Civil What?

Whose side are you on?

That’s the question posed by Marvel some months ago when their latest event was announced.

Whose side are you on?

What if you don’t care about the outcome or the issues?

Superhero Registration. Iron Man Vs. Captain America. Huh? Really? This is the Civil War that has been building in the background of marvel books since I have been reading?

Surely, there is a mistake. This…this…dispute cannot possibly amount to a war?

This was supposed to be the alternate version of civil war…the ‘What If’ version, right?

Right?

I have been a life long Marvel comics fan and I have been waiting for the moment when what has been building would finally happen. The real battle. The real war.

Mutants versus Humans.

After House of M, what more perfect opportunity could there be for nefarious hidden government forces to rise up and strike? What more perfect time than when the mutant population is effectively wiped out save for a small, alleged, 198? What makes for a better story than our embattled, decimated mutants struggling for their survival against new and improved sentinels and former friends and allies?

And how do you make other heroes fight to capture and eradicate their mutant allies and friends? There’s the registration act that someone had such a hard on for. They are forced to register and fight to capture the remaining mutants, or they are imprisoned. Stanford could still be the catalyst that set the events in motion. It would just be used to motivate anti mutant hysteria as opposed to anti hero.

When questioned as to why the Civil War was not Mutant/Human at Comic-Con ‘06, Mark Millar responded, and allow me to paraphrase here, “Too much has happened with Mutants. They need a rest.”

It’s disappointing on a massive scale.

So many brilliant and emotional moments could have come out of an event like this, events that mean something to readers. Maybe deaths that don’t fall flat and seem pointless (Cyclops dying at the hand of a super sentinel perhaps?). Instead, we get Goliath. Dead by the hand of a clone…of Thor. Not to insult any Goliath fans but really, in the long run, what does Goliath’s death mean? A 12th string character that hardly anyone remembers existed?

The main problem with Civil War as it stands is its lack of emotion and resonance. It’s a big “so what?” This is an event where nothing should be safe. Nothing sacred. Sure, Spiderman revealed his identity, and honestly, the Spiderman civil war books have been among the best of the entire event. Shouldn’t the main issues of an event be the best? The Civil War issues of late have been more of an overview of what is happening in the other civil war books. Shouldn’t they be the driving force of the story and not the back up?

What went wrong? It seems like the whole thing turned into a cluster…something. Where do they go from here? Perhaps Scarlett Witch will return and whisper, “No More War.” Maybe they will merge the ultimate universe into main stream continuity? Maybe they’ll do nothing and just let this dead dog lie.

I guess we won’t know until we get there. Maybe there is still hope for a real war. Doubtful, but I’ll cling to it. Until then, I will end this by calling the Civil War what it really is: The Biggest Ball Drop in Recent Comic Memory.