Mark Millar

That's why I don't see "No More Avengers" as all that insane. Cyclops is definitely going about it the wrong way, but his appraisal of the populace's general attitude actually makes a lot of sense.

Pretty much this.

Marvel's humans have a long standing tradition of double standards, moral dissonance and jerkassery.

The main underucrrent of Civil War is one that is bets sumaized in teh Cracked article.

In This verse you are eitehr one of about a couple thousdn apeople, or you arent. If youi arent then you , your goverment, yoru law enfocment, and yoru miltray can do NOTHING in th eface of any kind of mass battles assults and attacks. Superheroric narrtives totally remove human agency and by having the State take charge is a natural responce. The MCU did it more organically with Superhumans being run by SHIELD from the start but the point stands that in a world with living nukes, having no oversight is stupid as hell.

No oversight is bad, sure.

But so is storing everyones names, addresses, dates of birth, relatives, powersets, and weaknesses in a likely hackable or stealable database, and forcing them to be conscripted whenever the hell the government says so or else you get thrown in jail.

Getting everyone's names is what the government already does. Getting their powers and weaknesses is a logical extension. The whole approach to registration is what didn't make sense.

As said, Torch was already registered. So were all of the fantastic four, they had no secret identity, they weren't breaking any laws without consequence and had proved they could live among society without being a nuisance. Maybe they can be indirectly blamed for the U foes but The Wizard, Dr. Doom and Galactus would have all shown up whether or not Reed had super powers or not. If someone should be them for not getting more government help with the rogues always trying to kill them. Despite use inability to advance society in any meaningful way Reed's still at least allowed society to continue existing in the face of reality destroying beings and tyrants from the future, so society still owes him a favour.

There should have been outrage at the mob of New Yorkers dumb enough to attack a decent citizen, who's charitable reputation is second only to his known ability to kill all life Earth. If there was legal things to change then ban vigilantism or at least put up warnings on known super beings, registered or otherwise. Penalize unlicensed unauthorized citizens for going after someone as dangerous as Nitro should he go off.

Somehow it becomes against super people in general. How dare that girl use her powers to chase thieves out of her place of business? Citizen's arrest? Self defense? What's that all about? Never use that carapace until we've put you in reserve for our initiative! Only our personal army should have a greater than average chance of surviving armed robberies!

Besides the silly reason for the law or the silliness that resulted after its passing, there is also the problem of events in between. SHIELD, who I thought was a UN organization, tries to arrest a US soldier, for refusing to support a law that hasn't been passed. This results in a lot of superhero fighting instead of say, a court case or the Coast Guard chasing Fury(Hill?) out of the country. Doesn't anyone seem to care why these foreigners are so interested in national policy?

You know, this is all just knee jerk to people who say Civil War was a good story. I just can't accept it. If those involved, if at least the heroes involved, could have had civil discussion and negotiated responsibly it could have worked. Maybe if it settled on which side was ultimately the Holier Than Thou Knight Templars or run by a Hidden Agenda Villain it could have worked. Ironman certainty looked to be the latter when he tries to start a war with another nation to advance his agenda(isn't that treason or something?) but half the books were split on who was right, who was wrong, even well after the fact so that most of the people involved looked incompetent.

But hey, Millar himself says Civil War didn't end up like he initially envisioned right? So why are people still defending it?

I think the reason for that is, quite simply, civil discussion makes for boring fiction. Why do you think one of the most common criticisms of The Phantom Menace was "Too much debatey, not enough fighty"?

I thought the big complaint against that movie was Jar Jar, followed by too much reliance on special effects and Anakin ruining everyone's fanon about Darth Vader.

I thought wrong, well their could still be fights. Just, instead of Ironman and Captain America boxing each other after neither can get the other to change their mind they could debate before, after, or during an Avenger mission. Instead of Pym and Richard's Thor clone killing off Goliath Nitro could do it. Instead of Ironman setting up shop in the negative zone one of the villains who lives their could construct the prison. Why are Blastaar, Annihilus and Dusk letting him build on their turf anyway?

Or if facilitating debate isn't the point they can drop the idea of making the reader decide who's right and just make one side wrong, if only because they are playing into the hands of a(nother) villain.

I said "one of" the complaints.

About "making one side wrong," that's essentially what Justice League Unlimited's second season did with the specific intent of avoiding this sort of controversy among the fanbase. That said, I think a story where the reader decides what is right is a very interesting idea, though Civil War probably wasn't one of the best ways to pull it off. Perhaps if they'd timed it so it wasn't basically right after an exceedingly-controversial US election year?

edited 13th Sep '12 7:35:49 PM by HamburgerTime

Christos Gage is trying to prove that comics where people resolve their issues peacefully, through dialogue rather than punching each other, can still be entertaining.

On the other hand, he probably could use a little more people punching each other once in a while.

If you can't handle a weighty issue in a comic book without making it either boring or nonsensical, maybe you'd be better tackling another subject. Civil War tried to be deep and raise 'serious' issues (although ones that don't apply well to the real world, since we lack any superpowered beings, much less a whole community of them), but does it in a way where everyone is forced to play Calvinball with the Idiot Ball.

edited 13th Sep '12 7:44:10 PM by NapoleonDeCheese

It's not punching in itself that I have a problem with. It's an action that makes sense when Green Goblin is chasing your girlfriend with a machete while cackling about going after your aunt next. It even makes sense when someone tries to unlawfully arrest you.

Much of Civil War's violence wasn't really necessary and it didn't make much sense is my problem.

"likely hackable or stealable database" if by that you mean "Tony Stark's brain" than yes I suppose that's true, and given how the most powerful man in the world spent an entire story arc trying to get them, I think it's safe to say they were pretty secure. The SHRA was something the Marvel Universe desperately needed and if a smidgen of editorial oversight had been done, we'd be able to get what should of happened rather than the Post-Siege backhanded bullshit. lawandthemultiverse.com covers this much more than I do so see their articles on the various registration acts. And Cider, you wanted a book about Superheroes fighting each other to have... no superheroes fighting each other?

edited 13th Sep '12 11:47:33 PM by LushCity

The problem is the MU USA's government is so corrupted, idiotic and just plain borderline evil (we're talking about guys who manufacture killer giant robots in a regular basis and gave control over a superhuman force to Norman Fucking Osborn), they don't deserve to hold databases on regular humans, much less control over every superhuman on their grounds.

Which is something I don't think Civil War really touched on. I'm probably in the minority here, but I think Civil War would've been waaaay more interesting if it focused on the superhero community and its relationship with the government. At least more so than "Government Bad. We Good. Lets fight".

@Lush: My point isd, even within that arc, Stark acted in a way that was tending towards blatantly willing to be evil to achieve peace. Not to mention, the I Nitiative itself was the biggest problem I had, since it amounted to You have superpowers? Great. You're now either a criminal or drafted into the US Army. No, you dont get any choice."

edited 14th Sep '12 8:34:33 AM by Midgetsnowman

I felt for Stark, at least in the first issue. If someone spit at me and blamed me for getting their kid killed, I'd probably want to work to change that perception of me and others like me, too. I doubt I'd go as far as he did, but you can't say something like that wouldn't be an eye-opening experience. And I think there was something in another book that I haven't read yet that said the alternative to the SHRA was reactivating the Sentinel program, too.

Well, there's also the alternative of moving out of the country like the Thing did, but... yeah, that just ain't right either.

Which only adds to how evil the Marvel USA government is. They basically leave no choices but either enforcing a draconian rule or unleashing killer robots with a long history of complete disasters.

edited 14th Sep '12 9:15:37 AM by NapoleonDeCheese

On Deconstruction:

The Ultimates didn't intend to be a deconstruction. It intended to be a reconstruction. The weird thing about it was that Millar though the characters would be more relateable if they were more cynical. Millar was, in his own mind, staying true to the concept of the character, just in very different ways from how their 616s relate to the concept.

Kickass was definitely a deconstruction. The premise is "Here's a story about people who want to be superheroes." The story then proceeds to give you a bunch of reasons why you'd never want to be a superhero. Millar does a good job of getting you excited and liking the premise in the first few issues, but there's no rule that says a deconstruction can't do that. The conclusion proves it be a deconstruction.

The Marvel US Government isn't really that worse than ours. It just does what ours does scaled up to Superheroic and villainous levels. Now Canada THEY are evil in marvel.

Yeah, I find it funny how Canada, of all countries, is so incredibly evil in the Marvel U. I mean, sure, our politicians are jackasses, but they're mostly just a bunch of petulant babies with less maturity and decorum than a class of first-graders. (Seriously, the House of Representatives in the US may be filled with crazy morons, but at least there, they'll actually let each other speak. Up here, Members of Parliament routinely yell over whoever's speaking. It's shameful, considering these are the people running the fucking country, and they don't even have the same level of manners as the average child.)

Marvel Canada is actually fairly good at hiding its evil though.(then again, I guess your mileage may vary on whether that makes them better or worse and may just be because most of their screw ups usually end up hurting New York instead of their own people) They never actually appointed known supervillains like Bastion or The Green Goblin into visible positions of power.

That would be a story I'd love write though. "Omega Ray declares him/herself Prime Minister for life, promises a new age of Canadian dominance and to cleanse the world of all Korbinites!"

Edit: Never mind, wrong character.

edited 15th Sep '12 1:16:54 PM by NapoleonDeCheese

They actually did pretty much exactly that in the latest Alpha Flight series, though the Big Bad wasn't the PM himself but The Man Behind the Man. He started a new party and swept the Parliamentary elections through rigging them, and intended to use his influence to brainwash all Canadians into becoming slave laborers for him. He even got Vindicator! Since Fred Van Lente seems to lean rather to the left, some people have interpreted this storyline as a swipe at Real Life right-wing current PM Stephen Harper.

But Omega Ray's not Canadian. How could he be elected PM?

Also, Beta Ray Bill no longer operates in Canada. So Omega Ray has no reason to go there.

Also also, he'd be an illegal alien. The US elects illegal aliens, not Canada.

The PM was a long time supporting member from the Alpha Flight series, the guy was just being lead by a shadowy man behind the man.

What I love about Marvel Canada is just how awesome they were at being evil. There was a thread on /co/ that was just post after post of fun stuff like Vindicator double headshotting her cousin and his wife to get her daughter back, and the Department H agents were like "Whelp, they were armed and resisting arrest!" "I'm already writing the paperwork."

My issues with the idea of Dark Reign nonwithstanding, it did make sense. Osborn has been Marvel's Lex Luthor type and if HE can get elected President I dont see why his Villain with good Publicity wouldnt kick in, especially after he (seemingly) saved the world on National Television.

edited 15th Sep '12 3:04:55 PM by LushCity