DennisMM wrote:It's all crap, it won't last any longer than Secret Wars did and it's destroying the characters and their relatonships to one another. McNiven's art is nice.
DAMAGE CONTROL? Their book was light-hearted.
I like Dennis

DennisMM wrote:It's all crap, it won't last any longer than Secret Wars did and it's destroying the characters and their relatonships to one another. McNiven's art is nice.
DAMAGE CONTROL? Their book was light-hearted.
DennisMM wrote:Frontline is a much better book. If they had any guts, Frontline would be the book that tells the story and Civil War would fill in the holes with mindless action.
Thank you, Ginger Man.
Prof. Challenger wrote:If I were not reviewing comics for AICN, I would not have read this comic.
I thought that needed to be said because it bears on the fact that, like it or not, where Marvel and DC go, so goes the comic book field. And when these two do big "events," it really is the responsibility of a serious reviewing team to go ahead and at least look at it. I mean, I am sure that most movie reviewers went and saw PEARL HARBOR even though they would have preferred to just avoid it. But they "had" to.
Now, after the distasteful experience of DC's INFINITE CRISIS, I personally chose to just completely avoid Marvel's CIVIL WAR. My interest in the more current Marvel Universe is so tepid compared to the days when I literally bought anything with Marvel on the cover. I have not, however, been able to avoid the events that have made up CW, because they have been headline-grabbers like Spider-Man revealing his identity publicly. But up till now, the most I've done is skim through the issues on the stands to get a feel for how the "events" have been executed. My take on it up to this point has been that the book "looks" good and the writing seems competent.
Press releases from the days prior to last Wednesday built up CW#4 as an "event" so important that it must not be missed. In the wake of Spidey's revelation, I decided then that I would go ahead and pick up this issue and see what the big hoo-ha is all about. Technically, the comic feels like it was produced by automatons. The writing is technically competent, except that every character speaks with the same "voice." There is nothing to distinguish whether it's Sue Richards, Tony Stark, or Peter Parker other than typeface or word balloon placement. The art is solid, but completely devoid of any emotion other than anger. It seems like everyone is angry at all times which is just depressing to look at. The only good thing I can say is that it appears that Dagger doesn't wear panties and the paper stock is nice.
I'm not angry though, like a bunch of my fellow reviewers, but I am disturbed on many levels. Before I address the specifics, let me give an overall impression I've got. INFINITE CRISIS pissed me off not so much because of the things that happened in the story. I'm more willing than many longtime fans to buy into changes and events so long as they happen logically within the story and in character. The thing that pissed me off with IC was that it smacked of massive editorial and production incompetence. Within IC, I could see writers and artists striving to do something better than what the final product turned out to be. My problems with CW are much deeper than my problems with IC because it is a highly competent product, but insidious and deplorable in its goals.
I picture the Three Stooges running around the DC offices as editors constantly imposing themselves into the production of IC and turning it into a laughable 3-ring circus of nonsense by the end. But at Marvel, I picture a cabal of enormously overweight pompous politicians circa 1920 sitting in a cigar smoke-filled, darkened room wearing their neckties so tight that their necks look like muffin tops, all the while plotting and planning and chuckling to themselves about how much smarter and better they are than the sheep that voted them into office.
And the stench of those cheap cigars permeates every page of this turdpile of a comic "event."
CIVIL WAR just literally smacks of the arrogance of short-term thinking and nihilism. There was a time when Marvel comic books were about characters. Plots were simply tools to tell stories about characters. Now, characters are simply tools to serve the plot, or rather, "event." One way you can tell is that the life-changing events for these characters now occur in "give-us-money" books like CW rather than the characters' respective eponymous titles. After 40 years, the most status quo changing event in Spider-Man's development as a character - a decision that changes everything, contradicts everything he's ever said and done before, and affects everyone who has ever known him - happened in CW with the Spidey titles stuck having to deal with the fallout. Another way you can tell is that the manner in which characters, I mean "cannon fodder," are slaughtered is so detached and calculated that it really just disgusts me. Again, I can totally envision the "meeting" between the editors and the writer where they start throwing character names around, maybe putting them up on a board on note cards, and then deciding whether to kill them or not (the New Warriors in CW#1 for example.) No thought given to any rational reason why the character should die or whether there are any other moral considerations as to their responsibilities as the "gods" in charge of these fictional lives or the readers out there who invest emotion and concern for these characters. You know--those readers who keep voting the incumbents into office--I mean buying these insultingly jaded and disgusting comic books produced by this current editorial team? In fact, if any thought was given at all, it was probably a self-indulgent snigger back and forth over how the fanboys are gonna "love/hate" it.
Now, in CW#4 we have 3 major "events," one which fills the bill for the "life-changing" event; one which fills the bill for the pointless death; and one which is just indicative of the overly calculated manner in which this series has been put together.
The pointless death is that of Bill Foster/Goliath. In the course of this comic, we watched what appeared for all intents and purposes to be an utterly cold, angry, and evil Thor just tearing into Captain America's team of anti-establishment heroes. Goliath, completely unarmed, advances toward Thor, a god with a powerful deadly weapon, who proceeds to blast a bloody hole through Goliath's chest. Most likely, Foster died instantly. There was no point to this other than to advance an idiotic plot thread the writer/editors wanted to advance. So, they picked another "lame" character and threw him in front of the bus. In spite of the cheesy dialogue/narration that CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS gets nailed on sometimes, at least when you had a character like, say, Ultra-Man get killed, Marv Wolfman took it upon himself to give the character a final chance to be heroic - thus making his death instantly poignant rather than pointless. Here, Goliath's last words are insipidly "Get ready for the shortest comeback in history, Thor." And next he's on the ground with smoke billowing from his chest.
So, what was the plot that Mark Millar so desperately wanted to advance with Goliath's death? The one on the third "plot" card on his computer-generated outline for this series: (3) Sue Richards, shocked by the death of lame character to named later decides to leave Reed and join Captain America's anti-establishment team of heroes.
For this event to have occurred, the suspension of [dis]belief that Millar and the editorial team required of me was just too high. They took the father figure of the entire Marvel Universe and turned him into a murderer. No way around it. The Thor here was not really Thor but a clone created by Reed and controlled by Reed. He recklessly sent Thor into this battle knowing full well what was likely to happen. It may not rise to the level of premeditated first-degree murder, but it certainly rises to the level of second-degree murder. Thor here was nothing more than a dangerous weapon and Reed acted recklessly and with wanton disregard for others when he sent Thor into this battle. Reed is a murderer. He also is playing God in the manner in which he cloned Thor in the first place and then subjecting him to mind-control manipulation. Basically, this plot required Millar to "advance" the character of Reed Richards to the point that he is morally indistinguishable from Dr. Doom. There's a difference between arrogance and hubris. Both Reed and Doom have now crossed that line and there's really no rational way for Marvel to undo this unless they pull a deus ex machina that puts Reed under some sort of mind-control or they use Franklin or Scarlet Witch to rewind continuity in some way--both of which are Bobby Ewing-style cop-outs that are likely to even further damage Marvel's credibility with the fans.
There is such a coldness and unemotional aspect to the storytelling here that it almost reads like a computer wrote it. After murdering a longtime friend, Reed has sex with his wife and relaxes for a good night's sleep. During his sleep, Sue gets up and leaves him and drops off a note explaining why. The next day, Reed is utterly distraught by the realization of what he has done and tells Tony Stark he's out of this because he has got to find Susan and make things right! Well…if a writer who actually wrote these characters properly were writing it, that would've been what happened. Instead, the next day Reed and Tony are discussing clinically the fact that the balance has tipped in Capt. America's favor after the death of Goliath. No regrets. No mention of Sue. Hell, no mention of the fact that he has to explain to his son and daughter that Mommy has left them. Nope. It's simply, robotic advance the plot time again as we lead up to the stupid, I mean "big," reveal at the end.
Which is the other "event" I mentioned. Reed and Tony have organized a brand-new iteration of The Thunderbolts made up of utterly insane psychopathic costumed villains like Bullseye, Venom, and Jack-O-Lantern. There they go again, pulling out their character note cards and grabbing out the villains that all the fanboys go orgasmic over and throw them into the mix here as a DIRTY DOZEN-style taskforce put together by Reed Richards and Tony Stark. Well, if the Dirty Dozen had been made up of people like John Wayne Gacy, Ed Gein, the Son of Sam, Ted Bundy, and serial killers like that. It's like Millar and company are just pouring more and more grease on their fire of character disintegration. But what is one to expect from a comic where Capt. America delivers a stupid line like "You really think I'm going down - to some pampered punk like you?" This whole schism between Iron Man and Cap is so utterly forced and irrational that I cannot for the life of me understand how something so profoundly wrong could see print like this. It demonstrates first that Millar has no knowledge at all of the fact that prior to the Super-Soldier experiment, Steve Rogers was one of those scrawny little picked-on kids who grew up in the Bronx in the 20s and 30s. He was not a scrappy little gang kid. He also is not the type of person who harbors the type of immature class bias that this comment bespeaks. Cap is Marvel's embodiment of all that is best in the American ideal, which means he rises above petty biases and prejudices. Well, except in the dystopic worldview of Mark Nietzsche, I mean Millar.
The stench of that cigar-filled war room has apparently filled the entire Marvel Universe with cardboard cutouts rather than characters. If they aren't raging hate-filled narcissists, they are unemotional, detached, and completely amoral sociopaths. This is not the sort of world that engenders any sort of long-term commitment by the readers/buyers of the product. If every character is imminently unlikable and unrelatable, the reader is pushed away. No emotional connection to the characters means no commitment and that will, over time, result in an increasingly diminished fan base. This is an "event" that I can't stomach because it is utterly insulting to the characters, to the history, and especially to the comic-buying public at large. It's Marvel's big spit-in-the-eye to everybody who's ever given a damn about these Marvel characters.
Ribbons wrote:A scathing review of/manifesto against Civil War #4 over on the main page:
MasterWhedon wrote:Pretty solid issue overall, if a bit underwhelming. When the issue ended, I was expecting it to go on for six more pages or so. I'm sure it'll play nicely in trade, but I wanted a bit more as a monthly.
It's pretty clear at this point that the Pro-Registration side is being made to be the bad guy. I get the rationale, but it disappoints me a bit as Joe Q promised both sides would be represented equally. They've been given equal face time, sure, but the Pro-Regers are being portrayed as too villainous, IMO.
The Ginger Man wrote:For someone not reading any of the tie-in issues, I felt that Civil War #5 was a pretty big jump from #4. Obviously, I knew this was going to happen due to foreshadowing and the Marvel Hype/Spoiler Machine. But it felt like I'd missed about 5 issues in between, which I basically had. I know that's how these mega-events are handled now-a-days...have to buy 6 different books for a year to get the whole story...but that's weak. It feels like this is the new version of "varient covers." I'm just rather dissapointed in the whole thing. Bleh, I say....bleh.
The Ginger Man wrote:Oh! And it's nice to see you back, Adam!
bastard_robo wrote:
But this raises a question. I know why Punisher said he was getting in to this (With the new Thunderbolts getting involved on the pro side) put shouldnt he have just sat back and waited this thing out. He's not bound by the registration, hes just bound by the normal laws. I guess we'll have to wait and see where this gose.
The Ginger Man wrote:For someone not reading any of the tie-in issues, I felt that Civil War #5 was a pretty big jump from #4. Obviously, I knew this was going to happen due to foreshadowing and the Marvel Hype/Spoiler Machine. But it felt like I'd missed about 5 issues in between, which I basically had. I know that's how these mega-events are handled now-a-days...have to buy 6 different books for a year to get the whole story...but that's weak. It feels like this is the new version of "varient covers." I'm just rather dissapointed in the whole thing. Bleh, I say....bleh.
MasterWhedon wrote:Anyway, McNiven's very purdy cover for issue #6 is up HERE.
ONeillSG1 wrote:Jesus Christ, they haven't finished this yet?!?!
My god I am waiting for the entire bound volume so I can read the whole thing without monthly breaks.
ONeillSG1 wrote:Jesus Christ, they haven't finished this yet?!?!
My god I am waiting for the entire bound volume so I can read the whole thing without monthly breaks.
buster00 wrote:ONeillSG1 wrote:Jesus Christ, they haven't finished this yet?!?!
My god I am waiting for the entire bound volume so I can read the whole thing without monthly breaks.
If only it were monthly breaks; then they would be finished and we'd all be happy.
MasterWhedon wrote:Count me as one of the unfortunate few on the West Coast who'll have to wait 'til next week to get their hands on #6. My comics shop at two copies of the Michael Turner variant for $15 each, but no way am I paying that much for it. Ugh.
Leckomaniac wrote:MasterWhedon wrote:Count me as one of the unfortunate few on the West Coast who'll have to wait 'til next week to get their hands on #6. My comics shop at two copies of the Michael Turner variant for $15 each, but no way am I paying that much for it. Ugh.
That is an extreme bummer MW. I just finished reading issue #6, but I will refrain from discussing any details until all the folks have had their chance to read.
PLEASE REMEMBER SPOILER WARNINGS FOLKS! BE COURTEOUS!
MasterWhedon wrote:Count me as one of the unfortunate few on the West Coast who'll have to wait 'til next week to get their hands on #6. My comics shop at two copies of the Michael Turner variant for $15 each, but no way am I paying that much for it. Ugh.
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