The Civil War Machine: That Ending Sucked
Civil War #7 was not good. Here’s why:
1) The final fight was disappointing. It didn’t seem like a major battle. It had its moments, and there was certainly some cool art, but for the most part it didn’t live up to the hype. You want specifics?
a) I recognized everybody. If the Superhuman Registration Act was such a big deal that every superhero was forced to choose a side, there should be plenty of obscure characters I’ve never seen before. That’s part of the reason Infinite Crisis seemed so huge. Even earlier in Civil War, obscure characters like Ultragirl were shown fighting along with the anti-registration movement. So where are they now?
b) Namor shows up for one panel, yells “Imperius Rex!” and then leaves. Yep, the Avenging Son isn’t in a single panel other than the splash page he first shows up in.
c) Captain Marvel shows up and does nothing. Also not in a single panel other than the one he first showed up in. You’d think there’d at least be a moment when he questioned why Captain America and half the Avengers are suddenly his enemies. But no. He doesn’t even throw a punch or have a single line. Good thing they brought him back from the dead.
d) The Thing shows up and tips over a bus. Notice a pattern here? Why include these characters if they serve no purpose? What do Namor, Captain Marvel and Thing gain from being here? The ability to say, “I was there?” It’d probably be better for character development if they weren’t there, because then they could at least have the, “I should have been there” regrets. Instead, all three now know that they were wholly unimportant.
e) Reed Richards acts like a five-year-old. How many times has Mr. Fantastic seen Spider-Man fight? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands? So why does he suddenly think Spider-Man doing exactly what he always does is, “amazing?” Then Spider-Man says, “spectacular.” Get it? Because two of his books have those adjectives! Ahhhh ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaaaaa! Oh wait, that hasn’t been funny since the first time someone made that joke. I’m still waiting for someone to yell out, “web of!”
f) Villains run amok. Why would Iron Man let a group of homicidal lunatics run wild in this fight? Did he think that they wouldn’t try to murder everyone in sight? Cap would be dead were it not for the timely intervention of Namor. So would Sue Storm if Reed hadn’t sacrificed himself.
g) It ended too early. No one but Clor and Mr. Fantastic was down for the count when the fight ended. Stature, Hawkingbird, and Patriot were all show prominently in the, “That’s an order” splash. If the fight hasn’t even taken either side to the point where the non-super-powered, under-trained Young Avengers are still standing, it hasn’t been a very tough fight.
The fight did have its high points, like the fight between Hercules and Clor and Invisible Woman crushing Taskmaster beneath an invisible column, but it really just didn’t seem as epic as this fight deserved to be. Oh, and then there’s the ending…
2) Cap’s reason for surrendering was stupid. I don’t remember the anti-registration side ever being about wanting to protect people. I don’t think anyone thought that if you sign with the government, you stop being a superhero. It was always about protecting these heroes’ right to privacy, and about making a stand where greater security isn’t worth the loss of civil liberties.
And the moment where the “real heroes” try to stop Captain America was groan-inducing. We get it. Firemen and policemen and doctors and EMTS are real-life heroes. Enough already. I don’t read comics to read about real-life heroes. I read comics to read about super-heroes. And here’s a newsflash, Marvel: spotlighting the “real heroes” in a story every year or so doesn’t make up for the fact that you neglect them in the other hundreds of stories you publish every year.
3) The General Hero Amnesty makes everyone who took it seem like an idiot. “Oh, I was willing to fight my friends and family nearly to the death for what I believe in, but now that there’s no chance our side can win, I might as well join up with the winning team. I don’t think anything’s ever been accomplished by going to jail for what you believe in.” The only heroes I have any respect for now are the ones that didn’t take the amnesty, which appears to be Captain America, the Punisher and the New Avengers.
4) No one died. No, I’m not upset that no one died. What I am upset about is that this issue was heavily promoted to include a high profile character dying and Marvel didn’t deliver (imagine that!). I was just looking at the May Marvel Previews, and no less than four solicitations make mention of a major death that came about as a result of Civil War that impacts Captain America, Spider-Man and Iron Man and warrants a special issue spotlighting the character. And I don’t think anyone really cares that Goliath is dead anymore.
Civil War #7 was bad. But really, it didn’t have any chance to be good. There was no way Civil War was going to end with anything but the pro-registration side victorious. No amount of superhero vs. superhero fights is going to change federal law. And there was no way everyone on the anti-registration side was going to prison. Essentially Marvel has written itself into a corner that it couldn’t write itself out of. It was really just a matter of salvaging what they had into something halfway decent. Giving the circumstances, this is probably the best they could have come up with. That doesn’t make it any better, though.
Your big complaint that there aren’t enough heroes is kind of contradicted when you complain about the ones that only showed up in the backgrounds for a moment. Fact is, a lot of the heroes in the Marvel U wouldn’t have made sense if they had shown up (ie, everybody involved in Annihilation and all those who refused to take a side, like most of the mutants).
Plus, the reason Cap surrendered wasn’t stupid. Yes, he was taking a stand to protect heroes’ rights to privacy, which he finally realized shouldn’t be more important than protecting actual citzens who don’t have super powers. The greater good and all that. Cap lost sight of it, and, cheesy as it may have been to have the “real heroes” show up to stop him, it was just the jostle he needed to wake up and understand how he’s been acting only in his own self interest and the interest of other superpowered heroes, rather than in the interest of the average citizens.
I think it had a chance to be good, and I think it delivered on that chance. Yes, the final fight may have been shorter than desired, but there really wouldn’t have been a point for it to go on much longer. It had its high points; it showed a lot of intensity; and it gave us a satisfying conclusion that changes the face of the Marvel Universe to the point where it justifies spending our time and money reading this thing, rather than just giving us a draw or throwing in some greater villain to unite the sides.
Civil War may not have been great, but fuck it if it wasn’t pretty good. Bad? No, it wasn’t bad.
Civil War was crap, pure crap. A disgrace to comics and to its fans.
I don’t think me complaining that certain heroes were only in one panel contadicts my complaint that weren’t any nobodies there. Basically I’m saying there should have been more of everybody. Instead of having panels with two guys fighting with speedlines behind them, why not have a panel of two guys fighting with more guys fighting behind them?
Y’see, I took it as you complaining that there weren’t enough characters assembled during the fight to serve as background fighters, only to turn around and say, “These people were only used as background fighters!” That would’ve been a contradiction.
Oh, by the way, I was just reading through some old blog stuff about Civil War. You should check out your old post about, “The worst thing we could do is make it so everyone likes it” or something to that effect.
In the last line, you mention how awful it would be to bring back certain characters from the dead, specifically citing Gwen Stacy, Uncle Ben, or Mar-Vell.
Very funny. I just read it, but I’m way to lazy to offer up a link. Just go find it. It was from April or so.
i think you guys are both right, which is why marvel fans are so mad at this series: the ideas are really cool, and everything could have been set up and explained really, really well, but instead the whole thing feels rushed and, therefore, is disappointing. annihilation was a lot more fun, in comparison, because each character got enough time in the sun for the reader to understand exactly why things were happening. in civil war, unfortunately, all the readers got was mark millar-y platitudes and a strangely ultimate universe-ish limited series.
Let’s imagine, for a moment, how Fin Fang Doom apparently wanted Civil War to be written:
The battle scene is full of people we’ve never heard of. All the big names are absent, because they’re off moping about how they didn’t take part in the big battle. Captain Marvel stops to have a conversation with the people he’s fighting against, because nobody bothered to explain to him what was going on before the battle. The “normal people” that stopped Captain America were actually a bunch of school teachers and carpet layers who swarmed to the battle scene with the intention of stopping Captain America. And the internet would have rejoiced!
You are upset that you don’t know anybody and that random people aren’t just thrown into the backgrounds, yet you’re also upset that the people you do know are just thrown in there. I can only imagine that if the book had been full of no-names in the battle, we’d be hearing cries of “Who were all these people? Where were the big guys? Even if he was just there for one panel, I want to see NAMOR!!”
Much as I know that Captain America takes leaks even though we’ve never seen him walk to the bathroom, there’s just people and things that happen off-camera. Yes, the scope of Infinite Crisis did seem larger based upon all the nobodies, but at times, it did really come off like “Okay, who’s trying to get their money out of their Who’s Who in the DC Universe?”
I guess some of us are just capable of accepting that there are more things happening than what the storytellers determined were the most important things at the moment. I’m not sure what you want – 10 pages dedicated to a fight scene of each major character?
Not every character can have a starring role in the battle. But yes, they have to be there. If the big guns aren’t there, then all the net boys complain that the big guns aren’t there so it’s meaningless.
I would be willing to bet that some of the fight scenes were simplified due to the deadline situation. I thought the fight artwork seemed a bit stiff and boring (though I’ve seen other reviews that raved about it), which was part of why it had less of an impact for me. But I’m just guessing that there was a point where they were like “Okay, are we going to do it PERFECTLY and have it ship late again, or are we going to do it REALLY WELL and have it ship on time?”
I’m as sick as anyone of 9/11 sentimentality and the deification of anyone whose career happens to be in law enforcement or protection. But for crying out loud – it was a disaster scene! The superheroes were all so focused on each other that of course the “normal” fire and police departments are going to be there! How stupid and ridiculously patronizing would it have been if a bunch of other “heroes” with no business being there attacked Captain America? There’s a time when that stuff is shoved down your throats, and then there are times when those guys are actually doing heroic stuff. This is the latter.
Captain America didn’t give up on his beliefs, but he saw them in a new context, which gave them new meaning. I don’t actually recall Captain America ever saying the words you want to put in his mouth, so it doesn’t really work to discredit the story that way.
Had there been no amnesty offered, I’m sure we’d also be hearing cries of “How can these people say they were their friends when now they’re punishing them like criminals?” You are damning the story because not every superhero is 100% willing to be a martyr? How dare Marvel make their heroes show a shred of humanity in moments of crisis! How dare the situation reflect actual conflicts between warring factions of allies, where amnesty is quite often offered and accepted! Shame on Marvel for finding a storyline way to keep half their universe out of prison that reflects how reality works!
You’ve made a declaration that it was impossible for Civil War to succeed, when the only evidence of that was your self-constructed set of rules that are impossible for any book to follow. So yes, you were able to guarantee that Civil War sucks.
But the reality of the situation is that the book succeeded in everything it set out to do, and it managed to find and retain more readers than Infinite Crisis. I’m actually more excited about the direction of the Marvel Universe right now than I have been in a while. I sure didn’t like everything about Civil War either, but when that happened, it wasn’t because I made a decision to pick up a book full of straw men.
There’s really no point in arguing with you, because your criteria on what constitutes a good story is different than mine. It’s as simple as that. But I think you’re misinterpreting a few of my points:
1) Thing, Namor and Captain Marvel either a) shouldn’t have been there, or b) should have served some purpose for being there. Thing was in France, Namor said he wasn’t taking a side, and Marvel’s return really had nothing to do with Civil War other than timing. They all had reason that they didn’t need to be there, yet they were put in there just for the sake of putting them in there.
2) This particular battle being the turning point for Cap doesn’t make a lot of sense. The battle where Clor killed Goliath didn’t have innocents in danger, but surely that would have been a point where Cap asked “Is this really worth it?” But there have been numerous other battles where innocents where endangered and Cap didn’t bat an eye.
By the way, I’m no Marvel Encyclopedia, but I just looked over the issue again, and there are 20+ characters who I have no idea whatsoever who they are.
Maybe you just know a lot of Marvel characters and don’t know much about DC ones. ‘Cuz I didn’t see that many “nobodies” in IC.
Which other battles in Civil War endangered a lot of innocents? Which other battles in Civil War had innocents getting involved? I can’t think of any other battles in Civil War that were like this one.
Captain America is a soldier. I think if anything, Cap being caught up in his cause and all, a casualty is going to make him go “Those bastards, they killed Goliath. Now it’s time to settle this and make them regret it.”
You’re absolutely right, Fin Fang Doom. Civil War sucked and was an embarrassment to all comic books that are actually well-written.
Don’t let anyone tell you different.
You guys crack me up.
And you remind me of Nick Naylor.
Jim, those other battles that endangered innocents didn’t take place in the mini-series itself, so maybe I have a different view on things because I read a lot of the crossovers.
Thanks, JCVD, but I’m not the one working hard to develop spurious reasons to prove my point.
How can one’s reasons be spurious if they’re entirely subjective? And yes, I had to look up “spurious.” You’re fancy words don’t impress me!
http://thexaxis.com/misc/civilwar7.htm
Just pretend I said all that.
You could’ve taken it as a compliment.
“What other battles in Civil War had innocents getting involved?”
I guess my issue would be that if Cap wasn’t persuaded by the DEAD CHILDREN in the Stamford Incident, why would this battle change his mind?
Also, if he was worried about civilians, why would a tactical and strategic genius have Cloak teleport the battle into the middle of Manhatten, as opposed to the middle of the Nevada desert?
That last point was what annoyed me possibly the most. Does Cloak have limited transportation skills?
I don’t have the issue in front of me, but weren’t they trying to get to the FF tower but Cloak was overwhelmed by the number of people? I interpreted it to say that they were trying to move the battle elsewhere but that moving so many people pushed Cloak past his limit, hence everyone getting dumped in the middle of nowhere.
Hey Fin, I just read that article.
1. I must not have said it here, but I challenge the assumption that readers are overwhelmingly disappointed with the series. I don’t deny that people with comic blogs are overwhelmingly disappointed, but that’s clearly not the same thing as the 200,000 readers who are still buying the book. I’d like to see the evidence for “event fatigue.” If only there were some measure, some quantifiable way of seeing how many people continued to purchase the book…perhaps then we could see if people were still buying it…if only…
2. Sure there are people who like where issue 7 left everything. I’m one of them. But I liked the series too. I didn’t just sit there and hate 7 issues but then say “But…I like where it left things. So I like it now.” Saying the story was good for that reason is similar to saying it was bad because it didn’t match up to the hype. Neither Marvel post February 2007 nor Joe Fridays on Newsarama are in that story.
3. He says the ending fails on delivering that intended message of Captain America realizing they’re proving Iron Man right. How did it fail? Because he didn’t see that? Because his net buddies didn’t see that? Two of the four people who post regularly on this blog saw that. If I’m going to adapt comic blog math for my own purposes, I’m going to say 50% of comic readers understood the story!
I think the author here has a fair point when it comes to the storytelling needing to be developed over the course of the whole story as opposed to in one moment. But that’s been a restriction imposed upon the medium forever. Furthermore, Captain America was much more of an “eyes of the reader” character, and in my opinion, the story was set up for the reader to make the realization when Captain America does – not to have the reader turn on Captain America earlier on.
It’s pretty surprising to me that one would try to compare the Stamford disaster with the final battle. In one, the damage was caused by a villain; in the other, by superheroes fighting each other. The blowup guy (sorry, can’t remember his name) didn’t think he was fighting for truth and justice. The New Warriors didn’t decide to rent him a house next to the school. One was a case of bad judgment and worse villains, and the other was a case of the collateral damage when two sides of a superhero disagreement butt heads. It’s like if one day, George W Bush realizes how the Patriot Act imposes on American freedoms, and people say “How could he not see that considering how the bomb affected Japan in World War II?” Unless I’m mistaken, and the blow-up guy in Stamford was actually arguing with Speedball over policy proposals.
I’m going to waste too much time going through this thing point for point, but I guess if one can’t understand what the point of unmasking Spider-Man was, I can’t imagine how this person ever gets anything out of any story.
But in conclusion, Fin, if I’m going to pretend you said all that in the other blog, I’m going to also have to pretend you gave it a C. No chance anyone’s going to read your dismissal up above and think that approaches anything near a C. It was your hyperbolic over-reaching that motivated me to respond in the first place.
I completely 100% agree with you, my thoughts exactly, Captain America is such a great character, easily my favorite, why such a horrible ending to a great series? Could have ended it with someone like Spiderman dying, that guy has been around so long now, this sucks.
[…] The book is an epilogue to Civil War, and we at the Legion of Doom have had plenty to say about that. So, you can imagine that we’ll have plenty to say about the biggest event of Civil War, now that it’s finally happened outside of Civil War. Will this be the moment that spurs Jim Doom to actual violence against his fellow Doomers? Will I continue my unadulterated Marvel-bashing? Will Fin Fang Doom be able to hold off until Saturday to totally trash this book? Will Doom DeLouise drink so much he forgets that Civil War ever happened? All questions will have answers, come Saturday, so come on back and weigh in yourself. […]