The original "Civil War" event in 2006 is one of Marvel's most popular and well known events. Like the heroes of the story, readers were asked to choose a side on the divisive issue of superhero registration with the government, with Iron Man leading the supporting side against Captain America's opposition. But what some may not know or remember is that at the time, the story was controversial and received much criticism. Among Spider-Man's public unmasking (which put the character on the road to his character assassination in "One More Day") and the abrupt ending, one of the complaints toward the book was its depiction of Iron Man and how he was leading the Pro-Registration side. He made a clone of Thor, used mind controlled supervillains, and even locked up his (former) allies in the Negative Zone without due process.
So what makes "Civil War" more liked now? I have a few theories. First, the overall divide of the heroes and stronger government oversight wouldn't be resolved until the "Siege" event in 2010, so it might be an issue of being better in hindsight knowing things do work out eventually. Secondly, even if people didn't like its execution, the overall idea was brilliant. But I think the main thing is that it's had time to perfect itself. The "Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2" video game of 2009 adapted the storyline, and while it did follow the comics closely, there were some changes, mainly the ending, that improved on the story. And of course most recently, we had "Captain America: Civil War", what many consider to be the best Marvel film yet. In my opinion, it finally succeeded in what the comic set out to do in portraying a conflicting issue and making both side appear to be right and wrong depending on your own views.
As the film was about to be released though, Marvel decided to launch a new comic event in conjunction with, what else, "Civil War II", written by Brian Michael Bendis and drawn by David Marquez. A comic story coming out to tie in with a movie is nothing new (pretty much every year a Spider-Man movie came out also featured a comic story involving the film's villain), but never before had one been done in the vain of a line-wide crossover. It can be most certainly seen as a "cash-grab", but that didn't mean there couldn't be a good story to come out of it.
"Civil War II"'s conflict centered around a new Inhuman, Ulysses, who has the ability to see the future.
(No, not that guy. That would have made this a lot more fun.)
This divided the heroes on how best to use this power, with Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel wanting to use the power to prevent crimes before they take place, opposed to Iron Man believing punishment shouldn't come before a crime. Even before the series started, I found myself on Iron Man's side, because if I've learned anything from other stories in trying to control the future, 1) trying to prevent a certain event could actually lead to it happening, 2) changing the future could have unintended consequences, and 3) preventing something bad could actually lead to something worse later on.
So ten years after the original "Civil War" and knowing the mistakes that were made, surely Marvel had learned from the past and would come out with a superior sequel, right?
The first issue begins with the Avengers battling a giant Celestial in the middle of New York and it isn't going well until back-up arrives in the form of almost every Marvel hero you can think of, with the magic users combining their powers to transport it away. A celebration party occurs afterward with Tony and Carol thanking the Inhumans for giving them warning of the threat right down to the specifics. It's here that the Inhuman Queen Medusa introduces them to Ulysses, who explains his power to see the future. What's interesting is that he's apparently immune to telepaths, as Jean Grey attempts to project his story mentally to the others but is unable to. While Carol is offering Ulysses to come work with her and the Ultimates, Tony isn't so accepting, questioning the accuracy of his predictions and the morality of acting on them, essentially setting up the conflict of the series. Some time later, Ulysses has a vision of Thanos looking for a Cosmic Cube on Earth and relays the information to the Ultimates to try and stop him. It goes array though with War Machine being killed and She-Hulk laying in a coma in critical condition. Tony, already irate over Rhodey's death, becomes even more upset when he learns of Ulysses' involvement in the events.
Like with most Marvel events, the first issue is basically set-up and shows promise with the series. But again, that's the case with most Marvel events. It's how it goes after that that matters.
Issue two begins with Tony, acting on emotion, invading New Attilan and kidnapping Ulysses, fighting off some Inhumans along the way. The Inhumans declare this an act of war and even consider bringing down all of Stark Tower before being talked down by Captain Marvel to get a more peaceful situation.
So this is another reason I don't really care for the Inhumans in the comics. A kidnapped citizen equates to destroying a building in their minds. They're just so uppity and detached from the rest of society. It makes it less relatable. I'm not saying Tony was right in what he did, but he's not in his right mind to begin with after losing his best friend. I don't think he needs to be demonized for his actions like I've seen people do online.
Tony has taken Ulysses to a secret facility of his to scan his brain and figure out his predictions work. The Avengers and Ultimates then burst in to get Ulysses back and chastise Tony for his actions, which leads to another argument between him and Carol (get ready for A LOT of those). Amidst the tension, Ulysses has another vision, which he is able to project into the minds of every other hero there: a savage Hulk standing over the bodies of fellow heroes with the city burning in the background.
This leads to issue three, where Carol and Tony coming to Bruce Banner's secret lab bunker, asking him to come outside, where he's greeted by even more heroes and a few Quinjets. They begin to explain the situation to a nervous Bruce, who as expected, begins to get agitated, which leads to probably the most controversial moment of the series: out of nowhere, Bruce is impaled with an arrow to the head in mortifying fashion (with a panel of a tear dripping from his eye as he lays dead on the ground), shot by Hawkeye, who surrenders himself to be arrested. At his trial (where he's found not guilty), we find out that Bruce had entrusted Hawkeye with a special arrow to kill him if he ever lost control; at the time of the murder, Hawkeye claimed he saw Bruce's eyes begin to flicker green, which is when he fired.
Oh where to begin with this. I guess first off, the death of a character had already been teased going into issue three, and it was clearly going to be Banner. Now I'm not that upset with death in event comics; it's pretty much a given by now. My problem though is that this case was poorly executed (no pun intended). A hero's death is supposed to be a shining moment where they lay their life on the line for the greater good. Bruce's death, if anything, was anti-climactic. The death aside, the WHOLE situation could have been handled better by the heroes involved. First off, when has trying to keep Bruce from Hulking out or placing him in lock-up EVER worked out? But more importantly, they didn't have to come at Bruce with every hero in tow expecting a fight. Tony and Carol should have just gone to Bruce on their own, explain the situation, and at least have everyone standing by ready to step in if they had to.
It was by this point that I pretty much knew how the rest of the book was going to be. Tony's reaction when blaming Carol for both Rhodey and Banner's deaths pretty much said enough, especially since she was going to keep using Ulysses' powers anyway; "Who's next on your hit list, Danvers?!" It's not a bad question considering trying to work on his predictions has lead to two heroes' deaths at this point. Believe me though, it gets worse storywise.
Issue four begins with Carol going to see She-Hulk, who has just woke up from her coma, and has to tell her the bad news about Bruce in what has to be some of the worse dialogue I've read in a comic.
CAROL: It's Bruce, Jennifer.
SHE-HULK: Bruce Banner? My cousin Bruce Banner?
CAROL: He's--he's gone.
SHE-HULK: He left the planet again?
CAROL: No, Jennifer. He's--dead.
SHE-HULK: No.
CAROL: I'm sorry.
SHE-HULK: He's not. He's the Hulk.
CAROL: I'm so sorry, Jennifer.
SHE-HULK: How?
Okay, first off, it felt like they had to make it clear that Bruce and Jennifer are cousins in case some people didn't know. I almost expected She-Hulk to continue by saying "Who is also the Incredible Hulk? Created by Stan Lee in 1962?" But more importantly, I got no sense of emotion here. She just found out her cousin died and we don't even get an "Oh God. No." It's treated like she's finding out her phone doesn't have a signal. Also, notice Carol left out the fact that Ulysses was involved in what lead to Bruce's death.
But now for the real meat of the issue. Tony displays his findings from scanning Ulysses mind to Danvers, as well as other heroes including Beast, Medusa, and Steve Rogers. Tony has discovered Ulysses takes in energies from around the world which leads to his mind calculating a probable future, but not THE future. "It's profiling. It's profiling our future. And by Carol acting on it as if it were the bible...she is, by any definition, profiling individuals [...] She's betting on the math being absolute. But...it's not."
With this information given, Danvers says she wants Beast to look over Stark's work. Beast already has, and he agrees. So what does Carol do now that Stark has hard evidence that Ulysses' visions aren't concrete and that theory is backed up by Beast? THE SAME DAMN THING SHE WAS DOING BEFORE. This comes back to bite her though, as when she acts on one of Ulysses' visions to apprehend a possible HYDRA agent, they find no hard evidence on her. She's taken into SHIELD custody, where even a psychic evaluation finds nothing on her. Carol then goes straight at her, accusing her of working with HYDRA and wanting a confession, claiming she can hold her indefinitely. It was at this point I felt Carol had gone too far. She has such blind faith in Ulysses that she can't admit he could be wrong, even when the fact is staring her right in the face, and verified by on-hand psychics. At this point, it seemed this wass more about making sure Tony isn't proven right...and given some secondhand knowledge I've been told about in a tie-in issue of "Ms. Marvel", making sure Tony isn't proven right ACTUALLY IS part of her thought process. What a hero, am I right, folks? I really couldn't understand how anyone, characters or readers, could be on her side at this point.
Thankfully, the woman is saved by Nightcrawler, who teleports in and gets her out of the Triskelion. Tony and his team have arrived and it's here we get the face-off between the two sides of heroes.
As the issue wraps, Carol's back-up arrives in the form of the Guardians of the Galaxy, leading into the huge superhero melee for issue five.
As the battle begins, there's something to note on this double page spread:
Old Man Logan, the Wolverine of alternate dystopian future, is shown on Iron Man's side. First off, you'd think the character from a bad future would want to use Ulysses' powers to avert it. And you'd be correct, as the X-Men tie-in series to "Civil War II" shows Logan, Storm, and the rest of the Extraordinary X-Men team (except Nightcrawler, who defected) siding with Carol in hopes of building bridges with the Inhumans. I don't know if this error was on the writer or artist's part, but it bothers me.
Something else to note in that double page spread is Tony and Carol basically going "This is all your fault!" "Nuh-uh! It's your's!" This is an UNBEARABLE constant for pretty much the whole story. Aside from that though, the battle in this issue is pretty entertaining from the different character interactions and action moves.
Something I wondered about at the end of issue four is how the Guardians could really pick a side here when they've been off-world until this point, and apparently going off Carol's word since she's been a Guardian as well. Well that apparently is the case as Star-Lord refuses to listen to Stark.
TONY: Did Danvers explain to you that these future-visions are just algo--
STAR-LORD: I know all about them. I think they're great.
You know how some people have an opinion on something even though they don't know all the information about it? This is one of those cases. I'm not done on Quill yet, but we'll get there.
The battle rages on as Ulysses looks on from the shores of New Attilan when he receives another vision which he projects across the waters to all the heroes, showing Miles Morales having killed Steve Rogers on the steps of the Capitol. Everyone stops fighting and stares at Miles, visibly distraught and falling down to his knees. Only Ms. Marvel comes to his side to comfort him and ensure him that him killing Rogers would never happen. And what does Carol do? She tells the teenage superhero he is under arrest for a crime he has not, and for all intents and purposes would not, commit. It's like this comic is straight up going out of its way to assassinate Carol's character.
It was at this point that I began to question Ulysses' mind-set through all this. This kid's visions have resulted in the deaths of two heroes and caused another civil war among the superhero community. How does he feel? Does he care? But not only that, it seemed suspicious that he would have his visions about Hulk and Miles during times when the heroes were arguing/fighting over him. On one hand, you'd think knowing he's responsible for all this would make him want to remove himself from the situation. But then there's the thought of if there's something more nefarious going on here. Unfortunately, none of this gets explored. What ends up happening...well we'll get there.
Issue six begins with, you guessed it, more arguing between Carol and Tony. Even though she just said Miles was under arrest, she tries to backpedal and say they want to put him in protective custody. But in an actually nice moment involving common sense in this series, Steve steps in and talks with Miles himself.
Carol protests that they shouldn't let Miles go, to which Steve responds that Miles didn't do anything wrong, just like Banner and Rhodey, essentially calling her out on her shit. Thor then carries Miles off as Carol continues to protest, who is then stopped by Ms. Marvel, who idolized Carol and even took her old codename (never meet your heroes, right?). "He's my friend. He didn't do anything."
Black Panther then speaks up and also calls Carol out on her shit and switches sides. "I can no longer defend any of this. [...] I have grown more and more uncomfortable with my part in this. And long ago I learned that if you are on Captain America's side...you can rest easy knowing you are on the right side. And if he, even after we have all experienced, would choose to protect that child Avenger's right to be...then that is what I should have been doing this entire time." This buys Doctor Strange enough time to charge a spell to teleport everybody on Tony's side away to one of Nick Fury's old secret bunkers. Even the Inhumans leave instead of helping Carol go after them (it's more about going to check on Ulysses rather can having enough of her shit though).
The rest of issue six is mostly talk. On Carol's side, Star-Lord assures that's he's still on her side. "If you can stop something bad from happening, you do it. Boo-hoo if someone gets their feelings hurt." Yeah, who cares if people needlessly have to die or can just be imprisoned without hard evidence or having done anything at all? Quill, you seriously haven't been around to get a bearing on the whole situation, so please shut up. Carol and Storm even talk shit about Panther. "I can't believe you were married to that man, Ororo." Yes, how dare someone change their opinion from your own on something after acquiring sufficient knowledge to do so? Christ, when it comes to Carol's side, there seems to be a limit on how much they need to know and feel about the situation or they wouldn't be there at all. Not much happens on Tony's side other than a plug for the next volume of "Invincible Iron Man".
Issue six ends and seven begins with Miles standing on the steps of the Capitol and has a brief encounter with police before they're radioed to stand down and disperse (we learn later on Carol's orders) before he's stands face to face with Steve Rogers. They're both there hoping to prove that the vision doesn't happen. It's a pretty good interaction between the two, with the living legend and the rookie, both trying to figure out what to do in their current situation.
Elsewhere, the Inhumans try to communicate with Ulysses, who is lost in a trance. In actuality, in a kind of body experience, Ulysses is transported into the future (the one from "Old Man Logan" it appears) and encounters an older Logan. Asking what happened, he discovers that the Inhumans had left Earth and Stark had pushed "her" too far. He doesn't find out the identity of "her" as he's pulled back to the present, but it can be assumed to be Carol. What's interesting about these future segments is that they're done by a different artist, Andrea Sorrentino, who is the current artist on the current "Old Man Logan" book, which is a nice touch to keep with continuity among the line.
Back at the Capitol, Carol arrives and tries a more gentle approach (yeah, imagine that), but still wanting to put Miles in protective custody. Did it ever occur to her that maybe she should put Steve in protective custody instead? He's the one in danger, and usually you would put the person in danger of being killed under protection. But despite Carol's more gentle approach, Stark arrives in a giant armor (think of a cross between War Machine and Hulkbuster) and creates a forcefield around Miles. Stark and Carol begin to argue and fight (again) like the short-fused brats they've been the whole story as the final battle begins.
While I've been on Tony's side the whole story, this is the part where I can see him going too far, about on par on when he kidnapped Ulysses in issue two. While he began his crusade from an emotional response to Rhodey's death, for the most part, he's approached this from a logical standpoint, even figuring out how Ulysses' visions work. But in this instance, he definitely went gung-ho when a calm discussion should have occurred. Of course that would be too boring for a comic. But another way to look at it is that Tony's motivated by emotion rather than logic once again. War Machine and Hulk, two veteran heroes, have already died as a result of Ulysses' visions. Tony would rather put himself on the line rather than let a young rookie like Miles be the next to be killed based on that track record, and that's what makes him the true hero of this story in my opinion.
Issue seven ends with Carol delivering a massive, life-threatening energy punch right in the center of Tony's armor.
It should be noted that originally, this series was going to be seven issues, but was extended to eight to give a better conclusion. That said, issue eight begins with Tony still in the fight as the battle continues with Carol. So it's clear that the end of issue seven was done just to be a cliffhanger for the final issue, making us think Tony may have been killed going in. This was just clearly a case of creating drama when it wasn't needed all because they decided to split the final issue in two, when a longer book would have sufficed.
So Carol and Tony continue to argue and fight, and at this point, it's just not fun anymore. Everyone from Steve, Miles, SHIELD, and the Inhumans try to talk some sense in them to end the fight. Hell, Steve even gets knocked out by some of Stark's rockets after Carol dodges them. Eventually, Carol obliterates the armor completely, leading to Tony free-falling, getting caught by Miles after Karnak breaks him free from Stark's energy field.
But here's where things really jump the shark. Ulysses, enveloping the other heroes in his vicinity, has multiple visions. This leads to eight splash pages (seven of them unlettered), done by seven different artists. After all that, Eternity, one of Marvel's cosmic characters (who I had no idea who it was in this story until I looked it up), appears before everyone, telling Ulysses he has shown Earth all he can, that he's part of a greater universe, and asks him to join "them" (whoever they are). Ulysses goes with Eternity and leaves everyone behind. Apparently Ulysses' powers had kept evolving until they reached a cosmic level to the point where he could hang out with other cosmic entities like Eternity. As for the visions, I'm guessing these are teases for future Marvel events or just many possible futures. Honestly, it's not clear and it's really confusing, especially the Eternity thing. It really just seems out of place in what until now had been a pretty straightforward, somewhat grounded, but still infuriating, story.
In the aftermath, upon inspection by Beast, we find out Tony has gone into a coma, thanks to experiments he had been doing to himself, essentially saving his life and keeping his blood off Carol's hands. Carol still can't let it go as she says "I didn't start this." (Um, yes. You kind of did.) Beast then explains Tony's reasoning that if he didn't stop Carol using Ulysses then, he would have had to stop someone less noble later on. Maybe that's something Tony should have lead with and avoid this whole thing. On the plus side, she finally admits that Ulysses' visions were A future.
In the final scene, Carol meets with the President (covered in shadows as Marvel usually likes to do, though we can assume it's Obama) to discuss the future of the superhero community. We get a two page spread of multiple panels that are basically teases for the post-Civil War II books (including an as of yet announced Defenders book starring the Netflix heroes). But the main point of this is that the President wants to fund Carol, because she apparently handled everything with "incredible grace", so she can build a better future for the superhero community and the country.
I'm going to be honest: after reading this last issue, I threw the book across the room. Eternity taking Ulysses away to wherever was one thing, but what really pisses me off is that Carol gets a free pass and the President's approval. While the deaths had been played out by this point in the series, they should have just killed Tony. Hell, you could argue what Carol did WAS attempted murder. Then again, it would probably be considered self-defense since Tony started this particular fight. But I could tell Carol was so full of rage and using her full strength that I wouldn't past her going for the kill rather than just incapacitate Tony. But after everything that happened, I just can't believe that Carol faces no repercussions for her actions (again, the woman they accused of being a HYDRA agent without evidence is never brought up) or that she can be made the face of the superhero community when I doubt half of them even trust her anymore.
I hate to borrow Linkara's catchphrase again, but THIS COMIC SUCKS! For an event done just to be a cash-grab for the movie, it actually feels a cash-grab for the movie. But it didn't have to be like that. It suffers from the same problems the original "Civil War" did, but this time resulting in an even lower quality. As Carol's essentially made to be the villain like Tony before, she's way worse. Where Tony's previous actions could be seen as "the ends justify the means", Carol was acting on blind faith and not listening to any logic. In both cases though, they failed to make both sides seem right and wrong. This makes me think that in these situations, two writers should be on the project to balance things out. Where the original "Civil War" was relevant for its argument of "freedom vs. security", I don't believe "Civil War II"'s use of profiling hit its mark, or it was at least overshadowed by how the characters were acting. And while one would expect the main draw of this book to be multiple superheroes fighting each other, we only get the one huge battle in issue five, whereas the rest of the story is focused mainly on Carol and Tony's squabbling. You can argue the film only had one huge battle with the main focus being on Steve and Tony, but it had a much smaller cast with each character having some reason to be there instead of just for the sake of it like this comic.
I've began to notice that every time I review a comic by Brian Michael Bendis, the previous ones being Age of Ultron and Ultimate End, they're some of the worst things I've ever read. When it comes to Bendis, his writing is usually hit and miss with me. He does have good stuff, but apparently I keep picking his crap work to write about. (Note to self: find a good Bendis story to do a Retro Review on.)
Something that really hurt this book though were the delays, especially with the extra issue added on. By the time the final issue came out, the aftermath books had already been coming out for three months, although they were careful to not spoil the book's finale. But by this point, people were just waiting for it to end for ending's sake. Before the series ends, we already know nothing happens to Steve or Miles, which was the main focus of the last third of the series, although there was some mystery about where Tony was and if he was dead or alive. This is the second year in a row where post-event books began before the actual event ended. The difference is "Secret Wars" was still good. My point is, if Marvel doesn't care to finish their events on time and decides to put out the aftermath books anyway, why should we as readers care, either? As someone who's always wary going into Marvel events (especially when there's usually a never ending onslaught of them), I now question whether it's worth picking up issue by issue or wait to get the trade if it's any good.
If I had anything positive to say, the art was still nice (but that doesn't help the story), along with the other good moments I mentioned before.
From a story perspective, I give it a 4/10 in that they had an interesting concept but bad execution, especially with the finale. As for whether I'd recommend this to anyone, that's a big 0/10. This series was just infuriating, especially if you're a fan of Captain Marvel, Hulk, or even the Guardians of the Galaxy (even though they have little bearing on the plot). Who knows though. Maybe they can perfect on this story by adapting it into a video game and then a movie...except as I explained before, "Civil War II" just doesn't have the same appeal as the original.
Overall, avoid this like the plague and you'll have a much brighter future, and I don't need powers to know that's right.
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