing happens. And it prominently features Spider-Man. It comes to us via Jim McCann, Alex Chung, \u201cm3th\u201d (Meth???) and Rob Ruffolo, the art team all part of the art studio \u201cUDON,\u201d who got their start shamelessly ripping off the Street Fighter house style and wound up working for Capcom on Street Fighter stuff. I dunno, man, I guess just steal your way to success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Who are these people? I wouldn\u2019t have known if Marvel hadn\u2019t been very excited about this stunt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Obviously, this is \u201cmaybe kind of in-continuity,\u201d at most. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Her \u201cguiding light,\u201d you say?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Well, there\u2019s antics as the rest of the New Avengers show up, and then the Sinister Five show up, and there\u2019s an explosion when that lady zaps Sandman into the Quinjet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Yes. This was all an official crossover with the soap opera Guiding Light. Now, I don\u2019t think most comics fans in 2006 or any time before would have admitted it, but superhero comics more or less are soap operas all ready since the 60s Marvel days, so it makes sense in a way. Maybe you hope you\u2019ll get some cross-pollination of audiences. But it still seemed A) A weird thing to do, and B) A Weird place to put it. \u201cGuiding Light fans: Buy this expensive comic to see a small portion of it feature possibly familiar drawings of your favorite characters!\u201d I dunno, man. If it led to any more serious partnership, I don\u2019t remember. But that\u2019s certainly not something you see everyday. This concludes the interlude. Stay tuned for New Avengers 23 next post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s so much crap going on in Civil War. Like I said, I only bought a fraction of it, and I bought over 50 comics. And there were small bits of some…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29563,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1864],"tags":[2304,1785,744,155,759,60,302,77,2294,2300,25,49,2127,288,72,241,625,64,1981,2035,2303,301,435,2293,2301,139,2305,2302,2074,2237,80,2071,1621,247,2170,2306,101,160,2155,755,1261,2,138,1710,709,2307,409,300],"class_list":["post-29381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2000s","tag-alex-chung","tag-andy-lanning","tag-black-panther","tag-boomerang","tag-brother-voodoo","tag-captain-america","tag-colossus","tag-cyclops","tag-dave-mccaig","tag-dean-white","tag-doctor-octopus","tag-doctor-strange","tag-emma-frost","tag-fantastic-four","tag-human-torch","tag-hydro-man","tag-iron-fist","tag-iron-man","tag-j-michael-straczynski","tag-jessica-jones","tag-jim-mccann","tag-kitty-pryde","tag-klaus-janson","tag-leinil-francis-yu","tag-lockheed","tag-luke-cage","tag-m3th","tag-man-ape","tag-marc-guggenheim","tag-mike-mckone","tag-professor-x","tag-puppetmaster","tag-radioactive-man","tag-reed-richards","tag-reginald-hudlin","tag-rob-ruffolo","tag-sandman","tag-scorpion","tag-scott-eaton","tag-shang-chi","tag-songbird","tag-spider-man","tag-storm","tag-sue-storm","tag-the-mad-thinker","tag-udon","tag-venom","tag-wolverine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29381"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29577,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29381\/revisions\/29577"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}