I've been getting back into comics lately, and while my cardinal rule is only buying things that have the name Gail Simone on them, I wanted to read Civil War II because... well, it was either going to be better than Civil War, which would be a pleasant surprise, or it would be worse than Civil War, in which case, wow, this is a Tommy Wiseau-level trainwreck I'm not going to miss out on.
Civil War II is written by Brian Michael Bendis, who is one of the more reliable but not spectacular writers in the industry; I enjoyed Ultimate Spider-Man and his run on Daredevil, but he hadn't written anything I cared too much about, and after Civil War II, that statement still stands. It is better than the first Civil War, but let's be honest, that barely means anything.
I'll give it this; the huge dividing factor between both sides is much better this time. There's a mutant/alien/inhuman named Ulysses, and his power is that he can predict futures, such as 'Thanos is about to attack Latveria' and 'Sales of this series are about to crash harder than a Ubisoft game launching on PC'. Captain Marvel, now head of S.H.I.E.L.D because god damn has it been a long time since I've read a Marvel comic, uses this power to predict several crimes and prevent them, but Iron Man is worried because without testing, there's no way of knowing how these predictions work, and the preventative measures they take could do harm to people who may not have ever done the thing that future-they did but they did not yet do did. Still better than Civil War.
The big problem is that instead of both sides being flawed, they just take turns acting like huge jackasses. Captain Marvel is mostly sympathetic, especially back when Ulysses has a 100% success rate, but then when it fails and they arrest an innocent woman, she says 'Well, let's just jail her anyway and pretend she was working for Hydra!' Meanwhile, Tony is an asshat who kidnaps Ulysses to perform tests on him, and for a guy who repeatedly says how much he doesn't want a repeat of Civil War (which, you know, none of us do,) he keeps showing up to discussions by punching people really hard in the face. Showing up to an otherwise peaceful climax in Hulkbuster armour screaming 'FUCK YOU, CAROL!' kind of stuff. Both Sides Have a Point doesn't have to mean Both Sides Are Idiots.
But let's not be too harsh; this is an improvement, and not just in the sarcastic 'A turd would have been an improvement on Civil War!' way. There are some surprising A/B-List casualties - they won't stay dead, obviously, but still - and the story develops in some interesting and unexpected ways. Danvers and Stark have sympathetic and understandable moments, if not all the time. It's not great, but it's not Snark Bait. It's okay.
Maybe one day they can make stuff that's actually 'good' instead of just 'okay', but I'll take what I can get.
Minority Report 2: Danvers VS Stark
I've been getting back into comics lately, and while my cardinal rule is only buying things that have the name Gail Simone on them, I wanted to read Civil War II because... well, it was either going to be better than Civil War, which would be a pleasant surprise, or it would be worse than Civil War, in which case, wow, this is a Tommy Wiseau-level trainwreck I'm not going to miss out on.
Civil War II is written by Brian Michael Bendis, who is one of the more reliable but not spectacular writers in the industry; I enjoyed Ultimate Spider-Man and his run on Daredevil, but he hadn't written anything I cared too much about, and after Civil War II, that statement still stands. It is better than the first Civil War, but let's be honest, that barely means anything.
I'll give it this; the huge dividing factor between both sides is much better this time. There's a mutant/alien/inhuman named Ulysses, and his power is that he can predict futures, such as 'Thanos is about to attack Latveria' and 'Sales of this series are about to crash harder than a Ubisoft game launching on PC'. Captain Marvel, now head of S.H.I.E.L.D because god damn has it been a long time since I've read a Marvel comic, uses this power to predict several crimes and prevent them, but Iron Man is worried because without testing, there's no way of knowing how these predictions work, and the preventative measures they take could do harm to people who may not have ever done the thing that future-they did but they did not yet do did. Still better than Civil War.
The big problem is that instead of both sides being flawed, they just take turns acting like huge jackasses. Captain Marvel is mostly sympathetic, especially back when Ulysses has a 100% success rate, but then when it fails and they arrest an innocent woman, she says 'Well, let's just jail her anyway and pretend she was working for Hydra!' Meanwhile, Tony is an asshat who kidnaps Ulysses to perform tests on him, and for a guy who repeatedly says how much he doesn't want a repeat of Civil War (which, you know, none of us do,) he keeps showing up to discussions by punching people really hard in the face. Showing up to an otherwise peaceful climax in Hulkbuster armour screaming 'FUCK YOU, CAROL!' kind of stuff. Both Sides Have a Point doesn't have to mean Both Sides Are Idiots.
But let's not be too harsh; this is an improvement, and not just in the sarcastic 'A turd would have been an improvement on Civil War!' way. There are some surprising A/B-List casualties - they won't stay dead, obviously, but still - and the story develops in some interesting and unexpected ways. Danvers and Stark have sympathetic and understandable moments, if not all the time. It's not great, but it's not Snark Bait. It's okay.
Maybe one day they can make stuff that's actually 'good' instead of just 'okay', but I'll take what I can get.