Okay, I hate to be the one to do this, but I just read this TPB this morning and I want to talk about it. I wasn't going to ever read it, but I found it at Half Price Books, so I grabbed it and I thought it was a really great story! A few observations:
- One thing I had heard was that it was very unbalanced in laying out the reasons for each side, and that Captain America's "no registration" side was clearly represented as the "correct" side to be on. But I didn't feel this way at all. I thought it gave good reasons to have each side, and it really was a hard decision for both.
- I thought it was a little weird that the registration side was willing to take on teenagers in the form of the Young Avengers, namely Giant Man's daughter. That, to me, is equivalent to having a teenage police officer. They said she was sixteen, seventeen tops. That's a might too young.
- Steve McNiven's artwork was awesome!
- Mark Millar's writing was really pretty good, without any real condescending tone that I grew used to once upon a time when I read his work.
- I did feel like the ending was a bit ambiguous, but I suppose that's how most endings are in real life. I forgot that that's what started the Mighty Avengers and Avengers: The Initiative. I have the first two trades of Mighty Avengers, which I'll be reading now. First off today, though, I read the Avengers tie-ins that ran concurrent with CW, and I thought they fleshed out the story really nicely. The whole Initiative thing doesn't really appeal to me (in the same way Avengers Academy doesn't appeal to me either...I hate "school stories").
- I can now see that this was the beginning of the giant story arc that led to the death of Captain America, Secret Invasion, Dark Reign, Seige...was House of M before or after this? I read that book earlier this year, but can't remember.
- I felt that the Emma Frost/Tony Stark scene was particularly strong, and laid out the reasons for the X-Men's non-involvement really well.
That's what I thought about it! Pretty interesting story, and I have to say it casts a lot of the subsequent stories that I enjoyed in a much richer context. Great stuff.
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I've been thinking a lot about Civil War lately.
As a story, about 3/4 of it is great. There's no way that the writer thinks that we should give much consideration to Iron Man's side of the argument. Cap is just presented too heroically for that. "Watch that potty mouth soldier!" is a great line.
I think literalism is getting in the way of many people's response to it. (The people who didn't like it, that is.)
Yes, if we lived in a world with real people who became living WMDs overnight, we'd have to do something about them. Civil War isn't interested in that entirely hypothetical situation.
Millar just used the Marvel U to give us a story about the sadly non-hypothetical situation of the government trying to regulate and control regular folks (which the heroes are in Marvel Comics) for the sake of control and 'security'. Captain America stands for the beliefs of the Founding Fathers that you always have to guard against tyranny however it dresses itself up. Iron Man stands for the tendency of beaurocratic machines to dehumanise people in the name of some better system, or efficiency or what have you.
It's like a medievil morality play, where there are various tendencies and attitudes given human form to act out our contradictions, obsessions and fears on a stage for us. The Marvel characters function as those instantly recogniseable characters like the Devil, Lust and Virtue did in the Morality plays.
Arguing that Cap and Iron Man would simply talk it out as old Avengers, or that Cap wouldn't suffer the Punisher to work for his side, or that Cap would have surrendered earlier is just to allow interference from other things you've read to come between you and the argument Millar is dressing up in Marvel clothes and presenting as a self-contained entertainment.
I can happily cut out all that interference myself and enjoy it as a story, but the trouble is that I can't read the ending without seeing that as dictated by Marvel's marketing strategy for the next few years as much as what Millar might have wanted to do in terms of story. I'm not sure what Cap's surrender means in terms of the story told between the two covers of the book you've just read. That we should only fight for our freedoms until the government starts reacting too hard against our protests? That's pragmatic and valid, ... but hardly very heroic! (I don't think Washington would have approved.)
Civil War is a as close to a subversive anti-government story that Marvel could produce at the time without the suits getting nervous. All that stuff about presenting two sides to the issue was just a somekescreen to allow them to do it. (It's really an iconoclastic 2000AD story produced by Marvel!)
Stories set in continuity are strange things. As an 8-part series between two covers, this is a political fable. It's also the centrepiece of a vast tally of comics published concurrently with it that contradict it, or elaborate on it, or offer apologias for the otherwise reprehensible behaviours of some characters - characters who had their own comics and had to be 'heroic' in those comics.
It's also, as you say, Jeff, the First Act of an extraordinary years-long 5(?) act mega story that ended on a full stop with the last page of the Siege tie-ins, with everything that had been thrown into discord being resolved perfectly. Like a Shakespeare play actually.
Glad you read it Jeff. I like the story a lot. House of M, which I've never read, was before Civil War.
I read Civil War after the fact as well. I think it was a year or two years after it was over when I read the tpb. I had followed other series at that time that took place during Civil War. They weren't as good as the main event imo.
You should at some point check out Avengers the Initiative. Go over to our discussion group and check out some posts about it. It was a good series. Especially the first 20 or so issues.
There is a definite unbalance toward the Cap position, but I think they've done a pretty good job of making Tony a somewhat sympathetic character. Earlier today, I read most of the third hardcover of New Avengers, which is all of the tie-in issues, one-shots, and the few issues after that. I think it has #21-31, plus a few one-shots. I thought The Confession did a pretty good job of fleshing out Tony's humanity, as well as the line where he says to Luke Cage, Wolverine, etc., even though he can't see them, "If there is some better way, please let me know. Because I'll be on board."
As for Civil War itself, where I can't get on board with Tony Stark, I do think it was presented in a "this is the only way we can really make it fair for everyone" kind of way. And I'm a bleeding-heart leftist, mind you. But at least I could see their angle, even if I didn't agree with it, and that's a lot more than I can say about the whole limiting of the Freedom of Information Act + the whole Right to Privacy being revoked, etc. I think the U.S. government has come off as the hand-wringing, twirly mustached villains a lot more than Tony Stark does in these pages.
Tomorrow I'll probably read Captain America: Fallen Son. I have that one too, as well as the Death of Captain America books. Yeah, I tend to read things out of order. (I just read Secret Invasion about a month ago, which is where we're clearly heading next.)
I read Fallen Son this morning, and I'm not sure it was quite fair that Tony Stark was allowed to speak at Captain America's funeral and was given his own private funeral at the North Pole with Cap's body. I'm not talking "legally fair" as much as "actually fair". I'm not saying that Tony is essentially to blame for Cap's death, and I really get the feeling he's not, but I have to say that as far as the general public goes, they are/were enemies at this point, and Tony just got done leading nationwide manhunts against Steve Rogers. Even though he probably earnestly wanted to, I don't think Tony should have been allowed to suddenly play the part of the "weepy best friend".
(By the way, I realize I'm pretty much just talking to myself here, so I hope I'm not being annoying to everyone by keeping this thread going--I'll continue to do so until I'm done with this whole storyline or until a moderator tells me to knock it off already!) :-)
No, Jeff, have at it. I'm enjoying reading it.
However, as one of the more entrenched (although some might say "annoying") detractors of "Civil War" when it was actually happening, I don't think I should chime in. I was wondering how it happened that you didn't read it when it was going on; I only wish I could say that.
LOL!
I for one only think it's annoying when the evils of CW are brought up (again and again) in unrelated threads. "Man, there's no way Sugar and Spike would have acted like that after what Stanley's Monster did to them in Civil War!" and the like.
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Good, glad to know I'm not ruffling any feathers. I think I have the advantage of knowing how it all turns out. A year ago, I read the Invincible Iron Man Omnibus, plus about the next fifteen issues or so after that in subsequent months, and I've read Dark Reign and Seige, Hickman's Secret Warriors, the latest incarnations of New Avengers and Avengers, and about a month ago, I read Avengers Prime, so Civil War, to me, is more back matter to all that. For everyone who read it as it came out, it had to have looked like "the way it is now", which I can understand could come off as differing levels of frustrating.
Next up for me is to read The Death of Captain America, World War Hulk, War of Kings, and Chaos War (man, that's a whole lotta war for a peacenik like me...).
You've got some mighty fine reading ahead of you Jeff. How did you like Invincible Iron Man, it's the Matt Fraction series, right? I've been reading since issue 1 and love it. The Stark Dissassembled arc is one of my favorites. Secret Warriors is great too.
I know you don't like "school stories" but Avengers the Initiative isn't exactly a school story. It's a good follow-up from Civil War if you want to see the initiative in action. The majority of the series deals with the training camp but there are glimpses and arcs dealing with the 50-state teams that were implimented after CW.
I'm glad you read CW. It caused a lot of friction but I for one thought it was a well done story. It reads well in TPB form as well. The scope of the story and the art gave it a cinematic feel to me. I could see this being acted out on a movie screen.
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