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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
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More specifically, only certain types of superheroes are allowed to be right. Captain America ended up being right about the SHRA being a bad thing (despite that supposedly the original plan was that Steve's views on superheroism were meant to be seen as outdated). In Injustice, the heroes who are against lethal force no matter the circumstances are the ones allowed to be right. Every writer that wasn't named Greg Rucka depicted Wonder Woman's decision to kill Max Lord as an unambiguously bad thing. Even in the movie version of Civil War, Tony is depicted as being misguided at best for choosing the Accords and subsequent movies go out of their way to depict at as useless and obstructive.
The reason JMS said what he said ("So Iron Man is a villain now?") is because that's just how Mark Millar wrote him. Remember: Mark Millar was in charge of the main book and Millar is not subtle. JMS, also, created and wrote most of Babylon 5, as well as many films (like Changeling), so, really, calling him only a "comic book writer" is being disingenuous.
tldr; a comic book writer is just a writer, like all other writers. Saying that all they know how to write is good guys punching bad guys is being silly and basically insulting of the comic book genre as a whole.
Depends on whose book it is.
If Batman fights the Punisher, then the Punisher's methods will be shown to be unnecessarily cruel and inhumane crimes against humanity.
If the Punisher fights Batman, however, then Batman's methods will be shown to be hopelessly naive idealism that does more harm than good.
Captain America: Civil War benefit in part from having just one creative team telling the story. With the comics, the idea was that everyone's tie-ins would show their side. Captain America is right in Captain America comics, Iron Man is right in Iron Man comics. This, coupled with very poor editorial practice, meant that the SHRA could be simultaneously depicted as a totally good thing that benefits the world in Captain Marvel, a flawed but optional practice in The Loners, and literally Nazis in The Initiative. And those depictions are all equally canon.
The MCU, by comparison, only had one creative vision for the Sokovia Accords. You knew who was going to be right from the second you walked into the theater. Captain America's name is on the movie. It's his story. He's the hero. There is nothing to debate here.
This narrow focus gave Civil War the flexibility to make Tony a compelling but flawed three-dimensional antagonist. Meanwhile, the presence of an actual villain alongside Tony, Zemo, allowed the writers to ramp up the action without having to make Tony or Steve be the one that bombs the U.N. or triggers the Winter Soldier to fight the Avengers.
But, at the end of the day, the story wasn't about Zemo. Zemo was a spanner in the works. He was a cause for escalation. The story is really about Steve versus Tony, with Zemo enabling Tony to go off his rocker for a stakes-heavy final throwdown over Bucky's continued existence. Tony is literally trying to do a murder, and it still doesn't compromise his character or role as a hero in the rest of the franchise the way that Fuhrer Tony in the comics did.
It might seem counterintuitive, I'm sure. But by deciding right off the bat that Tony would be the bad guy of the film, the writers were able to give him more complexity and more flexibility than he had in his "complex" position in the comics. "Tony is the Hero but ALSO the Villain" made him a very bipolar figure whose villainy quickly outweighed the heroism. But "Tony is wrong but you still kinda feel for his side of things" made him legitimately complex.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Oct 7th 2019 at 8:18:40 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Except JMS was the one who wrote Tony as a villain while Millar had the most sympathetic take on Iron Man throughout the event. Just compare how JMS handled the Negative Zone prison ordeal to how Millar did. In the main book as written by Millar, Tony says the NZ prison is a temporary holding facility until they can find something more secure to keep superheroes in (since Marvel prisons have a long history of having poor security). JMS by contrast depicted Tony as saying they would remain there for the rest of their natural lives and even threatened to lock Peter in there too if he didn't get with the program.
Hell, Millar was the one who wrote the fact that Iron Man cloned Thor and that clone Thor killed Goliath and when they buried Goliath, they couldn't even shrink him down. That was all Millar.
Of course, Millar wrote Captain America as an asshole, too. JMS, on the other hand, wrote Captain America is someone more heroic. JMS was the one who wrote the "river of truth" speech, which Cap says to Spider-Man.
Edited by alliterator on Oct 7th 2019 at 8:11:57 AM
And yet regularly fights evenly and sometimes wins against the likes of Spider-Man, Captain America, and the Winter Soldier.
Windleopard has the right of it. JMS's rendition of Tony dialed Millar's version up to 11. He was Unintentionally Unsympathetic in Millar's Civil War and 100% Super-Evil in JMS's Amazing Spider-Man.
Yeah, and the less said about that speech, the better.
"This nation was founded on one principle above all else: The requirement that we stand up for what we believe, no matter the odds or the consequences. When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world — "No, YOU move.”"
That speech is classic "Heroic-sounding drivel that will actually make you a terrible person."
Edited by TobiasDrake on Oct 7th 2019 at 9:19:42 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.My understanding is Millar thought Iron Man's case was too sympathetic and made him a jerk so that somebody would still root for Cap.
Leviticus 19:34Having armed guards escorting people to prison happens in real life too for non-fascist reasons. And it isn't like weapons are much of a threat to Daredevil anyway.
The clone killing Goliath was an error none of his creators predicted. Reed flat out states the clone was supposed to subdue Goliath. You can accuse Tony of being an incompetent clone scientist (it's obvious engineering and robotics are his strong suit) but not a villain.
As other people have pointed out, the problem with this stupid speech is it has no moral parameters. Steve could have been defending segregation and you wouldn't have to change a single word. Being the lone man against the mob does not automatically make you righteous.
Edited by windleopard on Oct 7th 2019 at 8:42:53 AM
I don’t know that it matters whether it was intended or not because when your side clones Thor and unleashes him and gets someone killed it makes you look really bad despite intentions
Forever liveblogging the AvengersOne could easily make the argument that people so incompetent shouldn’t be leading a superhero army or team
I’ll make that argument
Forever liveblogging the AvengersGovernment regulation of superhumans is actually a pretty interesting topic. On the one hand, as RodimusMinor pointed out a while back, Alan Moore presents a famous "against" argument in Watchmen, which shows the end result of making metahumans beholden to the government would be, essentially, state-sanctioned super-hitmen answerable to the likes of Richard Nixon. On the other, I've also heard some excellent arguments that it's really no different from something like gun control in real life.
Yeah, when JMS hears "So Iron Man's going to clone Thor and that clone is going to kill someone," it makes perfect sense for him to go "So Iron Man's a villain now?"
In any case, I was pointing out that "comic book writers" are just writers and JMS wrote Babylon 5, which has some of the most morally gray characters around (see: G'Kar and Londo). Saying that comic book writers can only write black-and-white superheroes and villains is just completely wrong.
And yet they arrested him because he refused to sign up with the SHRA. Hell, they attempted to arrest Cap before it even became a law. Which means that even people without powers were being forced to sign up, which is a violation of their civil rights and oops, now we get to the fascist parts.
Edited by alliterator on Oct 7th 2019 at 8:46:11 AM
The problem with this argument is that it ignores the fact that permission to refuse illegal and unreasonable orders is a thing that exists in real life. Hell, Captain America has made a career out of telling the US government to go to hell when they try to make him do something wrong.
One thing that benefit the MCU conflict is that the Accords would have made the Avengers beholden to the U.N., rather than the United States government. When people think about regulating superheroes, they often think of "President Bag O'Dicks is sending Spider-Man to Iran to topple their government."
In fact, the Ultimate comics literally did that with the Iraq War.
The MCU conflict would have made the Avengers into U.N. peacekeepers rather than a paramilitary force run by any one sovereign state.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Oct 7th 2019 at 9:49:19 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.I'm honestly reminded how much..biblical symbolism there was in Civil War,they didn't exactly hide the fact that the last battle between cap and Tony had the last Supper's background
Also,I can't recall if this was in movie but there was a thing about Tony being a Judus figure because a bag of coins or something
have a listen and have a link to my discord serverJMS definitely thought the whole cloning Thor thing was a villainous act not a question of competence as he went on to have Thor deliver a verbal smackdown in his own book - followed by an effortless physical one.
"These 'no-nonsense' solutions of yours just don't hold water in a complex world of jet-powered apes and time travel."Well it is a breach of trust to clone someone without so much as a how do you do
Sure Thor was dead at the time but there are things you don’t do, like cloning your friend and then using that clone as a weapon
Forever liveblogging the AvengersIt wasn't in the movie but it was in the comics. When Daredevil was being escorted to prison, one of his guards handed Tony a coin Matt had hidden under his tongue (ew). Matt told Tony it was one of the pieces of silver he could use to pay the devil when he went to hell because he was now Judas.
That story was really stupid.
That's the kind of moment that just makes me think about the logistics involved. Matt had to hide a silver coin under his tongue while in costume just in case he was arrested, in the hopes that Tony would personally oversee his arrest so that he could deliver a sick burn while being escorted to prison.
A sick burn that, almost certainly, went straight into Tony's bank deposit and was spared not another second's thought - and that's assuming Tony Stark, famously a misotheistic humanist, even got it.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Oct 7th 2019 at 10:08:09 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.![]()
Not to mention, I don't think hiding a coin under your tongue is a pleasant experience for a guy who whose sense of taste is dialed up to eleven.
Basically, Tony was the only character in the main Civil War book that Millar tried to write as somebody with some level of common sense.
And then he died for everyone's sins.
Edited by windleopard on Oct 7th 2019 at 9:13:30 AM
god dammit
Yep. The irony is frankly amazing.
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