Then you can look at all those military protestors or the college campuses that refuse to allow the military to visit or recruit, even though one could argue they’re “free riding” because they reap the benefits of a strong military (freedom from invasion, internal peace).

There are protestors and political figures who, while not trying to take guns away from cops and military, do make every effort they can to control and limit how cops USE those guns. That’s why I conflated police and military into my gun analogy.

Mind you, I’m not defending Civil War. Even though I think the gun analogy works, I think Civil War approached the subject horribly.

It’s not outrageous, but there’s a flaw — at least as you present the analogy here. Though it’s written in such a way that you seem to conflate the two groups of gun-owners you wish to look at here, your “really decent people who never kill” and your “cops and the military” are two separate groups (though one would hope there is also real decency in the police force and the military). No gun control group that I’m aware of is interested in regulating the guns of police officers and soldiers, who are — to my mind — far more analogous to superheroes than would be a guy with a .38 up on a high shelf of his closet.

This is perhaps the most important point that’s being overlooked. That the book ended with Tony and the government winning isn’t what makes it bad; it’s how it ended was simply bad writing and seemingly no editing at all to improve it! It’s like Darth Vader not only winning in the end, but that the good guys surrender and tell each other that the dark force was right all along. It’s like the pig being roasted for dinner after Charlotte’s work. It’s breaking the trust of the audience by completely changing the ground rules simply to make a point or shock value.

Comic books are escapism. Of course it’s a totally fantasy world with it’s own rules and superheros with or without powers would never work in the “real world” society. The entire Civil War story states the obvious. Big whoop. I read comics today for the exact same reason I loved them as a young boy. They were exciting, interesting stories that allowed me to escape to a world where the bully got what he deserved for a change and all these other cliches we were told about Truth, Justice, and the American Way were somehow real.

A small amount of reality is good for the characters in the story. Giving Spiderman familiar problems helps us identify with him. But Marvel just turned their entire world into the very thing we’re reading the books to escape from. It’s not that the grand idea of individual liberty and justice is being trampled on, it’s that our heroes are the ones responsible for it and enforcing it. That’s bad writing.

None of this means that superheroes have to be stupid or childish. It only means that they can’t be realistic in particular ways. Unrealistic genres can actually be faithful to some emotional truths in ways that more realistic ones can’t because our inner lifes aren’t all that subject to realistic constraints either. We wish, hope, and fear things on a scale that reality itself can’t accommodate, and it takes external constraints like the ones economists and sociologists study to tie our inner lives down to what reality can handle. Stories that let some of those hopes and fears out into the surrounding world can tell us true and important things about what’s normally locked up inside. “With great power comes great responsibility” gets all muddled in reality, but as the drive for a character in a world where there’s more scope to try for it, it’s pure gold. Ditto for a lot of other classic motifs, from “My enemy, my ally!” to “In brightest day, in darkest night…” These can be the fodder for great stories for adults and children alike.

What we’ve got here is the worst of both worlds, really: far too much reality to let heroes remain heroic (admirable, role models, inspirations, anything of the sort), but far too much power fantasy to say anything interesting about real life. Real-world debate about the proper role of authority and governance isn’t about people given super-strength by radioactive spiders, and nobody in a position of official or unofficial leadership was ever a frozen and thawed super-soldier of half a century ago. They aren’t good metaphors for guns or sex offenders or anything else in the real world – they’re only expressions of things inside us. It’s not even like trying to eat soup with your shoe instead of a spoon; it’s more like trying to eat soup with the barrel of a pistol. You won’t get a good meal, and afterward the gun is likely to not fire as best it might.

Civil War’s problem overall is not plot; if you simply rattled off the plot points without context, you would have an acceptable if perhaps not brilliant piece of pulp fiction. The problem is how the plot points are reached… y’know, the story. I think there’s so much outrage because Civil War takes an idea of amazing potential in and of itself, and pisses it away in favor of meaningless hysterics and utterly disorganized shunting of major plot points into minor spin-offs books. Event books and giant interlocking storylines could be good for sales (and even make for good comics) if only they were competently edited, which by and large they are not.

I might hate the SHRA a lot less if it had any concern for civil liberties, but you can chalk that up to either the fascism of the Marvel Universe or Mark Millar’s inability to think things through. As it is, it’s really really bad.

skank, whore, douchebag, fucking, moron (DC’s Supergirl)

superboy punch, worst ever, insulting to my intelligence, dark, twisted, insane, pointless, crossover fatigue, parody is WAY better than the real issue (DC’s Infinite Crisis)

baffling, not what I pay money for, crap, shit art, weird, hack (Batman the interminable novel issue)

dropping all, big two have lost it, implosion, disrespectful, no idea of what he is writing, hack, second rater, all about the $$$ (too many to list)

ALL OF THE ABOVE [seriously, no kidding check for yourself]: Marvel’s CIVIL WAR.

Why not? Isn’t that sort of intimate with the idea of collaborative fiction? It’s not like we’re talking The Continuing Adventures of Darcy and Elizabeth or Double Indemnity II or other Stand Alones that were never meant find further expression.

Ostensibly, the purpose of keeping these characters in print is to tell new stories with them. And new stories implies change to the status quo. So really, why shouldn’t creators take characters (and especially the ones people love) and play around with them, have them grow, change, die, and generally just explore what there is for them to explore?

I think the bigger problem is that there isn’t enough exploration. That there isn’t enough screwing with the characters lives. That there too often a simple return to status quo. That there’s too often a return of all the toys back into the box.

I think that’s why people outgrow comics.

Really? Because I bet he’s looking across the ocean and saying, “I’m RICH, bitch!!”

Hey, I said I was being “VERY GENEROUS” with my interpretation. To consider that this wasn’t Millar’s intent, to think that Millar’s hamfisted political metaphors didn’t hide a more subversive, challenging allegory…that…that, my friends, would surely drive me to madness.