Civil War #7 reaction
I made the prediction that there was no way that Iron Man and the rest of his pro-registration goons were going to win Civil War. And I was so very wrong.
Now, it's too early for me to start bitching about this new status quo or how it will effect the next few years of stories. (I don't read that much current Marvel anyways.) Luckily, it will probably be nullified by some other huge event by 2010 at the latest.
But what I am left really thinking about is how the ending of Civil War, specifically Captain America's simple surrender, must be angering legions of fans but how it also makes a lot of sense. It was perfectly clear from the very get-go that Iron Man was the villain of the series and that Cap and his band of rebels were the one's worth rooting for. But why is that? I think that the general pro-Cap sentiment among fans was grounded in the idealism that superheroes represent for people. It is the same reason why some people get all bent out of shape about Batman killing in the movies: superheroes are good, just and should not be questioned or lowered in stature. By subverting superheroes (also mistakenly called "darkening" them) creators undermine the virtues that are projected onto the characters.
It is this and the plain fact that the Stamford accident is purely fictional that makes Iron Man's side so hard to accept and Cap to easy to root for. But let's be perfectly serious, if 9/11 were caused by superhumans (good or evil, doesn't really matter) instead of religious terrorists, you'd bet that we in the real world would all be calling for superhuman registration as well. It makes sense that a vast majority of people in the Marvel universe would side with the government and be in favor of registration and so it makes sense that a hero so dedicated to the people to surrender to such an opinion, like it or not.
Perhaps the "problem" of Civil War's resolution has less to do with flaws in the series and more with a fundamental flaw in fiction, that we can only get so close to the characters, that we can only understand their motivations to a limited extent. It is this distance from the character's reality (or even our own distance from the event Stamford is so shamelessly based on) that makes it hard to look past the idealism of Captain America and to see just how practical Iron Man and SHIELD are being. To say that the ending of Civil War sucks is perfectly reasonable, but to say that it isn't the way it should have ended is simply a fandamentalist delusion.
That being said, I am glad that the only contemporary Marvel comics I am dedicated reading are Runaways and Punisher MAX. Everything else I'm reading was published decades before Civil War.
3 comments:
There was no real resolution to the story. I know that this is part of the whole "soap opera" of comics. But come on. All this build up and blah it's over.
Richard
http://1rightopinion-comics.blogspot.com/
You have a point, but Marvel dug their own grave with this, so to speak.
To make this story "work" (to the extent it does, anyway), one has to ignore decades of the citizenry in the MU allowing costumed vigilantism. Once has to ignore multiple events more destructive than Stamford that DIDN'T result in public backlash (Magneto incinerating humans en masse in NY? Kang nuking the US?). One ESPECIALLY has to ignore that we as readers KNOW, not suspect, but KNOW that the MU US government and S.H.I.E.L.D. are corrupt and tend to either do the wrong thing, or have worse security than a 7-11 store.
Then, we have to ignore all the really villainous things Stark and company did in the service of the SRA.
Finally, Cap folds. Not back in issue #2, not after Bill Foster's death (way to honor that sacrifice by the way, Cap, by pretty much saying his death was for naught), but here, in #7, after some contrived emergency workers tackle him (funny how they never did this in ANY OTHER story. Kinda like how the MU citizenry didn't react to the destruction until the story called for it, eh?).
Sorry, while the conventions of the genre might have hampered some of the execution, I think that's proof this story either;
A. Shouldn't have been told, at least, not in the half-assed way it was without being consistent, or
B. Should have been made a "What If?" story, so they COULD see it through more "honestly."
Of course, it sold well, so Marvel will take exactly the wrong message away from this, and write more nonsensical stories with fall-flat endings and nonexistent editing ...
Take it and run.
That being said, I am glad that the only contemporary Marvel comics I am dedicated reading are Runaways and Punisher MAX. Everything else I'm reading was published decades before Civil War.
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Me too. The only thing I read that comes from Marvel are the MAX Punisher comic books that are so far better than the civil war Punisher that it's not even funny.
Anything else from Marvel that I'm reading was written years ago.
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