{"id":29513,"date":"2025-11-08T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-08T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=29513"},"modified":"2024-02-18T20:20:48","modified_gmt":"2024-02-19T00:20:48","slug":"civil-war-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2025\/11\/08\/civil-war-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Civil War 4"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This was the first issue to slip, arriving a month late. Due to last issue\u2019s 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\u2019s yer back cover:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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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\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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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?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Well, that\u2019s fun. What\u2019s going on inside the building Iron Man smashed Captain America into?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Mark Millar\u2019s cro magnon jerk Cap from the Ultimates has firmly arrived in the prime continuity. But don\u2019t worry, he\u2019s only in the main Civil War series, he\u2019s 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\u2019s already on the way, and he, Cable and Cloak are arranging for a teleport out when\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bill Foster\u2019s 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\u2019d never heard of some screentime so they wouldn\u2019t have to murk a more useful asset in the middle of the story. All sizzle, no steak. For my part, I don\u2019t think I\u2019d ever seen Goliath before this series, and I was far from alone. So, while Thor murdering a hero was \u201cshocking,\u201d Mark Millar\u2019s favorite word, it also wasn\u2019t exactly shocking<\/em>. He didn\u2019t kill Sue Storm or anything. Just poor ol\u2019 Goliath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In saving the unregistered gang from being annihilated, Sue shatters the FF. What a twist. Ho hum. But wait, here\u2019s the good bit:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Aw, wookit how sad the poor Watcher is! Yes, folks, it\u2019s not the real Thor. Back at Avengers Tower, operations are being performed on \u201cThor,\u201d as a shaken Hank Pym reveals what\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s all he\u2019s known for, but these three idiots made an unstable clone of their \u201cfriend\u201d who proceeded to murder their other friend and tried to murder a whole passel of their other friends, and we\u2019re just supposed to roll with that? \u201cHey, everybody makes mistakes?\u201d When this stupid event is long over, when the heroes all kiss and make up, when Thor is really back, they\u2019re still the heartless, soulless monsters who cloned Thor. That doesn\u2019t go away. This should be something they can never come back from. Instead, it\u2019s more or less not mentioned again. The clone will pop up as a villain in Thor comics years later, but by then, he\u2019s just the evil Thor clone (Named \u201cRagnarok\u201d), you\u2019re 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\u2019s attempts to be edgy and transgressive in the 2000s, I guess it was deemed worth the risk. Well, Hank says he just can\u2019t understand why their Thor clone would commit murder, and staring at it, Peter wonders aloud if they\u2019re 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\u2019s go look at the anti-reg team\u2019s fearless leader:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Captain America is now a frothing-at-the-mouth lunatic who doesn\u2019t 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\u2019s 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\u2019s reduced to an absolute dumbass in service of the plot! Captain America is a perpetually enraged, heartless idiot in this comic, because if he\u2019s not, there\u2019s 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\u2019t helm this one. I sure wish he had. Character is his entire deal, I feel pretty confident he could\u2019ve 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\u2019t have made the big brains into ghouls who clone their dead friend, either. As the heroes leave, they\u2019re 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\u2019t play god with a dead god, stupid!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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That cop analogy has aged like MILK. Also love her son having this old toy of an armor Tony\u2019s been wearing for like a week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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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 \u201cfix this\u201d so they can be a family again. Which, again, feels like a half-measure. \u201cWe\u2019ll break up Reed & Sue! It\u2019ll be shocking! But we\u2019ll do it in a way where it\u2019s for sure not permanent.\u201d And, indeed, it lasts exactly as long as Civil War and not one month longer. Whomp whomp. But this issue\u2019s not done being stupid yet, they saved the best for last!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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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\u2019t register, and now employ villains to hunt them down. None of this is about registration anymore. Like, their side is not \u201cpro-registration.\u201d It\u2019s totally gone off the rails. And for that matter, Captain America is no longer opposing registration. He\u2019s now fighting his own private war against Iron Man, and who cares who gets hurt? Marvel sold this event as \u201cboth sides have some good points, it will be hard to pick a side,\u201d but the actual delivered product is \u201cboth sides are awful morons.\u201d And they\u2019re 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\u2019t Bullseye, uh\u2026 strange\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This was the first issue to slip, arriving a month late. Due to last issue\u2019s cliffhanger, no tie-ins take place between these 2. Well, none that I have, anyway, I dunno. Which…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29493,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1864],"tags":[2290,2295,744,1889,2289,60,186,2284,315,58,2038,2127,263,882,61,762,72,64,331,2297,139,2106,2039,235,1621,2296,247,665,1261,2,2037,258,663,409,62,187,2249],"class_list":["post-29513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2000s","tag-atlas","tag-bishop","tag-black-panther","tag-bullseye","tag-cable","tag-captain-america","tag-carol-danvers","tag-civil-war","tag-cloak-dagger","tag-daredevil","tag-dexter-vines","tag-emma-frost","tag-falcon","tag-goliath","tag-hank-pym","tag-hercules","tag-human-torch","tag-iron-man","tag-jack-olantern","tag-lady-deathstrike","tag-luke-cage","tag-mark-millar","tag-morry-hollowell","tag-nighthawk","tag-radioactive-man","tag-ragnarok","tag-reed-richards","tag-she-hulk","tag-songbird","tag-spider-man","tag-steve-mcniven","tag-taskmaster","tag-the-thing","tag-venom","tag-wasp","tag-wong","tag-young-avengers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29513","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=29513"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29513\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29515,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29513\/revisions\/29515"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}