Comic Book Resources

Waiting for the trade.

No. I did not buy it but a friend did and I read it at the store yesterday. I did purchase the first issue, but felt like nothing really happened. I’ve read the past issues at my LCS and like the art quite a bit, but could care less about what’s going on.

I read issue 4 at the store, got bored and went back to getting my fill of Retcon Punch! from Infinite Didio, I mean Crisis.

Wow, I must be in the minority here, but I bought it and loved it.

I think one of the reasons I’m enjoying Civil War more than most every one else is that I’ve always thought Reed Richards and Tony Stark were dicks.

Bought it. Hated it. Dropped the series.

Being poor has made me drop books I know will disappoint or infuriate me: Civil War, Ultimate X-Men Annual #2, Warlord…

Ye Olde Iowa – you aren’t in the minority.

I liked Civil War #4 but I didn’t love it but that doesn’t mean I’m going to drop the series.

Do we really have to have a stereotypical fanboy overreacting moment here?

I bought 1 & 2 and then decided, I might get the trade. Then I bought #3 because I wanted the McGuinness cover art. I’m torn on getting 4 now, especially with the overwhelmingly negative reaction to it.

#4 came out already? Hmm.

“Do we really have to have a stereotypical overreacting fanboy moment here?”

Why is it a fanboy moment if someone asks if you like it or not, and you say “Not”? If being a fanboy = not spending more money on something I didn’t like, then fanboy me up.

To be fair, Civil War has had some good issues already. #4 might not have been one, but there have been some good issues to give people hope that #4 was going to be good.

I’ve been dropping comics left and right mostly because they’re just so bad lately. I wouldn’t mind crossovers, just make them GOOD. I remember Mutant Massacre, Fall of the Mutants, and Inferno and they were all readable. But lately you can’t have a crossover without quality going down the toilet. Maybe because the size is too unmanageable now? The good thing is that the space in my budget has allowed me to finally buy things I’ve been putting off, like “Brownsville” and “Jew Gangster.”

I’ve been reading it and BUYING it, because it has the horrible fascination of a car wreck on the highway. You don’t want to slow down and look, but you just can’t help yourself. Besides, it is rather fun to see just how obnoxious they can make Tony Stark and Reed Richards. How on earth will they ever be heroes when this whole furshlugginer mess is over?

For what it is worth, I enjoyed Civil War #4. I think part of it is that I have not followed the mainstream Marvel U very much, so I am not taking this whole thing too seriously. Taken on its own, the issue is rather fun.

I actually kinda liked it. The killing of Goliath kinda sucks, but if you view this outside of any actual continuity, it’s a decent comic. More coherent than INFINITE CRISIS and better paced than HOUSE OF M.

Read it in the shop. It was actually the first issue of Civil War I have read. I felt so burned by Infinite Crisis that I’ve sworn off crossovers for a while, but I got curious because I’d heard good things about Civil War. This issue was so stupid it guaranteed that I won’t even buy the trade. Clones have been done to death. Only the Clone Saga on Ultimate Spider-man seems to be handling it well, but there’s still time to screw it up. I was also interested in the new Thor title, but if it’s about the clone there’s no way I’ll read it.

I’ve been buying it and enjoying it despite myself. It’s wildly lopsided, features some downright bizarre character moments (Reed is DRILLING into the Thor Clone’s SKULL) and a lot to dislike, so I do understand the carwreck feeling Sally P mentioned. But it’s also doing something I hadn’t expected: it’s made me actively curious as to how this is all going to end. It’s exciting me, and who could turn that down?

Civil War has pretty much been my “jumping-off point” for most Marvel Universe titles. I’ve been reading *about* it on the blogs, which mostly confirms that decision for me.

Bought it, loved it. Loved all of it. As a 30-year reader of comics, I agree with The Mutt that Reed and Tony have always been dicks.

I understand where some of the criticism is coming from, but don’t agree with much of it. For instance, people complaining both that they tried to clone a god AND that they weren’t successful. Hello. They weren’t successful BECAUSE they tried to clone a god. Or complaints about Sue leaving the kids with Reed miss out on the fact that it was a move intentionally designed to try to force him into thinking beyond his narrow frame of reference.

I bought it because I’m researching a book on the subject of crossovers, and that means I have to buy it. However, I can safely say it won’t be in the book under “Marvel’s Finest Moments”–not just the Thor-clone thing (did they clone Mjolnir from a chip of stone off the hammer?), but just in general the pacing of the story. Every issue of Civil War to date has followed the same trend–five pages early that are just huge, action-packed, and contain a major plot point, then a lot of treading water, then two pages at the end that contain a major cliff-hanger.

You could very easily condense CW #3 and 4 into a single issue. The funeral sequence, while nice, could have been done as a tie-in (in Iron Man), ditto with Sue’s leaving Reed (in Fantastic Four). The battle sequences in 3 and 4 could have been tightened up, and bang–you’ve got a much pacier, more exciting six-issue series.

Mind you, that six-issue series would still be a slow-motion train wreck, because they’re still deciding that they can make the mainstays of the Marvel Universe do actively horrible, unpleasant, and evil things, then continue to sell comics about them next month. The emphasis on novelty, change, and originality at the expense of character, plot, and the fundamental ethos of the worldview is a big problem with comics these days. (Which is a nice way of saying, “Yes, it’s all different and shocking to make Iron Man into a fascist, but there’s a whole world of ten-year old boys out there who might like to buy Iron Man comics if you just wrote the character as a decent human being–the way he was when you _read_ the comics instead of writing them.”)

So, yes, in my case, buying it because I’m hoping to make money off my purchase someday.

“More coherent than INFINITE CRISIS…”

David Lynch movies are more coherent than Infinite Crisis, so that’s not really saying much.

Silly nonsense.

I agree with John Seavey: where the heck did the Fauxlnir come from? Not that we’re going to have any chance at continuity, but….Thor is Asgardian, not a mutant. The hammer is the source of the weather control hooey, not him.

This is just baaaaaaaaaaad writing.

I bought it because my subscription requires me to order issues two months in advance. So once I find out an issue is crap, it’s already on its way. Keep in mind that I’m located in Norway, so I haven’t even received CW4 yet, let alone read it – ground shipping is a bitch. It’ll probably arrive in a week or two.

I’m still not convinced it’ll be all that bad though – I concur with the other posters regarding the dickiness of Reed and Tony. I think the series so far has been much better than I feared, to be honest.

On thinking about it–clearly, it’s not just a direct clone of Thor. Reed and Tony and Hank must have genetically engineered a super-human based on Thor’s DNA, but with additional genetic grafts (perhaps from Storm?) that simulate Thor’s non-genetic based powers. The hammer is technological, covering any aspects that the body missed.

So ThorClone is inaccurate. This is actually…

SimThor!

I felt it lived up to preceeding issues. I very much enjoy that this mini-series has been less about big battles and which huge character is going to *die* which month and more about the consequences of people of good conscience landing on the opposite sides of an important issue. In that way it was nice to see Sue leave Reed and, as she is essentially joining a criminal underground, leave her kids with him. It was also nice to see Goliath’s funeral and the truth that actions do have consequences. Putting in the mother who got the ball rolling on the whole registration act also serves to reinforce why Tony Stark, as a self-proclaimed futurist, would continue to follow the course he’s on despite having regrets about what has happened.

I agree with the previous posts in that I also always thought Tony and Reed were jerks, though not intentionally so. They’re written as characters who spend all their time looking at a much larger picture and even in real life when you do that, you lose track of the small things: the moments and the individuals.

where the heck did the Fauxlnir come from?

As is pretty clearly shown in the artwork, Mjolnir is technology based.

T.

Inferno wasn’t really readable. And actually, Fall of the Mutants wasn’t that good either. For one reason or another though, I did enjoy myself throughout most of the Mutant Massacre. Really, I think The Cron should do a Top 5 countdown for best multiseries crossovers. There sure aren’t a lot of worthwhile ones.

Read it in the store, like I did #1-3. As I put it to the guy at the store when I picked it up: “Let’s see how Quesada and company destroy the Marvel I loved in my youth THIS month!”…

I liked Civ War #4. And a clone of Thor doesn’t bother me… if anything, I like the new, merciless Thor better than the real one.

After all, the Norse gods of old weren’t really big on concepts like “mercy” and “pity.” Might makes right in the old Norse laws… the new Thor is in line with that.

And Reed Richards IS a dick! Nice to see Marvel owning up to that!

i read a friend’s copy of #3, and honestly liked it as it was better than i expected. i never really took to millar’s brand of realist superheroes in the past (he often feels like the halfway point between ellis and morrison, only “deeper”, case in point is the SimThor concept, something that sounds as if straight off of PLANETARY and SEVEN SOLDIERS, that whole hardcore scifi and grand comic book/world mythology and dubious superhero moral ambiguity mix), but i quite liked it, although i liked FRONTLINES more than CIVIL WAR, for the antho feel and concept (i hate the epiloguey literary end chapter verse war through the ages juxtaposition thing, though). i’m planning on saving up for the trades (FRONTLINES and CIVIL WAR) for when they come out. oh, and i like the art.

You’re all overlooking one of Civil War #4′s saving graces: Nextwave cameo!

Seriously, on the first page where we see Cap’s Secret Avengers returned from the battle, there’s a panel showing a bunch of heroes milling about, and Monica Rambeau and Aaron Stack are both in the background wearing their Stuart Immonen threads. I thought it was pretty funny.

So… yeah, I spent money on it. It’s actually the first issue I bought. As out-of-character as Millar is writing a lot of these heroes, it does manage to be coherent, paced okay (although less so in the last two issues), reasonably accessible, and easy enough to follow, something you can’t say for… well, pretty much any other crossover in recent memory.

It was pretty bad, but had its moment, and Jeff’s tapped into something reasonably attractive about the book: I genuinely have no idea where it’s going. That, at least, is worthy of some points.

Haven’t read all that much Iron Man, but Reed Richards has always been a bit of a dick. After all, the Marvel Universe got its start from Reed dragging his friends into criminal activity.

I don’t really have a problem with any of the plot points, though the execution has been off in parts. As I see it, Tony’s side is objective-driven intellect, Cap’s side is ideal-driven emotion. Tony’s side is coming off poorly from an ethics standpoint, but they’re also taking what they perceive to be as the quickest path towards resolving the conflict. It’s worth dirtying their hands if they can make things better/safer in the long run. The flaw in their POV is that they are using uncontrollable elements (Clone-boy and the criminals), and that, if they achieve success, the true power over the heroes will lie in the hands of a potentially unethical government.

Cap’s side recognizes the possibility of government power-abuse, which is really the only reason why they would contest the potentially beneficial law. Several heroes would improve their lives if they could get salaries and government benefits for what they do, and there would be a lower likelihood for screwups from crappy heroes.

Basically both guys are both right and wrong, and I feel the series has conveyed that well, for the most part. I think the format hinders it a bit, and it would work better as a larger series with fewer/no tie-ins, folding the rest of the important plot points into the main series. As I’ve been typing this, breaking down the plot elements in my head, I’m not really coming up with too many concrete flaws in the execution. I’m thinking the whole is less than the sum of its parts.

Obviously, Marvel has several better titles more deserving of the insane hype. But the core concept is sound, the execution is above average, and reception has been pretty positive on the whole. Several of my co-workers, most of them non-comic (or DC/Vertigo only) readers, have been throughly enjoying my copies.

yeah, I’m loving Civil War. The only character flaw I’ve seen so far has been Cable jumping ship. Other than that? This has been a great series so far, and #4 is the best issue yet.

The “overwhelmingly negative” reaction is just the internet being the internet – it’s more fun (and easier) to get riled up about something you hate and post about that than to go online, wade through the over-reactionary fanboy moments (“wasted” their money? yeah) and post why you liked it. So kudos to those who have – it’s important to have the opposing viewpoint every so often…

Bought it. Read it. Loved it.

I think a better question is how many people are wasting their money on 52? I bought the first four and read them. Bored to tears. Now I just read the odd issue in the shop and still feel bored to tears.

Civil War!

What is it good for?

Ab-so-lute-ly nuthin’!

HUH!

I enjoyed it myself. Not the strongest issue but nothing that would put me off reading further.

I haven’t bought a single issue of the Civil War series proper. I’ve bought the tie-ins in the series I read regularly (ASM, X-Factor, She-Hulk, & Thunderbolts), and the Young Avengers/Runaways mini, but that’s it.

Immediately after reading it and putting it down I felt really embarassed that I bought it. I felt like a sucker. Yes, we get it already. With twenty or so titles a month sledgehammering us over the head with the unmistakable message that conservatives are evil and liberals are righteous, how could we not? It’s just gotten tiresome all the way around. Characters are being painted into extreme corners just to hammer that point home. It’s really old.

I thought the lead in was nice, and up until recently, I’ve actually enjoyed Civil War. (I work in a comic store, so I try and read most of the new stuff coming in.)
I just think it’s a shame after setting up a situation where both sides can be right AND wrong simultaneously, they’ve decided to just resort to hamfisted political allegory.

I think the aggro over CW#4 isn’t the fact that it’s the worst thing ever, more that it should’ve been a LOT better.

Still. It IS pretty bad.

I don’t really have a problem with the political allegory being one-sided. I haven’t been reading ‘Civil War’ and I don’t plan to start doing so, but I’m cool with this particular ‘flaw’, although it does suck if Marvel acted like it was going to be fair and balanced.

For the purposes of superhero comics, the anti-side is pretty much the historically established side that we should be supporting, since as superhero fans, we’re all about the vigilantes.

And right at the start of Simonson’s run on F4, he had to deal with the exact same anti/pro-registration story, and sided ridiculously strongly with the anti-side. But it’s ok, because it’s Simonson, and because- again- it makes sense (at least to me) that the anti-side would be the one we sympathise with.

The real question is, what the hell happened to Reed’s political ideology between the Simonson run and ‘Civil War’?

I’ll buy the trade, I’ve been following the series and have enjoyed one or two of the tie-ins etc. But like incredibly sweet deep-fried foods, whats good now is fatal to the future. The sales to me are akin to curiosity buys for a “disaster in progress”. Disaster being not a good word for the Marvel in this case.

My main problem is that this mini-series essentially paints every single one of the MU characters into a corner that they cannot get out of – short of a messy retcon (Norman Osborne was behind everything!), unversal wipe (Crisis on MU earths), reboot (reboot), outright ignoring it (did anyone remember that Kang wiped out Washington DC with a few million casualties a few years ago?). It used to be that only Spider-Man and few select others (Cable, Iron Man?) had severely “damaged” continuities, but the Civil War is spreading it to everyone else.

There will come a time when the continuity of the Marvel Universe is going to be so far removed from what readers (long time and new ones) can identify with. Writers will be unable to construct new appealing storylines hobbled by the mess (a world destroyed by committee?) that Earth 616 has become. I cannot foresee any other outcome other than a massive cleaning of the Augean stables within the next year or two. Either everything gets wiped away in a massive cosmic retcon or we just shift the MU away from Earth 616 to a new one untainted by all the half-cooked badly thought through editorial decisions.

I buy but I cry at the same time…

um…freakin’ awesome comic. lahooosaher

Didn’t waste my money as I totally enjoyed this comic. Can’t wait to see what the hell happens next. Will be picking up the next one. Thanks for asking!

“I bought it because I’m researching a book on the subject of crossovers, and that means I have to buy it.”

That’s it! That’s the excuse I’ve been looking for for forty years! Thank you, John. You’ve made my mother very happy.

Stop trying to blow this internet mother out by getting fanboys to boycott something you personally don’t like.
I saw a hundred of these posts after Beetle got whacked, the All Star Batman launch, and now Civil War #4.
AND I AGREE all these comics are terrible but I’m not furious-
…. because I know people who love them.

My nephew is 10 and he has no preconceived notions about what Tony & Reed would resort to when pressed.
He just loves the idea of the whole Marvel Universe being rocked by something HUGE and eagerly awaits the next installment.

If people wanna buy them, good for them. The big crossovers are never gonna go away no matter how many hate letters you post.
I had to pay full price for all these titles and I’m not near as pissed off as some of the people who trash ‘em.

Dale – I don’t care if they stop or not. I just find the idea of continuing to buy something you don’t enjoy fascinating. As I mentioned, if you like Civil War, buy away! If you don’t like it, why are you buying it? That’s all I wanted to know.

And your nephew is one of the people who will be let down the most by this. If it’s getting him interested in comics, great. But what happens a year from now when everything goes back to the way it used to be? Will he be disappointed and turned off comics? We’re used to it. He may not be.

This book started out interesting with the distruction of This book is an absolute joke.But then for my money Millar is an absolute terrible writer who somehow manages to get onto projects with artists I like (Ultimates) so I have to plod through his crap all the time.

Never mind they held up half the production schedule waiting for the art for issue 4 to get finished and it looks rushed and half assed. If half the line only prints 11 (or 10) issues in 2006 instead of 12 do you know how much that will cost Marvel? Is anyone getting fired? Will Marvel NEVER learn to get all issues of a mini series in the vault before releasing it? Is there any sense of proffessionalism left in the comics industry?

And does anyone honestly believe that this will leave a permanent rift between Cap and Iron Man or Sue and Reed?
It’s already been said at by Joe Q. that they will be cranking Spiderman back to what Stan intended him to be. They can’t do that if the world knows he’s Spiderman. So look for the Beyonder or Onslaught or Mephisto to rewrite the history of the world and wipe this all clean…

“I don’t care if they stop or not. I just find the idea of continuing to buy something you don’t enjoy fascinating.”

It is fascinating but many of us MUST see how the story ends, even if we don’t particularly like the plot.

And I know even when you DON’T buy issue #5, you’ll be right back here offering commentary. Or someone else will. You’ll read what happens regardless, but many people resort to purchasing the book to find these things out.

“But what happens a year from now when everything goes back to the way it used to be? Will he be disappointed and turned off comics? We’re used to it. He may not be.”

He’ll be a comic fan. As you said, WE’RE used to it. If he likes them still, he’ll get used to it. If he doesn’t then Marvel’s gamble didn’t payoff.

But Civil War didn’t invent the incredibly audacious comic event, and it didn’t invent the cosmic do-over .

I was there when they killed Superman and broke Batman’s back.

The return of Jason Todd. Jean Grey. Bucky, for chrissakes.

We kept buying when they wiped those “tragedies” off the slate. What compels you to look out for the next generation?

How come Power man needs band-aid?

Meh. Haven’t been buying it precisely because I expected this. And it seems liekt he people who’ve said they like it either like it because Millar seems to agree with their fan opinions — “I always knew Reed and Tony were dicks, and now Marvel says so too!” — or because they “gotta see the end, even if they don’t like it” — also known as addiction (the compulsion to do something even after it is no longer pleasurable).

Civil War #4 is not a good comic. Its main plot point cannot be summarized in even the most carefully neutral language without sounding quite explicitly stupid.

But as decades of television and, increasingly, decades of comics have shown us, stupid sells. It sells big. Because stupid’s only requirement to be entertaining is that we shut off our brains and gape at the pretty colors and the incoherent events.

Hey,

I’ve figured out how it all ends. I was lost for a while there, but after seeing the brilliant originality of clone Thor, and the touching bring back a guy noone ever cared about and try to make the readers care when he dies events of CW4, I’ve got it.

Tony Stark’s been possessed by the disembodied brain of…..Adolf Hitler.

Gold I tells ya, gold!

I haven’t actually bought a single issue, but I’ve read about half to a third of it based on panels posted by various outraged bloggers. It doesn’t look bad based on my standards (I don’t care about violations of continuity or even longstanding characterization; I just want it to be internally consistent and interesting), and I might pick up the trade when it’s collected umpteen years from now.

The best part was The Watcher solemnly shaking his head, heartbroken and disappointed.

The only panel I connected with.

“And it seems like the people who’ve said they like it either like it because Millar seems to agree with their fan opinions … or because they ‘gotta see the end, even if they don’t like it’”

Or because we like good comics. But no, that would be silly…

Omar said…
“But as decades of television and, increasingly, decades of comics have shown us, stupid sells. It sells big. Because stupid’s only requirement to be entertaining is that we shut off our brains and gape at the pretty colors and the incoherent events.”

Well, yes and no, I think.

Yeah, ‘Civil War’ sure does look stupid to me, too.

But if they’ve figured out what the fans want and have come out with a successful tentpole title to hold up the rest of the company, then what’s stupid about that?

Wow, Marvel are releasing a title that the fans want to buy. How freaking stupid must they be?

Havn’t been to the shop this week, but I wasn’t planning on buying this, as I haven’t bought the prior three issues either. I do have a friend who bought it and had me read it under “you have to see how stupid this is” premises (and he LIKED the first 3 issues), which just reinforced my decision to leave it on the stands.

The thing that bugs me about Civil War, and Infinite Crises too for that matter, is the marginalization that happens to the core monthlies. Creative teams who were brought in to be the guiding force for characters like Captain America or Superman or Iron Man are suddenly belittled because they’re suddenly no longer the core influence (or at least the biggest influence after the company suits) on the character whose main book they’re writing! So basically, if somebody wants to know what the big thing happening with (for instance) Iron Man is they’re pointed out to Civil War and not Iron Man’s own book, and that seems kinda ass-backwards to me. But then, I’m not very big on the “shared universe”/”interconnected continuity” concept to begin with.

Because stupid’s only requirement to be entertaining is that we shut off our brains and gape at the pretty colors and the incoherent events

how exactly is it stupid?

and, like i said before, i’m not buying the monthlies but i’m actually planning on buying the trades for CIVIL WAR main and FRONTLINES, not because of my lefty leanings or because i agree that Stark and Reed are dicks (i don’t really care much about them to actually think about them on that level, and, at any rate, most strong Marvel leaderish characters are dicks (Prof X, Cyclops, Doc Strange, Namor, Bruce Banner, etc) with only Spider-man being the only truly accessible character in Marvel U), not because i have this nostalgic whathaveyou for the characters involved, or maybe i do but it doesn’t run too deep.

no, i’ll be buying the trades because i’m actually interested in the story, which you’ll have to admit, when stripped to its barebones and regarded out of continuity (like i do), is actually pretty interesting. i mean, come on, imagine this happening in, i don’t know, Astro City (or whatever superhero verse outside DCU and MU). i bet it’d be getting more positive comments if it was in a self-contained fictional universe, free from continuity gravitas, seeing as to how most of the negative comments about the book are about the characters not being true to themselves or their concept (Spider-man unmasking), about characters acting out of character (Stark and Reed).

and you know, it’s one of those done-in-one things, something more like what graphic novels ought to be, superheroey, yes, but it has that Steven Ambrose feel to it, only with spandex (or pleather, or whatever it is that these guys use now as costume material).

so, yeah, i’ll be buying this because so far, CIVIL WAR has the more intriguing high concept comic book thing compared to all the other high concept comic book things out there.

Allow me to clarify — I’m not calling the readers who enjoy Civil War stupid, nor am I calling Marvel or its writers stupid. I’m calling the plot point in Civil War #4 unutterably stupid, and that’s about it. I’ve made this point elsewhere, and there I was cautious enough to make sure I defended the premise and much of the prior plotting in Civil War as quite good in terms of premise.

The problem here, for me, is that a story that began as vaguely political, then became a passably constructed and well-executed hero vs. hero brawl, has now degenerated into a pile-up of genre cliches: Clones! Brainwashing! A second banana will die in this issue!

I don’t care what happens to Iron Man and Reed Richards in this. They’ve been around 40 years, and dozens of writers have had differing takes on the characters and concepts, and will continue to do so. Nor do I care much that Black Goliath and his dated codename are dead and buried.

Civil War #4′s plot twist is stupid because it amounts to “Superheroes make faulty killer clones of other superheroes that kill still other superheroes.” It is thematically dull — what, pray tell, do killer clones have to do with either the War on Terror, the gun control debate, or the vigilantism debate that Civil War started out trying to touch on? — and it fails a basic of risibility when summarized in ordinary language.

It’s not raising serious concerns about genetic engineering or about law enforcement methods. It’s a clone of a Shakespeare-spouting god that kills people with a hammer shaped lightning cannon. The scene doesn’t anger provok thought, it merely shocks and provokes disbelieving laughter at having bought and read the stupid thing now in front of the reader.

We see stupid things like this all the time in comics. That doesn’t make them anything other than stupid things we’ve all come to accept as features of the genre, things we breeze past to get to the worthwhile stuff. If they weren’t there in the first place, though, I suspect we’d get more of that worthwhile stuff in undiluted form.

That Civil War will still sell huge after this, in turn, may in fact suggest things about the Direct Market, just as the figures on Infinite Crisis did. It is smart marketing…but only because of the audience that it’s marketed to. As anything beyond a short-run cash grab that will hold Marvel’s stockholders for another quarter, Civil War #4 is simply not defensible.

what, pray tell, do killer clones have to do with either the War on Terror, the gun control debate, or the vigilantism debate that Civil War started out trying to touch on?

maybe it’s a metaphor on the lengths one goes through to prove/validate what others might see as a dodgy point, only filtered through comic book tropes?

in the same way that, say, the original VOLTRON lion cartoon was a metaphor about the ever-escalating American-Soviet-China arms race?

or NOW AND THEN, HERE AND THERE being based on the African (and West European) guerrila practice of pillaging a village and kidnapping their young to Stockholm them into their guerrila causes?

and by “West European”, i meant “West Asian/East European”.

to start this off, i have loved every issue of the civil war and all tie-ins. here’s the thing. i’m 21 yrs old, and recently re-acquainted myself with the world of comics. i quit reading when i was about 12. the last series i had any interest in was age of apocalypse. by then, the stories/characters/universe was so haywire and skewed that i couldn’t follow what was going on most of the time. then, a few of my biggest childhood desires came to fruition…. movies. spiderman, xmen, hulk, punisher, etc. i didn’t know a single kid my age who didn’t watch the xmen and spiderman cartoons every day after school and wish for a live-action version to come out. what this all boils down to, people, is that the civil war has re-introduced me back into the world of comics. i have been reading back-issues and trades for house of m, new avengers, etc. i had no idea that the world of comics had evolved into something worth paying attention to.

what i’m getting at is, if you have been a comic fan for years and years, have read and dissected and nitpicked thousands of books over time… then no “mainstream” book is going to fully satisfy you. same goes for anything else. if you put enough time into anything (art, music, sports, whatever), then you won’t like what is considered mainstream. i have playing music for most of my life, and as most musicians would tell you, we hate the radio. as a fan of not just comics, but great storytelling overall, the civil war series has me so tickled pink that i get to actually experience the feeling of not being able to wait for the next issue to come out. this feeling is something that i haven’t though i’d ever feel again, and this brings me right back to 12 yrs. old again. thank you, marvel.

adam!, Could you perhaps dissect that metaphor, then, or are you just saying it’s a shorthand way of saying that the pro-Reg heroes have abandoned their usual morals in pursuit of this goal?

Because if it’s the latter, then, frankly, they’ve just made this point last issue, and, really, in every issue so far, but in far more interesting and understated ways. My problem with the Thor-clone bit is that the plot twist itself is so OTT, so silly, and so gimmicky that whatever metaphor its making is buried under the sheer geekout lameness of “evil superhero clones made by superheroes who kill superheroes.”

More frankly, this particular plot twist is an especially stupid, absurdly over-the-top way to keep making that point in story that began by questioning the basic assumption of the superhero genre — violent vigilantism by decent folk. That it’s now wallowing in genre elements even more absurd and unreal than that seems to be a massive tonal or thematic problem if we take the context of serious metaphor.

We can maybe compare it to the end of Watchmen, which was also quite exaggerated given what had gone on before, but in that case the metaphor was readily apparent — Adrian kills a lot of people and then lies about it to achieve a greater good. He creates an “alien” because he needs a threat that’s beyond Cold War politics to unite the world against, and he needs it to kill a lot of people so that it’s taken seriously.

Taken in that spirit, I’m not sure what the Thor clone bit is meant to convey, aside from the notion that the pro-Reg heroes will do anything to win and have lost sight of their originally moral end. There’s nothing specific in the plot event that works as a metaphor; it’s just extreme, unsubtle shorthand. When you look at the details, it falls apart very, very quickly. Why a clone? Why a killer clone? Why a programmed killer clone?

Unless the point is that the pro-Reg heroes are anti-free-will psychotic eugenecists — Nazis, then — I don’t get it. And if the point is that they’re Nazis, well, sorry, Millar has left the building called “reality” far, far behind. There’s simply nothing going on in the real world today that seems to fit reasonably with the details Millar has chosen for his twist. It’s comic-book logic at that point where it becomes too detached from reality, from metaphor or allegory, for anyone besides the hardcore fanbase — 300,00 strong, based on sales figures — to much care.

Show me what I’m missing, then.

ryan — We’re making the same argument, then. You’re saying that it’s fun if you just don’t think too much about it; I’m saying that Civil War #4 doesn’t bear thinking much about.

Show me what I’m missing, then.

i don’t think you’re missing anything, as i actually agree with everything you’ve stated (clumsy heavy-handed beaten-over-head one-sided SimThor metaphor… MetaThor?), it’s only our reactions to it that are different. it’ll always be superhero comic book logic and it’ll always be detached from reality (i mean, it’s a genre that chooses to have norse god Thor wear spandex and fly about with scientists and mutants and super soldiers instead of tackling the theological whathaveyous such a being might have in the world, maybe validate nordic mythology over, say, Islam and Christianity for their lack of representation in the Marvel U), and i’m okay with that because once we get too critical about it (like how you’re being (my opinion, of course) too critical about it), the entire story, metaphors and motivations and superhero comic books’ most basic foundations will all be rendered meaningless and weak and hackneyed and childish.

and to butt in on your conversation with Ryan, it seems like we’re all making the same argument here, pro or antiCW: that it’s not much to think about, which makes our efforts to criticise it by holding it up against the finer points of literary devices a bit weird, because it doesn’t hold up, not even at the beginning when it was trying to be subtle, because the story still has to make Marvel Comic Logic, because it doesn’t exist in a vacuum, but (and here’s the funny bit) i read (and will read, when the trades our out) them as such, heavyhanded metaphors and all, because, put simply, which mainstream superhero comic book metaphor isn’t heavyhanded?

i will buy the trades because, again, it has one of the more interesting mainstream superhero comic book plots around, a bit mindless, yes, but beautifully so, and with just enough smarts and balls (however fake or biased) for me to marvel (ha!) and think about (so i guess it’s not THAT mindless). i need that sort of thing every now and then, being someone who has the complete Eddie Campbell ALEC books, three OPTIC NERVE collections, a majority of the PANTHEON graphic novels (Satrapi, David B, Clowes, Ware, Beyer, Katchor), not to mention all the Brautigans and Murakamis and Eggerses and Sinclair’s and Moorcocks and Moores, etc etc etc, in my sagging swollen to the brim bookshelves.

and re: WATCHMEN, that book is totally unreliable when taken against every other mainstream superhero comic book saga, as (like ASTRO CITY) it doesn’t have the continuity gravitas that most comic book franchises do (only the illusion of continuity, but that’s all it really is, which is, i suppose, a testament (or secret?) to the comic book’s greatness). it only shows us the details that Moore and Gibbons want us to see and know to have that book’s alien invasion THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL properly motivated, meaning Ozymandias doesn’t have 60-odd years of straight history to have us fanboys yelling Foul! at him being dicky and out-of-character (which i believe he was being, and i believe everyone else in the book had that same thing in mind, as everyone thought Ozymandias was the least likely guy to do it, that’s why they were all shocked and awed when they (and us) finally find out it was actually him orchestrating everything).

addenda: at least CIVIL WAR is trying to say/comment on something OUTSIDE of the confines of mainstream superhero comic books (Real World Politics, compared to, say, ALL STAR SUPERMANs (and every GM book out there (i loved THE FILTH, by the way)) overall general theme of Change and Renewal and Evolution) by actually using mainstream superhero comic book tropes, unlike most stuff out there (pretty much everything with Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee, some of the weaker JLA stories… oh, and a bunch of Mark Waid and Kurt Busiek stuff, too) that are just… there… and not even trying to say something worth listening to.

I liked it,but the real reason I’m here is to ask if there is a way to see the comic online. I know youtube has manga comics you can read page for page. Any luck with these comics.

Myweasel@yahoo.com