I know there’s more to talk about in Marvel’s direction than Civil War (which is neither all that Civil, or a War. Discuss.) but I did happen to notice some interesting things tucked into particular tie in books that answer a few questions that the main title isn’t even touching.

If you’ve been peeved at the treatment of Tony Stark and Reed Richards, if you’d wondered who benefits from a superhero catastrophe, or even want a little bit of hope in the form of some good, ol’ fashioned evil, read on, True Believer.

First! Damage Control hops school playground killing Nitro up on MGH to cause the Stamford Disaster to make more money! Ripped from the headlines, this cult favorite faction (no really, Marvel.com told me) is gaining government contracts in the wake of the SRA and had a direct hand in supplying a known villain with the means to blow up a innocent elementary school!

Let’s start from the basic principles: superhero fights super villain, makes a big mess, Damage Control gets paid to clean up said mess. But what I’m seeing here, from Damage Control’s own records, is Damage Control doing everything they can to increase the number of superhuman fights, the point being more fights, more mess, more money.

… explaining why Damage Control was hooking Nitro up with MGH; bigger bang, more buck for them. And the Registration Act’s the motherload: in addition to cleanup, they’re getting government contracts for superhuman registration, evaluation, training, you name it. Saw this kinda thing in ‘Nam, first Gulf War and Iraq, too; where there’s war, they’re war profiteers.

Not only is this a very lovely page by ‘Ringo from Wolverine #46, but certainly something strangely unexplored by our main heroes from Civil War. Normally, one would think that when things get bad, one would look for the cause behind the curtain, the root of the problem of why people who have worked seamlessly with one another in the past would be at each other’s throats. Even in our modern world has the idea of the ‘War Machine’ (sorry, not Rhodey) and the danger of the military-industrial complex, so it’s surprising that the futurists and think tanks in the Marvel U haven’t thought to who benefits from the Superhuman Registration Act chaos. Are they too short sighted? Is the idea actually too realistic for comic readers to explore? Are we just looking for the next punch to the face rather than the political machinations behind that punch?

In Civil War: Frontline #7, Ben Ulrich gets to Iron Man with a simple question a lot of fans have asked themselves since Civil War #4: what the H-E-Double Hockey Sticks is Tony Stark doing? Implications of implanted microchips into the brains of the Registration’s Own Thunderbolts team to keep them from doing harm are mentioned and when presented with the accusation, Iron Man drops the entire conversation and walks away.

I ran into a mutual friend of ours on the streets, last night — someone who, by every stretch of the imagination, the American people should expect to be incarcerated until Doomsday… and that person’s behavior led me to believe that he was not fully into control of this actions.

So what I want to know is this, Mister Stark: was it overwhelming arrogance or just overwhelming stupidity that led you to make a deal with the devil known as the Green Goblin?

Civil War: Frontline is the ‘Alias’/'The Pulse’ comic that fits into the grand scheme of the crossover, catching all the minor players and the ‘human element’, so to speak, of the Daily Bugle’s pursuit of justice. While the question posed wasn’t all that professional and he’d just gotten done taking care of a huge Registration battle (*cha-CHING!* says Damage Control!), the ‘No comment’ approach is very telling just as it is on CNN. If Mr. Fantastic and Iron Man are using mind control devices on the worst villains of the Marvel Universe, the very idea should be preposterous enough to toss an overhanded quip about it. Some sort of flat denial, even a ‘if you print such a ridiculous idea, you’d be out of your mind’. But the interview is over and readers’s minds fill in the blacks. We think of the last time a politician walked off the podium in the middle of a press conference and bring the Marvel Universe that much closer into our lives. Marvel’s always been patterned off the ‘real world’ and now this includes some of our darker aspects as well.

But nothing so dark as Captain America #22, the first Civil War tie in from the two major players. Sharon Carter, Steve Rogers’s flame and SHIELD Agent, tells a staff psychologist about her failed attempt to stop Captain America from starting the rebellion. Confused by her feelings for him, she gives the cape killer SHIELD agents the wrong address for the sting and watches as her man goes off to fight against her agency. The psychologist leaves, goes to a cemetery and turns out to be Doctor Faustus working with the truest symbol of evil that the Marvel Universe has to offer.

Foolish woman… I wish I could be there to see it. Though it’s almost enough to watch these American idiots battling each other… forgetting who their real enemy is.

The Red Skull, through Doctor Faustus, has infiltrated SHIELD. All bets are off. This isn’t about freedom vs. security anymore, or analogy between the real and the fantastic breaks down because using someone as dispicable as the Red Skull really doesn’t have anything close to equivolent in the modern day. He is the very fantasy of evil, trained by Hitler himself, the embodiment of Nazi intimidation and a nefarious mastermind that has endured for decades. Civil War, at least in my mind, has gone from strange reflection of the US political climate to the covert and ugly machinations of a top rate super villain. I could not be anymore relieved; that encroachment of our world into theirs recedes like the tide. The Red Skull, ladies and gents.

The next punch is bound to be fantastic.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 11th, 2006 at 1:00 pm and is filed under Marvel, The Fifth Color. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.