Marvel's Civil War began when I was just out of high school. It didn't age well.

Thought-Provoking Comics Comments!

I’ve been out of the loop with the Marvel Universe since Civil War, and it’s been a while since I revisited that. I’ve read enough to hate Brand New Day, but my Bay Area libraries didn’t stock much more than that. Up here, though, I’ve been reading bits and pieces of Civil War, Secret Invasion, Dark Reign – the whole shebang, and it’s reminded me what I love and hate about Marvel.

I’ve come to the conclusion that Marvel’s a flawed version of The Ideal Comic™. The power of recognizable characters that we’re attached to gave Civil War a different kind of weight than other, similar indie parallels; personally, I think it feels more real if it happens as part of a broader continuity than it does in the essentially one-shot Watchmen. And yes, there were a few moments during the War that really brought the ethical and practical quandary home, like the Punisher pointing out that there were still super-villains who weren’t taking sides, or some of the more sedate Iron Man and Cap debates.

But the sheer scale of it, with everyone, their cousins, and both of the kid teams getting involved… I understand that it’s meant to affect everyone, but just because everyone remembers where they were when they find out about the Twin Towers doesn’t mean that every able-bodied man enlisted.

It’s especially vexing when groups like S.H.I.E.L.D., which have their own gravitas in most books, get tossed into fights with telepathic and empathic dinosaur pets.

And that doesn’t even get into the issues of bad writing, blatant favoritism of the anti-Registration side (“Whose Side Are You On?” my ass), and the flagship series being nothing deeper than a drawn-out brawl with a few deaths tossed in.

What this boils down to is the idea that the fewer writers and titles are involved in the event, and the longer the editor is willing to let it play out, the more faith I’ll have in it. So I’m tempted to read Bendis’ run on Avengers: it seems like he always knew what he wanted to write, he had years to write it, and he followed a fairly limited cast.

Also, I just wiki’d what happened to Steve Rogers after making national headlines and bleeding to death. Okay, I know that Cap couldn’t stay dead, even with a replacement, but did they really have to use a plot device that DC used just a year earlier?