Yeaaaah, I am sorry but I just can't agree with you. Granted, Civil War wasn't perfect and did some mistakes, but you are oversimplifying everything and it was nowhere near as bad as you say. I am really getting tired of the whole "Iron Man is a facist" crap because I actually read the book, and it was more subtle than that: the book shew clearly that he wasn't comfortable with the whole thing and did try a peaceful solution (somehow people always forget Cap was the one who answered the proposal of peaceful solution by hacking his armor). It's not like these characters went all full-fledged villains for the sake of it.
And while I'll admit things like One More Day are less forgivable, I still think that in the end, Civil War was an interesting story arc that deserves more credit than it's given. Though I will admit it did open that stupid thread of heroes fighting each others instead of bad guys. But overall I do like the fact it took some risks and tried to shake the statut quo a bit, even if it was clumsy in the execution.
I said it before, I say it again: Civil War is the Best Crisis Crossover Ever.
Ultimate Secret Wars
I... wouldn't go THAT far. But I still think it was a worthy addition to the MCU and better than just a Dork Age.
I do not believe I oversimplified. CW was a hot mess that tarnished every major hero in Marvel except those who were stuck in space.
Maria Hill attempted to incarcerate Cap before the registration bill was even approved. The violent arrests without trial occurred long before Cap rejected Iron Man's offer/ultimatum backed by every weapon Tony had. There is no excuse for using villains with shock collars to hunt heroes nor is there one for creating Clor.
Iron Man's regime was only marginally less oppressive than Osborn's, who's reign was founded on Iron Man's organization. Did Stark feel any regret? Sure. He regretted his crap briefly. The majority of it was in a glorified "what if?" issue after Cap surrendered and was shot under his watch. The rest of the time, he simply winged about how only he was strong and smart enough to make the hard decisions. He had no doubts about the prison, the villain slaves, the Clor or the staged assassination attempt on the Atlantean ambassador.
Civil War relied on the reader's ability to outright ignore past characterizations. Supporters had to turn a blind eye to decades of opposition to previous registration acts like the MRA. Literally every major proponent of the law was originally against it right before CW. When it came time to justify their position, it was done with often contradictory hand waving. Reed Richards made up two different lies for Parker and Sue before being outed as having made and followed a supposedly flawless equation to predict the future that said this was the only way. His equation was a load.
I could forgive even all this crap if it had no lasting change and for the most part nothing did in the end. Registration is just a bad unspoken memory now. The heroes are more or less friends again. Stark was such an unbelievable and unlovable bastard he needed to get mind wiped to clean his slate. Sally Floyd has been MIA so long that she is little more than a bad memory.
Unfortunately, "One More Day" came and did last. I forever curse Civil War and Quesada's name because of it.
It's always kind of difficult to say something along the lines of 'Let me explain why you don't realise you're wrong' without being a condescending douchebag, but Theokal, the problem here is that there were like 20 different Civil War tie-ins.
Civil War: Iron Man is actually one of the absolute best because it shows an imperfect man aware of his flaws trying to implement a ruling that could revolutionize the way superheroes are taught and trained. He knows it's not perfect but he knows that something like it has to happen and he genuinely wants to make it as good as he can, something made more difficult when basically his best friend Steve Rogers decides it's a horrible idea and refuses to support it.
Then you've got Civil War: Front Line where it turns out he staged an assassination attempt on the peaceful ambassador of Atlantis. And he was imprisoning people in the Negative Zone without trial or even due process. And he cloned Thor and the clone killed a hero. And he stole Spider-Man's Spider-Sense. That last one is kind of Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking but it still bugs me.
Mark Millar could not have made the pro-Reg heroes less sympathetic unless he'd doodled little toothbrush moustaches on all of them.
When the arrests took place, the law was already in full force. There is even a part of the 2ยบ issue setting the turning point. Note that Iron Man did not "have" to offer Cap a fair surrender, that was just courtesy.
Previous acts were usually aimed towards mutants. Accordingly, mutants did not took part in this (except for some individual ones here and there). Besides, those past acts usually came from out of the blue, there was no Stamford then. Seriously, what else did you expect to happen? "Oh, how unfortunate you blew up a city when you attacked a dangerous supervillain to film a reality show. Have more care next time".
And "One more day" is NOT part of civil war. Focus your anger on that specific story.
Ultimate Secret Wars
So does that argument address the fact that the New Warriors had to have their entire personalities changed for the entire starting premise to work?
To be fair, we could make a comprehensive list of the characters whose entire personalities would have to be changed in order for the premise of Civil War to work.
Top of the list would be Iron Man.
"Reed Richards made up two different lies for Parker and Sue before being outed as having made and followed a supposedly flawless equation to predict the future that said this was the only way."
Woah. So, okay, the only thing related to this that I've read was the Spider-Man trade paperback. So you're saying that rather than give Richards a sympathetic reason to believe what he believes that's rooted in something the audience might empathize with... they made it something stupid?
In the very first issue, Maria Hill attempted to arrest Cap before the law was in place. Even if the arrests themselves were justified, enslaving criminals to do the arrests was not. Once again, there is no justification for clor.
Stark did not "have" to send a cyborg murder clone to attack Cap, much less talk to him. Iron Man #14 and Iron Man/Captain America: Causalities of War proved that they could have talked before things got ugly.
Even the fight with clor did not have to be ugly. One of the "what if?" comics had a scenario where Stark admitted his doubts instead of threatening Cap, leading to cooperation instead of a dead Bill Foster.
Those past acts came because of fear of mutants with Magneto doing a lot to reinforce that feeling. Stamford has nothing on NYC. Marvel had mutants blow up the World Trade Center before 9/11. The acts also allowed for imprisonment without trial and putting people in prison camps. The only difference between them is that CW included anyone with power.
It isn't that registration was a bad idea. Newbs need training. It's just that the method and security was so rotten that no one in their right mind would support it for fear of scum like Osborn coming into power to abuse it.
The entire setup for OMD began at CW. It is the only piece of crap that is still around because of CW. The anger is properly focused.
Also, in answer to the previous question, Reed Richards not only lied to friends and relatives, he based his decisions on a dumb calculation he came up with after reading an Asimov novel. He then had the Mad Thinker, a villain who has tried to kill him for decades, come in to double check his work instead of any of his genius friends.
He did all this and Sue still came back to him right at the end of issue 7 with nary a mention of it save a throw away page in the some aftermath issue talking about needing to work harder in their relationship.
I still can't agree with wrongpassword's point of view here. I read the main Civil War book and a few of the tie-in, and really, Tony's regret were NOT limited to a What if. I do realize some tie-in I missed must have been bad, but the parts I read were a genuinely interesting story, and I stand by my point the arc wasn't that horrible and deserved to be remembered as something more than a Dork Age. Even if it was far from perfect and I understand it pissed off people.
Oh, and forgot: how was creating a clone of Thor horrible? Sure the clone went psycho but they didn't expect THAT to happen. Same with the whole using super-villains as recruit; in theory it was a good idea to try reforming criminals even if in practice they did it in a horrible way. Also I distinctly remember a scene where MARIA HILL is the one sending said criminals after Spidey and Stark tries to convince her not to.
Stark's regret wasn't limited to the aftermath of What if. He had his two tie-in issues (minuscule compared to virtually every other CW tie-in) and a few appearances in Ms. Marvel I believe giving some justifications involving mind control and alcohol. It says a lot that Iron Man was one of the few titles that stuck to a story outside CW for the most part.
Stark and Reed took the DNA of one of their best friends and made a weapon/slave out of it for the express purpose of hunting other heroes. Even before the psycho killing, that would be considered evil on the level of Red Skull.
You do not recruit murderers to become police officers. Reforming criminals should not involve giving them police badges. Stark may have been against using villains in one comic but he was the one who used and empowered Osborn. CW was a contradictory mess that way. I do agree that Maria Hill was scum though.
Yeah, also the main book did explore some aspects of Iron Man's point of view and I didn't feel like it made him look like a fascist. But hey, maybe that's just me.
Really? Because the way I perceive it, it's more like they were trying to create a replacement for Thor after his death and kept control so he would not go rogue (which fails sure, but I think Skrull Hank Pym has something to do with this). The act was morally ambiguous, but unlike Red Skull I feel like there was a good intention behind. Just misguided.
Well, that makes one thing we agree on at least. Though I feel Hill got better post-Civil War.
Maria Hill became a decent supporting character in the Invincible Iron Man series, she was good there. As was Iron Man, come to think of it. That series did a really great job of redeeming him. His make-up with Thor after he got his pre-Civil War memory back was one of the nicest Iron Man moments I've seen, it's great.
I'll admit that most of Iron Man's morally ambiguous actions could be taken as necessary evil if it wasn't for one or two of the downright supervillain things he did in the crappy Civil War spin-offs that dragged the whole story down. Heck, 'Civil War: Iron Man' is probably my favourite edition of the story because you really get to see things from his point of view, and it's not an ongoing fight that he's happy to take part in.
'Civil War: Iron Man' was probably the closest the series got to actually featuring an interesting problem where both sides had good points but neither were clearly better than the others. But then it went from that to 'And then Tony Stark secretly arranged a terrorist attack on peaceful diplomats because reasons.'
None of the comics put Stark in a positive light. Those few that defended him painted him as a reluctant enforcer. The rest made him a violent autocrat with few moral limits.
The pro-reg side had plenty of members that could fulfill clor's role as a heavy hitter. If they did a straight clone I may have agreed on the ambiguity. The world could have used Thor, though more for his leadership than his might.
There is nothing ambiguous about clor. The Skrull did likely tamper with the clone's AI but Stark and Reed's purpose was still to create and enslave a god in the image of one of their lost friend. It was not made to honor the memory of Thor. They didn't want to be friends with it. It was not there to reason with the anti-reg.
The intention they had was to use clor to violently put down the anti-reg forces before they dump them in a tortuous extrajudicial prison where prisoners' powers are researched and monitored. This is something Red Skull dreams of doing when he isn't thinking of killing heroes and minorities outright.
On a side note, can you point me to any redeeming stories for Hill? The only one that vaguely comes to mind for me was when she saved mentally crippled Stark from Osborn. Outside of that, all I recall her being was an obnoxious obstructionist.
If the good side of Maria Hill was portrayed only in Iron Man after CW, it's no wonder I've never seen her good side. :P
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Civil War: A.K.A. When Iron Man became a fascist.
Some look back on Civil war fondly. All I see is a train wreck. Just look up "Civil War in 30 seconds" if you want to skip my rant.
Before the war, Marvel had already been in an accelerated cycle of event after event making the Marvel U ever closer to a crapsack world. Thor was dead. Secret War led to Fury being replaced by the obnoxious Maria Hill. The Avengers got disbanded. House of M got rid of a bunch of mutants.
Things weren't all bad though. The art was never better. The heroes were still heroes. Cable/Deadpool saved Deadpool from the cutting board.
Then Civil War came. Heroes were violently tossed in jail without trial by other "heroes." Villains were enslaved and forced to hunt heroes. Iron Man and Reed Richards made a racist murder Clor. Captain America was killed. Sally Floyd lived. All this occurred while they shilled Sentry doing nothing but hiding and whining.
With every single title tying into the event for months, it became impossible to avoid the event. Characters flip flopped with little to no justification on the vague registration. Stark and Carol Danvers became fascist thugs in all but name. Villains were given better treatment than most heroes.
Even worse, none of them paid for their crimes. Stark became head of Shield. Carol became head of "The Mighty Avengers." Reed Richards got Sue to come back to him like a lost puppy. Iron Man made Green Goblin the head of the Thunderbolts.
CW tarnished the image of more than half of Marvel's characters but none more than Spider Man in "One More Day." The devil contracted magical retcon tainted not only the Spider Man legacy, but Marvel as a whole.
Civil War marked the beginning of an age where past characterizations mean squat, editorial mandate ran roughshod over once great titles and author avatars attacking straw men became the norm. That age hasn't ended. May god (or Jack Kirby) have mercy on comic book fans. The publishers have led us into a dork age.