Ok, so I've been reserving my judgment on this whole thing until it was over. Now that it's over I will say this: "Fuck you Civil War".
I'm really not impressed with what has happened here in the least. The series may have been a commercial success but it is definitely NOT something the writers and editors should be proud of.
SatanIsMyMotor on
0
Sars_BoyRest, You Are The Lightning.Registered Userregular
It was Tony Stark warping reality with his Reality Infinity Gem the whole time.
Myriam Sharpe or whatever her name is
Is Loki.
That would've made for a much better ending.
This was just sort of dumb. It seemed like a waste of time.
Yeah - I felt pretty under whelmed about the whole ending. I wasn't expecting anything fantastic, but this feels like it could have easily been resolved in four issues at the most using the ending that they gave us. There were a few of us at our LCS reading it at the store before picking it up and there was a commensurate "wtf….that's it?" after it was over.
I'm one of the few people who really liked Civil War, including the ending.
I'm bored in class, so I feel like posting an extemporaneous explanation:
---In re: Continuity & Characterization
People have voiced concern that many characters have acted in ways that they wouldn't have done in the past. Examples include Reed (who aggressively fought a previous registration act), Iron Man (the same), Bishop (who comes from an seriously fascist future) and others.
The difficulty is the standard comics continuity issue: it is impossible to both (a) give full credence to every issue, and (b) act as if the history of each character occurred to one person over the span of one lifetime. Iron Man has decades and decades of stories that happen to him, but in-story his time as Iron Man is maybe a decade and a half.
Moreover, there have always been this sort of continuity in character break: Spider-Man for example has been extremely successful in the public eye, but he's always feeling inadequate and always unpopular. The universe is somewhat static.
---In re: 42 & the Act
I'm sorry, but the Registration Act makes sense. You cannot try and analogize between real-world civil rights and a world where people are born (or given) such absurdly amazing powers. Iron Man - supposedly not a mutant or mutate - developed armor and technology that in sum exceeded basically the history of mankind. Reed Richards - a mutate - does just as much. The Sentry was a scrawny Cap'n America wanna-be who took a serum and became damned near omnipotent. Mutants like Proteus can reshape reality; Magneto is so much a force of nature that he once merged with the Earth's magnetic field and reconstituted his body...hell, Magneto just tore a stable wormhole open before House of M. Speaking of House of M, Wanda Maximoff re-wrote the entire universe TWICE.
Moreover, consider the basic legal issue: people are arrested constantly by citizens, with no due process, and usually with collateral damage and excessive force. Look at Watchmen: if non-superpowered vigilantes were running around, causing collateral damage and resulting in constant dismissals (improperly seized evidence, etc.) wouldn't you be pissed?
Especially given that Iron Man and Reed seem to have realized that the Registration Act would result in Stark taking over SHIELD, it looks like we've now got a huge version of the Avengers instead of some reckless army.
The only real mistake I see is that bringing the Thunderbolts into the fray seems insane.
---The Ending
Supposedly, Captain America thought he was fighting the good fight. The ending fit this perfectly: he realized that all he'd done was to get all the American people rallied against him. All Captain America and his allies did was prove to everyone that super-heroes think themselves above the law.
As Dr. King noted, if you believe a law is unjust you cannot fight it if you refuse to subject yourself to that law. This is supposed to be settled in the courts, not in the streets.
As Steve Rogers put it, they weren't fighting for something: they were just fighting.
And by the way: Rogers was ready to kill Iron Man. What a hero.
And by the way: Rogers was ready to kill Iron Man. What a hero.
man, fuck that
cap is a soldier, son
he knows sometimes you gotta get the job done
he doesn't like it, and he's good enough at what he does that it pretty much never comes down to that anymore, but you think the living legend of world war II never killed a nazi?
I can understand a lot of the reasoning behind why a lot of characters did what they did, but I don't think I've ever been a big fan of Millar's dialogue, which really kind of hurt my enjoyment of this a bit. Especially Reed and Sue's letters, those things were fucking creepy.
The art was pretty awesome throughout, although it faltered a bit at the end.
And I think I'm going to start judging events more out of what comes out of them when they're at this scale. There's just going to be so much crap piled in that it's damn near impossible to make something truly amazing out of it, I think.
House of M kind of revitalized the X-line, even though it didn't do as much for the rest of the universe. Infinite Crisis at least led to a pretty good Superman run and 52.
I don't know. I'm going to hold off judgement until I get a little more perspective on it, but I'm kind of in the middle of the road on it at the moment. I did like the ending, since I really don't know if there's another way that battle could have finished.
What would have happened if Cap and co. had won? The public sure wouldn't have been behind them. And there's still SHIELD to deal with. Outside of the new Thunderbolts team, which isn't so much a bad idea as it is a bad group to try out that idea on, I think things could be much worse.
Outside of the new Thunderbolts team, which isn't so much a bad idea as it is a bad group to try out that idea on, I think things could be much worse.
i don't think it's a bad team, really. why do you think that geebs
mostly so far, i like the new director. my favorite part of the two issues so far is the fact that i was able to identify him right away from the retarded hair
although to be fair his line when bullseye asked him who he was is the best line to come out of civil war, i think
'everybody knows who i am, bullseye. i'm the director of the thunderbolts. i'm norman osborn'
I don't mind the line-up from a creative standpoint, I just think that of all the villains to try to reform, Venom, Bullseye and Norman Osborne aren't exactly the sanest choices.
DJ Eebs on
0
HarrierThe Star Spangled ManRegistered Userregular
edited February 2007
Can Venom even technically be reformed?
If the symbiote's host becomes Dudley Doo-Right it will just jump to someone else who will be more inclined to cause mayhem with its power.
Harrier on
I don't wanna kill anybody. I don't like bullies. I don't care where they're from.
i never got the impression that they were supposed to be reformed necessarily though. i just thought that the government (or tony) felt like they'd need rougher customers than usual during and after the war and that he might as well piss off spider-man while he was at it (i guess)
I was a lot more critical of the series until I sat down this weekend and read all of the issues in one sitting. I think it's a lot better that way. It's actually not an amazingly huge story, despite how it's marketed and such, which makes reading one issue every couple of months less than fulfilling. Taking it in all at once, though? Quite an improvement, I'd say.
I don't think a "big event" has ever been successful from a consumer standpoint.
Secret Wars
Exectutioners Song
Stryfe
Infinity Gauntlet
Onslaught
Everyone felt like most people seem to be feeling right now..."Meh". The problem is companies are too scared of what they might lose if they actually killed of a big character in one of these big events to actually make these events really meaningful.
But in the end Marvel wins. They got our money and everyone is ecstatic for WWH. Could they of pulled it off any better?
I don't think a "big event" has ever been successful from a consumer standpoint.
Secret Wars
Exectutioners Song
Stryfe
Infinity Gauntlet
Onslaught
Everyone felt like most people seem to be feeling right now..."Meh". The problem is companies are too scared of what they might lose if they actually killed of a big character in one of these big events to actually make these events really meaningful.
But in the end Marvel wins. They got our money and everyone is ecstatic for WWH. Could they of pulled it off any better?
It's not like killing characters is the only way for a story to excite readers and make a story meaningful.
I posted this on another board, but doesn't this basically mean the conclusion to this event is
a "Whoops, my bad dudes" by Cap. Not exactly a lot of dramatic oomph there.
It's good, though. If Cap had won, and the civs had rallied behind him instead of Iron Man, then we'd all be back where we started and nothing would've happened except killing off a few B and C listers. With Cap losing (and surrendering is a better ending than him being knocked out imo) then serious change has happened.
I really don't think Millar was forced to choose between two possible endings, neither of which would have been a satisfying conclusion. Even if that was the case, surely that could have been averted by altering the story to allow for a more satisfying resolution.
I don't think I've seen anyone saying what the ending should have been.
I don't think either side should have won. The way the series and tie-ins were written, neither group was justified in their actions and so it just doesn't seem fair unless they're both forced to confront consequences for their respective crimes. I myself would have preferred it if the in-fighting resulted in a situation that was terrible for everybody and, ultimately, forced them to mend the rift between them to overcome it (but not immediately, of course).
The way things seem now, with the Pro-Regs hunting the Anti-Regs still, it just seems like Civil War isn't ending even though the mini itself has.
I don't think I've seen anyone saying what the ending should have been.
Millar said in an interview, I think, perhaps, with Newsarama, that readers would be getting the ending they "need," not necessarily the one they "want."
I think the real question is what the hell is Ant-Man\Yellojacket doing on Team Texas with those cowboy looking fellas? Forgive me if I didn't recognize a single one of those guys
So, uh, has Hercules always been able to do that thing he did, that I thought only certain Very Special people were able to do? Or is that, like, an artificial version of the certain thing?
(Posted stupidly because <spoiler> and </spoiler> don't seem to work, and I'm not sure where to look to figure out how to code it.)
I'm better with the ending than I thought I was going to be. Did anybody die in this issue? All the previews seem to imply somebody important died, but if they did, it was off-panel.
Oolong on
0
HarrierThe Star Spangled ManRegistered Userregular
So, uh, has Hercules always been able to do that thing he did, that I thought only certain Very Special people were able to do? Or is that, like, an artificial version of the certain thing?
(Posted stupidly because <spoiler> and </spoiler> don't seem to work, and I'm not sure where to look to figure out how to code it.)
I'm better with the ending than I thought I was going to be. Did anybody die in this issue? All the previews seem to imply somebody important died, but if they did, it was off-panel.
It wasn't the real Mjolnir. That's why it broke along with Clor's robot head.
Harrier on
I don't wanna kill anybody. I don't like bullies. I don't care where they're from.
Did anyone else find that exchange with Maria Hill a little bizarre? I found it strange that he such a jerk when they seemed to be somewhat close in that recent issue of New Avengers.
Ed: Also, Maria Hill shouldn't be looking at Marvel.com during work.
So, uh, has Hercules always been able to do that thing he did, that I thought only certain Very Special people were able to do? Or is that, like, an artificial version of the certain thing?
(Posted stupidly because <spoiler> and </spoiler> don't seem to work, and I'm not sure where to look to figure out how to code it.)
I'm better with the ending than I thought I was going to be. Did anybody die in this issue? All the previews seem to imply somebody important died, but if they did, it was off-panel.
It wasn't the real Mjolnir. That's why it broke along with Clor's robot head.
Are you sure it wasn't real?
The Road to Civil War leads me to believe otherwise.
So, uh, has Hercules always been able to do that thing he did, that I thought only certain Very Special people were able to do? Or is that, like, an artificial version of the certain thing?
(Posted stupidly because <spoiler> and </spoiler> don't seem to work, and I'm not sure where to look to figure out how to code it.)
I'm better with the ending than I thought I was going to be. Did anybody die in this issue? All the previews seem to imply somebody important died, but if they did, it was off-panel.
It wasn't the real Mjolnir. That's why it broke along with Clor's robot head.
Are you sure it wasn't real?
The Road to Civil War leads me to believe otherwise.
Unless the real deal is made out of computery bits, no.
So, uh, has Hercules always been able to do that thing he did, that I thought only certain Very Special people were able to do? Or is that, like, an artificial version of the certain thing?
(Posted stupidly because <spoiler> and </spoiler> don't seem to work, and I'm not sure where to look to figure out how to code it.)
I'm better with the ending than I thought I was going to be. Did anybody die in this issue? All the previews seem to imply somebody important died, but if they did, it was off-panel.
It wasn't the real Mjolnir. That's why it broke along with Clor's robot head.
Are you sure it wasn't real?
The Road to Civil War leads me to believe otherwise.
Unless the real deal is made out of computery bits, no.
I was under the impression that it was the head that was turning to computery bits, not the hammer.
If it was a real thing, clone or not, he wouldn't be worthy to hold it would he?
I guess that's a pretty good point.
But in the Road to Civil War, the Thing tries to pick it up and he's unable to, and they explain how it cuts through Hell and such and is captured by SHIELD. Right?
I just remember seeing someone with Thor's alter egos initials on a back pack picking it up. Why they'd send out Clor to get it with a backpack and all then bring him back I dunno. Unless they couldn't clone Thor but just his normal state and the hammer was necessary to turn him.
Still, worthy is worthy. Dunno why Thing couldn't lift it but if every good guy could it'd be a bit pointless. I still don't think a clone could ever lift it.
Anyway, not the most instantly gratifying thing ever... but then, it really did end the only way it could have, I guess. I actually found Iron Man's reaction to Hill pretty good and in character; the entire series he's just been doing what he felt he needed to do regardless of his personal feelings. Now that he's in control, he can make his personal feelings about Assistant Director Hill clear.
Sentry on
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
wrote:
When I was a little kid, I always pretended I was the hero,' Skip said.
'Fuck yeah, me too. What little kid ever pretended to be part of the lynch-mob?'
Maybe Beta Ray Bill picked it up, wearing one of Donald Blake's old coats or something. We know BRB is back, has a human alter ego, and can lift Mjolnir
On a related note, did anyone else think Punisher: War Journal from this week was one of the best things about this entire Civil War.
Sentry on
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
wrote:
When I was a little kid, I always pretended I was the hero,' Skip said.
'Fuck yeah, me too. What little kid ever pretended to be part of the lynch-mob?'
On a related note, did anyone else think Punisher: War Journal from this week was one of the best things about this entire Civil War.
I saw it when I went to the store today. For some reason, I didn't really register that it was a tie-in, probably because it didn't have the Civil War banner smeared across the cover.
Posts
IT MAKES PERFECT SENSE NOW!
And those heroes who were with Thor and Marvel, they were some new west coast super hero team based on the Greek Gods.
I'm really not impressed with what has happened here in the least. The series may have been a commercial success but it is definitely NOT something the writers and editors should be proud of.
This was just sort of dumb. It seemed like a waste of time.
Yeah - I felt pretty under whelmed about the whole ending. I wasn't expecting anything fantastic, but this feels like it could have easily been resolved in four issues at the most using the ending that they gave us. There were a few of us at our LCS reading it at the store before picking it up and there was a commensurate "wtf….that's it?" after it was over.
I'm bored in class, so I feel like posting an extemporaneous explanation:
---In re: Continuity & Characterization
People have voiced concern that many characters have acted in ways that they wouldn't have done in the past. Examples include Reed (who aggressively fought a previous registration act), Iron Man (the same), Bishop (who comes from an seriously fascist future) and others.
The difficulty is the standard comics continuity issue: it is impossible to both (a) give full credence to every issue, and (b) act as if the history of each character occurred to one person over the span of one lifetime. Iron Man has decades and decades of stories that happen to him, but in-story his time as Iron Man is maybe a decade and a half.
Moreover, there have always been this sort of continuity in character break: Spider-Man for example has been extremely successful in the public eye, but he's always feeling inadequate and always unpopular. The universe is somewhat static.
---In re: 42 & the Act
I'm sorry, but the Registration Act makes sense. You cannot try and analogize between real-world civil rights and a world where people are born (or given) such absurdly amazing powers. Iron Man - supposedly not a mutant or mutate - developed armor and technology that in sum exceeded basically the history of mankind. Reed Richards - a mutate - does just as much. The Sentry was a scrawny Cap'n America wanna-be who took a serum and became damned near omnipotent. Mutants like Proteus can reshape reality; Magneto is so much a force of nature that he once merged with the Earth's magnetic field and reconstituted his body...hell, Magneto just tore a stable wormhole open before House of M. Speaking of House of M, Wanda Maximoff re-wrote the entire universe TWICE.
Moreover, consider the basic legal issue: people are arrested constantly by citizens, with no due process, and usually with collateral damage and excessive force. Look at Watchmen: if non-superpowered vigilantes were running around, causing collateral damage and resulting in constant dismissals (improperly seized evidence, etc.) wouldn't you be pissed?
Especially given that Iron Man and Reed seem to have realized that the Registration Act would result in Stark taking over SHIELD, it looks like we've now got a huge version of the Avengers instead of some reckless army.
The only real mistake I see is that bringing the Thunderbolts into the fray seems insane.
---The Ending
Supposedly, Captain America thought he was fighting the good fight. The ending fit this perfectly: he realized that all he'd done was to get all the American people rallied against him. All Captain America and his allies did was prove to everyone that super-heroes think themselves above the law.
As Dr. King noted, if you believe a law is unjust you cannot fight it if you refuse to subject yourself to that law. This is supposed to be settled in the courts, not in the streets.
As Steve Rogers put it, they weren't fighting for something: they were just fighting.
And by the way: Rogers was ready to kill Iron Man. What a hero.
They were both so enjoyable over the last 8 months or so, that I can almost let this whole anticlimactic and over-hyped Civil War crap slide.
...almost.
Situation excellent. I am attacking.
- General Ferdinand Foch
man, fuck that
cap is a soldier, son
he knows sometimes you gotta get the job done
he doesn't like it, and he's good enough at what he does that it pretty much never comes down to that anymore, but you think the living legend of world war II never killed a nazi?
Pretty good, I think.
Not amazing.
The art was pretty awesome throughout, although it faltered a bit at the end.
And I think I'm going to start judging events more out of what comes out of them when they're at this scale. There's just going to be so much crap piled in that it's damn near impossible to make something truly amazing out of it, I think.
House of M kind of revitalized the X-line, even though it didn't do as much for the rest of the universe. Infinite Crisis at least led to a pretty good Superman run and 52.
I don't know. I'm going to hold off judgement until I get a little more perspective on it, but I'm kind of in the middle of the road on it at the moment. I did like the ending, since I really don't know if there's another way that battle could have finished.
i don't think it's a bad team, really. why do you think that geebs
mostly so far, i like the new director. my favorite part of the two issues so far is the fact that i was able to identify him right away from the retarded hair
although to be fair his line when bullseye asked him who he was is the best line to come out of civil war, i think
'everybody knows who i am, bullseye. i'm the director of the thunderbolts. i'm norman osborn'
If the symbiote's host becomes Dudley Doo-Right it will just jump to someone else who will be more inclined to cause mayhem with its power.
i never got the impression that they were supposed to be reformed necessarily though. i just thought that the government (or tony) felt like they'd need rougher customers than usual during and after the war and that he might as well piss off spider-man while he was at it (i guess)
Secret Wars
Exectutioners Song
Stryfe
Infinity Gauntlet
Onslaught
Everyone felt like most people seem to be feeling right now..."Meh". The problem is companies are too scared of what they might lose if they actually killed of a big character in one of these big events to actually make these events really meaningful.
But in the end Marvel wins. They got our money and everyone is ecstatic for WWH. Could they of pulled it off any better?
______________________
battlerep on STEAM.
It's not like killing characters is the only way for a story to excite readers and make a story meaningful.
I hate me some spoilers
Also, might want to throw a spoiler tag in there.
I don't think either side should have won. The way the series and tie-ins were written, neither group was justified in their actions and so it just doesn't seem fair unless they're both forced to confront consequences for their respective crimes. I myself would have preferred it if the in-fighting resulted in a situation that was terrible for everybody and, ultimately, forced them to mend the rift between them to overcome it (but not immediately, of course).
The way things seem now, with the Pro-Regs hunting the Anti-Regs still, it just seems like Civil War isn't ending even though the mini itself has.
Millar said in an interview, I think, perhaps, with Newsarama, that readers would be getting the ending they "need," not necessarily the one they "want."
(Posted stupidly because <spoiler> and </spoiler> don't seem to work, and I'm not sure where to look to figure out how to code it.)
I'm better with the ending than I thought I was going to be. Did anybody die in this issue? All the previews seem to imply somebody important died, but if they did, it was off-panel.
Ed: Also, Maria Hill shouldn't be looking at Marvel.com during work.
Are you sure it wasn't real?
The Road to Civil War leads me to believe otherwise.
Unless the real deal is made out of computery bits, no.
I guess that's a pretty good point.
But in the Road to Civil War, the Thing tries to pick it up and he's unable to, and they explain how it cuts through Hell and such and is captured by SHIELD. Right?
Still, worthy is worthy. Dunno why Thing couldn't lift it but if every good guy could it'd be a bit pointless. I still don't think a clone could ever lift it.
Anyway, not the most instantly gratifying thing ever... but then, it really did end the only way it could have, I guess. I actually found Iron Man's reaction to Hill pretty good and in character; the entire series he's just been doing what he felt he needed to do regardless of his personal feelings. Now that he's in control, he can make his personal feelings about Assistant Director Hill clear.
I saw it when I went to the store today. For some reason, I didn't really register that it was a tie-in, probably because it didn't have the Civil War banner smeared across the cover.
I wish I had picked it up.