So finally we're getting to the actual event. As Civil War #1 begins, Speedball is talking to a network exec about the bust he's planning for the New Warriors' reality show: Four villains, one house. The executive mentions they're all high-profile escapees, and one of them has come close to defeating the Hulk. Night Thrasher and Microbe express some perfectly reasonable concern over this idea, but Speedball's response is, "Think of the ratings!"
I'm sorry, what?
Were you not listening just now? Have you, in fact, been paying attention at all? One guy nearly took down THE INCREDIBLE HULK. You know, that indestructible monster that has demolished entire superteams in the past? And you are about to attack that guy and three others of presumably comparable power because you think it would be good for ratings? What is wrong with you? Have you even considered the possible outcomes of a fight like that? What if you lose? What happens to your ratings then? What if you win, but one or more of you has to be hospitalized, thus delaying your next episode?
Of course these are valid concerns for any hero about to fight any villain. Then again, most heroes are not planning to randomly pick fights with villains who could challenge the goddamn Hulk.
It quickly becomes a moot point, however, as Coldheart spots them and runs inside to warn the others. Well, no turning back now. The heroes rush in to do what they do. And they do it, with what I can only assume is a network-mandated one-quip-per-shot requirement. Speedball, making the best of a bad situation, tackles Speedfreek, the aforementioned Hulk-level fighter, before he can finish putting on the armor that I assume grants him his powers. A beatdown ensues. Night Thrasher and Namorita take down Coldheart pretty quickly, and Microbe apparently defeats Cobalt Man offscreen.
Okay, I take it back. This was actually a great choice for a hit. Three of the villains are equipment based, so hit them before they can equip themselves, disarm them, or beat their equipment, and you've won. That just leaves Nitro, escaping. Namorita chases him down and pins him against a school bus.
Then this ha... oh dear lord.
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Nitro explodes with the power of an atomic bomb, reducing Stamford, connecticut to twisted piles of rubble. America's heroes come to help with the cleanup and rescue efforts. Iron Man mentions there's a lead on Nitro. Captain America responds, "Does it matter?"
What.
"All these children, Tony. The F.E.M.A. chief said there could be eight or nine hundred casualties."
And that is why it matters. It matters more than it ever would have if there hadn't been eight or nine hundred casualties. Are you saying that you would consider locating this escaped criminal a priority if he was minding his own business, but now that he's killing people en masse you don't care?
Ah, Tony has an answer for him. At the risk of using too many quotation marks:
"They should have called us, Cap. Speedball knew the New Warriors were out of their league. The whole country saw the tape where they said they were only chasing ratings."
Wait, wait, wait. Didn't Night Thrasher say on the same tape that Coldheart had spotted them? At that point, a fight was almost inevitable, and if the New Warriors hadn't attacked, the villains would have escaped and done who knows what. There was no time to call in anyone, especially from another state. Furthermore, aside from the Hulk comparison, they had no reason at all to believe they were out of their league, and they were actually handing the villains their asses until Nitro exploded. It seemed to have been remarkably well-planned and well-executed for reasons I already mentioned, despite the fact that Speedball never actually got to finish telling his teammates the plan.
Also, they had no reason to believe Nitro could do what he did. Namorita, the one who chased him down, was well aware of his explosion powers, and seemed to believe she could contain him. That's because up to this point in continuity, Nitro has never displayed the ability to create an explosion that large. There's actually a reason for this, one that will be addressed in later issues, but suffice it to say, blaming the New Warriors for attacking in this situation just doesn't make any sense.
Rachel Summers is helping to lift large portions of rubble with her telekinesis because I guess this is at a point in continuity where Jean Grey is dead and they needed someone to fill in. God knows she's not there for her personality, as she gets snippy when Scott asks if she's okay managing part of the mess by herself.
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"Don't take that tone with me, young lady, or I'll turn this car right around!" |
A small child is scared by the giant purple robots following the X-Men around, but his mother comforts him by telling him, "It's okay, honey, they aren't going to hurt you. The Sentinels are only here to keep an eye on the X-Men for us. They're the good guys."
Why does that line have a distinct aftertaste of blunt force trauma? I know mutants are supposed to represent oppressed minorities, and the hatred toward them is supposed to be a metaphor for real-world bigotry, but that really only makes it worse. I mean, it's like... I don't even have an appropriate analogy for this because it's so goddamn retarded. The X-Men just saved both of your lives, woman. The least you could do is not villainize them for it.
God, I've already found a lot to hate about this issue and I'm not even a third of the way through it yet.
Goliath and Miss Marvel talk about how bad the shit has just hit the fan. We cut to two random, confused panels in a row. First there's one of She-Hulk being interviewed by Larry King, who doesn't have a secret identity but should, about her opinion on the Superhuman Registration Act, and it's really not very informative, she just says it "sounds reasonable" without elaborating. Then there's one of a memorial service for the people of Stamford being held. And, wow, Marvel. Okay, see, I just don't get this one. In my experience, preachers don't do this. They don't disingenuously pray for divine mercy for someone they hate. You never hear a Catholic praying for God to spare Charles Darwin. Assuming the preacher recognized "super people" as being no more inherently evil than ordinary people, the thing he'd be most likely to pray for is their repentance. Otherwise, he'd just outright condemn them. Or, given that this was a memorial service, maybe he should be focusing on the victims, praying for their families, stuff like that.
Tony Stark is apparently attending this memorial service, and as he leaves the building, he's confronted by a woman who... uh...
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...she has a web-shooter in her mouth? |
And then she NYAUGH
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I can't be the only one who sees Pennywise in this panel. |
Uh. Well, Stark's bodyguard asks her to leave, rather than immediately having her arrested for assault, but she insists on continuing to make a scene and says that Stark should be arrested. Oh, this ought to be good.
Stark points out that the New Warriors have nothing to do with him (which isn't technically true, as he's apparently taken it upon himself to secretly spy on and manipulate the entire supercommunity for years now, but is close enough to the truth). The woman responds, "Oh, yeah? And who finances the Avengers? Who's been telling kids for years that they can live outside the law as long as they're wearing tights?"
This is a terrible point. Okay, I noted in Amazing Spider-Man #530 that Senator Whitmore was absolutely right to talk about the legality of vigilantism, but there's an important fact this woman is forgetting: The Avengers aren't vigilantes. They are a privately-employed emergency response team, and they do exactly that: respond to emergencies. This fact has been made public by Tony Stark himself so presumably he's met all the requirements to make sure that this operation is completely legal and aboveboard, otherwise government and law enforcement agents would have had to step in and say "no, you can't do that" a long time ago. Stark himself might be guilty of employment fraud, since he claims Iron Man as an employee when in fact he IS Iron Man, but the rest of them aren't living outside the law at all. In fact, the New Warriors weren't even acting outside the law. They were filming a reality show, a lot like Dog the Bounty Hunter except that... wait, no, actually it's exactly like Dog the Bounty Hunter.
Oh, and Jameson's there too, I guess.
We then have a panel of - NOPE. I'm not going to acknowledge this guy's argument. It's as pointless as practically every argument from this issue on is going to be, and it has the added bonus of being devoid of context (it starts with "...like Speedball, for example", implying there was more to that sentence that they just didn't care to show us). Plus it's more of that "accountability" crap that I've already addressed. Just... just cut to Johnny's date, okay?
Right, so, Johnny Storm shows up for a date, apologizing for being late, and tells the girl he got held up by pretty women. How... very charming. The two are about to head into a nightclub where apparently Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan are waiting for them, or at least that's what I assume from the context, when suddenly the guys in the line start hurling insults at him. I'd complain about the fact that we're about to watch a bunch of people gang up on the Human Torch, apparently the idol of millions, over something that's not even remotely related to him, but since that means Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan don't actually appear in the comic, I'm willing to accept it.
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...on second thought, is it too late to bring in Paris? Maybe have her write an issue or two? Please?
This is some of the laziest dialogue I have ever seen. If you're going to have a group jeering someone, at least show that they're capable of thinking up some witty variations. If it was an organized mob hunting him down chanting the latest line of propaganda, or a disorganized mob yelling over one another, that would be something, but these guys are all waiting their turn to say this individually. What is going through their heads?
Johnny's date is clearly uncomfortable with the situation. She tells him she wants to go home.
Then this happens.
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Johnny is instantly knocked out, and the assembled crowd starts beating on him. Wow, this is actually a pretty tense situation. I wonder how they're going to follow up on it?
Cut to the Baxter Building. Okay, so I guess we're going to see Sue trying to cope with the news about her brother, Ben comforting her, and Reed wondering why his hair feels so greasy.
Nope. Turns out the superheroes of New York have gathered to discuss the Registration Act. The situation with Johnny is acknowledged for all of one panel, as Ben Grimm blames "people like [Wolverine]" for giving superheroes a bad name. Everyone here is concerned with one of a few things, most of which are irrational or have been said already. This is an abridged transcript:
- The Wasp: The government wants to directly control all heroes.
- Luke Cage: The government wants to put an end to superheroism.
- Iron Man: Superheroes should be publicly accountable.
- Iron Man: Superheroes should be publicly accountable.
- The Falcon: The government wants to directly control all superheroes.
- Yellowjacket: Superheroes should be publicly accountable.
- Wolverine: Superheroes will be targeted when their identities are made public.
- The Thing: Superheroes should be publicly accountable.
- Spider-Man: Superheroes will be targeted when their identies are made public.
Sue Storm speaks up now. "The secret identity thing isn't such a big deal. The Fantastic Four have been public since the beginning, and it's never really been a serious concern."
Okay, first. It's not a big deal for you because you don't just live in the fucking Baxter Building, you own the fucking Baxter Building. If anyone wanted to attack you or anyone close to you on your home turf, they'd have to first get past whatever defenses a group of rich, superpowered scientists have prepared, and then deal with four superheroes. Second... isn't your brother in the hospital? Like, right now? In a coma, because he got kreeshed? Yeah, pretty sure that wouldn't have happened if he had something like, I dunno, a fucking secret identity.
Meanwhile, Captain America is meeting with Maria Hill. She asks how he thinks the supercommunity is going to react to the SHRA. Also they seem to be staring intently at each other's foreheads. He predicts that a lot of heroes are going to rebel against it, and Hill asks him if he can handle them. Cap expresses disgust that she's asking him to take down heroes, but of course that's not true at all. She's ordering him to take down heroes. The guy who subjected himself to extremely deadly supersoldier experiments to enable him to fight Nazis is now being ordered to round up political dissenters. And just in case we still thought this was a request, there are now eleven or twelve guys pointing tranq guns at Captain America.
This, of course, doesn't work. He uses one of them as a shield - and no I don't mean he gets him in a chokehold and threatens to kill him if they don't let him go, he actually picks the guy up and uses him to block a volley of tranq rounds, probably killing the guy in the process - breaks two of their guns with his shield, delivers blunt force trauma to the rest of them, then runs through the backup Hill (who appears to have collapsed and started vomiting at some point) calls in, jumps through the window, lands on a fighter plane, breaks part of the windshield open with his shield, uses the hole as a handhold, and tells the pilot to keep flying.
The lesson to be learned here is, nobody tells Captain America what to do. Back at the Baxter Building, the Watcher has popped in. And now everyone is watching him. I guess his presence means that this is the exact moment that this storyline became an inevitability. Great job, Uatu.
We cut to Washington, where the Cabinet is meeting on the subject of the SHRA. The news is talking about Congress and the political skill of Miriam Sharpe. Wait, who's Miriam Sharpe?
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Yes, the woman from the memorial service has managed to rouse an army to convince Congress to meet (they say that but really Congress was straining at the bit for this Act).
Meanwhile in the Cabinet meeting, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who doesn't have a secret identity but should, is laughing about Captain America's escape from SHIELD HQ. President George W. Bush, who also doesn't have a secret identity, is concerned that Cap will become a symbol and a leader for those who oppose the Act, and suddenly Iron Man, Yellowjacket and Reed Richards are in the room. Okay. Iron Man closes out the issue as ominously as he can manage in five words:
"Leave Captain America to us."
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