Civil War #7 - Spoilers

[TheDarkling]

I was talking about Millar's political views.

From what I can gather, Reed has become a complete mad scientist. I am so sick of that cliche it's not even funny.

Millar is on Tony's side, he isn't casting Reed/Tony as the bad guys so he isn't doing a political job on them.

If he has any political commentary here it a comment on Americans being government fearing chaps who are opposed to change because it is change.

[TheDarkling]

Honestly some of the characters stayed relatively accurate, Spiderman got some sense after making initial mistakes as he always does,

I'm not so sure, I cna't imagine Peter ever thinking coming out to the public was a good idea.

Namor got super pissed and owned people, wait.... Namor, I forget, how did they just explain away the fact that he would want Iron Man to die now? They just shook hands and chuckled about a dead Namorita and the people that Iron Man had killed? Wow, that's a bit of a plot hole.

I imagine he walked off in disgust at Cap and muttered something about the damned air breathers.

The Punisher comes out shining from Civil War, they wrote him spot on. He had the opportunity to kill alot of villains and did so with reckless abandon.

True.

[18-Till-I-Die]

I was talking about Millar's political views.

From what I can gather, Reed has become a complete mad scientist. I am so sick of that cliche it's not even funny.

I dont personally know anything about Millar, now that i think about it.

I would guess he's a big fan of the PATRIOT act considering how he seems to be under the delusion that Iron Man is a hero and Captain America a behind-the-times terrorist menace.

Or this is all a brilliant feint before he reveals the true villain of the series...i'm still holding out hope.

As for Mister Fantastic, he's basically willing to break up his family, create clone warriors and generally be an insensitive cunt to everyone now. Invisible Woman left him for a while and joined the resistance but she came 'crawling' back after the resistance imploded. He promised he wouldnt make any more clones, even though his clone of Thor murdered Black Goliath during a skirmish recently.

And according to him, it's better to knuckle under when faced with government oppression instead of fight back. Or basically thats the story he told Spiderman. Supposedly he has some uncle who was screwed by the government and he feels it was the uncles fault for fighting back. "Look at how you was dressed, you was askin' fer it!"

[TheDarkling]

Personally in a world where people wear super powered armor suits and a guy who took steroids sixty years ago is still in his prime cause the shit was THAT good, i would consider mind control and clones to be considerably less silly than someone's personality completely changing in a few months time for no reason whatsoever.

I don't have a problem with it from a suspension of disbelief standpoint, I'm simply pointing out that when writers use those sort of retcons hey usually get it in the neck for being cheap.

[Solauren]

Why, why couldn't they had had something behind it all that would make sense?

Like say, an uber-big bad telepath like Onslaught. Someone it took most of the superhero community to kill, about to return, so he decides to sick the heroes on each other to weaken him to the point they are not a threat to him.


That would oh, make sense.

[Stark]

I don't have a problem with it from a suspension of disbelief standpoint, I'm simply pointing out that when writers use those sort of retcons hey usually get it in the neck for being cheap.

Get it in the neck? The whole industry is built on retcons. Has anyone been fired over retcons?

[TheDarkling]

Get it in the neck? The whole industry is built on retcons. Has anyone been fired over retcons?

I meant from the fans.

How often do people complain about character coming back from the dead or changes to status quo being erased yet here we are asking for such.

[18-Till-I-Die]

Me? I never mind such retcons, its part of the business.

But in this case in particular, they've backed themselves into a coner. The long term effects of this are untenable. And we dont need to beat a dead horse again and talk about the MASSIVE and out-of-the-blue changes to characters flung around willy nilly in Civil War.

[Steve]

Though I'm hardly a fan of this storyline, I do want to point out a few things I think were not touched on.

A) Stark did not want to murder foreign dignitaries. He ensured Osborne only had a weak gun that he knew couldn't kill an Atlantean.

There is, in fact, a plausible explaination for a lot of his Machiavellian actions.

Namely, he had no choice.

When Stamford happened, that was that. The jig was up. He knew it, Reed knew it, Hank Pym knew it. There was no hope of further review of the SHRA, of a refinement of it's terms. Anyone who tried to block it would be trampled under in the wave of blind public rage after Stamford. So as a result, a law that was still under review and refinement was on the fast track to passing.

What do you do?

Tony knew that there was no real hope of forcing the government to back down. The entire country was behind the act, what're they going to do? Refuse to protect America from alien threats, Doctor Doom, etc? Are they going to fight their own country and compel it, by military force, to back own from the law? Those options don't work at all. Nor can you wait for the government to refine the law after passing, since who knows how much damage would be done in the interim?

The only option, then, is to play along, intending the entire time to protect the interests of his friends.

To draw a fun allegory, think of the Psi Corps from Babylon-5. Founded to protect normal humans from telepaths by keeping them registered and in control, but easily co-opted by the telepaths themselves....

Although I disagree with the "provoke the Atlanteans to cause a crisis and unite the heroes" element (Frontline's writers have not impressed me very much), it's pretty clear from this point that Tony never intended to leave heroes in the Negative Zone. He was working for an amnesty since day one, and it ironically might've been Cap who delayed it by maintaining the resistance.

I don't necessarily agree with how things went, or even the plot itself, but I feel this is an alternative to the "OMG Tony is now EV1L11!!!!1!!" standpoint.


As for Bishop, besides getting screwed by Millar with that dumbass "I thought we were the Avengers" line in Civil War #7, I found that Civil War X-Men #1 explained his motives better. Namely, he's holding out hope that the SHRA might prevent this timeline from becoming the same as the one he grew up in. Certainly an understandable motivation, especially if the SHRA didn't happen in his timeline

And that's my two cents of wisdom for you.

[Stark]

I meant from the fans.

How often do people complain about character coming back from the dead or changes to status quo being erased yet here we are asking for such.

Well they've got you. Instead of writing something they think is awesome-cool and retconning it (to the disgust of fans) they've written something fucking crap that everyone hates, so fans WANT them to retcon it... and refuse. Game, set, and match!

Because fuck knows it's not going to stop anyone buying the books. In which case the captive audience funds whatever nonsense the writers see fit to write. Turns out all the comic readers with taste or willpower stopped reading back in the industry crash, the ones left are like Star Wars fans.

I don't read comics and haven't read a word of Civil War, but Steve's post suggests what I find common to comicbook 'events'. Namely, that there IS a way to write an interesting, thought-provoking story with the ideas they have. They just don't. All the behind-the-scenes motivations etc is fine, but if the actual text doesn't even HINT at it the text still sucks.

[KrauserKrauser]

Steve, that all breaksdown when factoring in the fact that he commited massive amounts of war profiteering off of the incident at Stamford. Not only that, the whole attack was the result of the actions of the Damage Control corporation, but sweet Jesus for some reason they are getting a free pass on that one.

This could have been written well, Iron Man could have been pro registration and the registration did not have to be this quasi forced enlistment of everyone that has any powers whatsoever, but it wasn't, it's shit, it's worse than shit because the beginning was good and it completely went to shit in teh last few issues.

[Tsyroc]

As for Mister Fantastic, he's basically willing to break up his family, create clone warriors and generally be an insensitive cunt to everyone now. Invisible Woman left him for a while and joined the resistance but she came 'crawling' back after the resistance imploded. He promised he wouldnt make any more clones, even though his clone of Thor murdered Black Goliath during a skirmish recently.

And according to him, it's better to knuckle under when faced with government oppression instead of fight back. Or basically thats the story he told Spiderman. Supposedly he has some uncle who was screwed by the government and he feels it was the uncles fault for fighting back. "Look at how you was dressed, you was askin' fer it!"

I guess he never wanted any of the Latverian peasants to revolt against the rule of Dr. Doom either. Although, it is in FF continuity that pretty much any time Doom isn't in charge of Latveria the place gets royally fucked up.

IMO, as soon as Sue left and took the kids with her the stretchy guy would have eventually caved, or at least crashed and burned. Sue's the one in the group that really has some backbone and the Super hero registration act would mean that both her kids would be registered and draftable.

I also find it odd that Reed apparently doesn't care about what his best friend, the Thing, thinks about the act either. There is a precidence for Reed getting swept up in making his cool toys for the government though. The alternate Earth Reed who got turned into the Thing made all kinds of robots for whoever would pay, including robots with military applications.

Speaking of the alternate Reeds, I think he was once replaced with his other self, the one who could turn into the Brute. Maybe (pretty please) we'll get a rehash of that.

[lance]

I liked the conservation with him and johnny were he says"sense when? You don't even obey the laws of physics" and "The FF overthrows an ET government 3 times a year. We've deposed of evil warlords, defied gods. Now all of a sudden we turn on our friends i because of a bad law?"
And Reed responds with it being necessary Ends justify means 1.396% of the time and this is one of them.

[Stofsk]

I reiterate, it goes against his established character. Millar is a hack.

[GuppyShark]

I dislike the "Iron Prick" sig. Don't blame the victim.

[Oddysseus]

Steve, that all breaksdown when factoring in the fact that he commited massive amounts of war profiteering off of the incident at Stamford. Not only that, the whole attack was the result of the actions of the Damage Control corporation, but sweet Jesus for some reason they are getting a free pass on that one.

This could have been written well, Iron Man could have been pro registration and the registration did not have to be this quasi forced enlistment of everyone that has any powers whatsoever, but it wasn't, it's shit, it's worse than shit because the beginning was good and it completely went to shit in teh last few issues.

What might have balanced things a bit would be an added scene in the last book. Have Stark, after the fight, in the montage, meet with a group of heroes he knew didn't want to fight and just wanted to retire in peace. Have him offer them amnesty, and let them hang up the costumes, now that the big fight is over. And, have him apologize for dragging them into this, and ask that they consider coming back if an emergency arises.

Then he would show that he rally was trying to help "his people", and now as the SHIELD bigwig, is trying to mend some fences, be "decent", and let the few, NOT IMPRISONED, who want to go, go. Then you might wonder, gee maybe he is trying.

But, nah, it is a big army, and everyone is happy, working in the fields.


And, really? They reporters in Frontlines go to the trouble of going to the prison to see Captain America to rub his nose in it and blow a raspberry. Cause that is how I read the description. Wow, talk about kicking someone when their down, and I am talking about the what the writers’ are writing. Yeesch.

[mr friendly guy]

What do you do?

Tony knew that there was no real hope of forcing the government to back down. The entire country was behind the act, what're they going to do? Refuse to protect America from alien threats, Doctor Doom, etc? Are they going to fight their own country and compel it, by military force, to back own from the law? Those options don't work at all. Nor can you wait for the government to refine the law after passing, since who knows how much damage would be done in the interim?

What to do? Migrate to Canada.

[TheDarkling]

Go on strike is exactly what they should have done and once thousands of people had died the populace would have had a keener understanding of exactly who needs who in this situation.

Lying down and allowing yourselves to be made into slaves shouldn't be an option.

As for the negative zone, when was it said Stark got them out?

It would seem anybody held under the SHRA has to be put in 42 simply because the law is unconstitutional and once you give a court (other than the supreme court which Tony apparently has in the bag) jurisdiction to look into it the whole house of cards comes falling down.

The main effect of the series in my opinion isn't to make me like Tony less (although I do) or think less of Cap (although I do) but just to hate the ungrateful scum that is the MU US populace, these people save the earth of a monthly basis and the public turned on them like jackals.
I just can't be on their side any more and I will probably cheer when the Thunderbolts break loose and Bullseye starts offing people left, right and centre.

[18-Till-I-Die]

I meant from the fans.

How often do people complain about character coming back from the dead or changes to status quo being erased yet here we are asking for such.

Well they've got you. Instead of writing something they think is awesome-cool and retconning it (to the disgust of fans) they've written something fucking crap that everyone hates, so fans WANT them to retcon it... and refuse. Game, set, and match!

You know that might just be what they're doing.

It's actually a brilliant plan. Now they could call any fans who gripe about retcons hypocrites, and take the moral high ground when they do use retcons. It's like something Palpatine would think of if he were an evil douchebag comic book writer instead of a evil douchebag intergalactic politician.

Not me thought. I never really found fault in retcons. So i could easily call him on such bullshit with a clean conscience. Thus i win.

[Sriad]

I was also disappointed by the ending of Civil War and the nutjob-swing Frontline's reporters took in the last few issues, though I can say with a certain satisfaction that Marvel hasn't extracted a single red cent from me with all this Crossovering.

I wonder though, are there any Right-wing comic fan web boards out there where they think this all ended the right way?

[Manus Celer Dei]

The latest issue of Iron Man offers a bit of an explanation for his apparent shift in personality:

Eh. Not too farfetched.

[Manus Celer Dei]

Holy fuck, I meant to post the thumbnail, not inline the whole damn image. Um, sorry. Can a mod fix that?

[Darth Yoshi]

For those of us who haven't kept up with Iron Man, what the hell is this extremis they're talking about?

[Manus Celer Dei]

For those of us who haven't kept up with Iron Man, what the hell is this extremis they're talking about?

A weird virus/nanotech thing he used on himself at the beginning of his current series. Increased his reaction times, let him interface with his armour (and any other technology) directly with his mind and gave him a minor healing factor.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Hooray for comic book writers butchering science (again) with this "next stage of evolution" crap. I think if we evolve enough, we can all become Silver Surfers and visit the stars.