The comic may be delayed some more, but the fans at the Bendis Board know what side they’re on:
Since Civil War began, everyone has been dissing the pro-reg side, calling them machavellian and comparing them with the current neocons in DC. But you know what? I’m a liberal teenager and Tony is right. What the hell does Cap think he’s going to do after he “wins” this war. Just turn around to everyone and say “ok, as you were. Frank, try to lay off the killing.” There’s no plan other than to retain the status quo under sneakier circumstances.
Anti-Reg supporters have been pointing to registration as abridging liberties, but when did it become a liberty to anonamously don a mask and fight crime with no training or accountability? Yes, I realize that there is concern that once it is unquestioned, superpowered people who dont want in on the hero game will be drafted into superteams under government control. Tony has concerns about this. He is attempting to obliterate that concern by working within the system. Registration is only a threat when people with no idea about the lifestyle are controlling it. Once Tony is head of SHEILD (and he will be) he will be controlling the enforcement of the act instead of merely acting out its will.
If all the superpowered people were united, does anyone really think washington could tell them what to do? If they are united, legal, and within high ranking positions, theres nothing anyone could do to boss around the superhumans. Cap shouldnt be worried about the act, Congress should be.Looking back at the real civil war, Tony is the union and Cap leads the confederates. Yes, the confederates owned slaves, but they saw the abolishment of slavery as an affront to their constatutional freedom, their right to hold property. The Union saw the abrigement of that “right” necessary for the greater good. So it is with Cap and Tony. Cap defends a harmful liberty (anonimity and a lack of responsibility) and while Tony sees the the destruction and harm those staples have caused (Teen heroes with little to no skill or training leading to Stamphord) and precieves it as better for the public and the heroe community in general to unite under it. Look back to the Illuminati Special: he saw this coming. He knows, if they continue to splinter themselves and dont stand as a united entity, the people that all the anti-regs dont fear are going to have the justification in the public’s eye to wipe them out. If they come together, theres nothing anyone can do to stop them.
So yeah, Go Tony.
And the problem with the pro-reg side? Apparently, the creators behind the comics:
“I’ve been pro-reg the entire time, which is why it annoys me when they constantly look and act like assholes.”
“I think the problem is that none of the writers understand the pro-registration perspective. And they’re writing it pretty damn ineptly.”
“The Pro-Reg side has a validity to their argument, sure, but there are certain aspects of what they’re doing that are violating liberties(secret prisons in the negative zone, the way Speedball was held without charges, unleashing the murderous Clor) as well as being in league with pretty shady characters and shady rationales(the Damage Control angle). In addition there’s the whole releasing violent, murderous killers into the streets. The Green effin’ Goblin, people.”
“I still maintain they are all acting WAY over the edge in a villainous manner for a reason. I would agree 100% that all of the pro-reg out of character crap we’ve seen so far would indeed be bad writing if it didn’t turn out to be a villain behind it all or someone like Hate-Monger controlling their minds. Seriously, some of the things Reed and Tony have said and done are so far out of character they might as well be villains.”
“I’m not sure this story was ever supposed to be an even-handed debate. Some of the thinly-veiled critiques of current political issues(the ‘rights’ of enemy combatants, war profiteering) don’t really leave room for two sides of the coin. One of the things that really does bother me, as you alluded to, is the weak weak words being putting into the words of some characters that alter how we think of them. The Reed Richards thing in particular bothers me. A couple years ago he’s willing to risk his entire family’s well-being and defy every kind of international law imaginable to do what he thinks is right and now the best they can give him is ignoring his family and saying ‘You have to follow the law if it’s the law, right or wrong’.”
“Yes, it’s being badly handled. Civil War shouldn’t be a ‘good guy / bad guy’ issue but Marvel clearly felt the need to cast it that way with pro-reg as the bad guys. I think pro-reg is the only side that makes sense. But for Marvel to reestablish the status quo when it’s all over it can’t succeed.”
December 1st, 2006 at 12:44 pm
I’m a conservative Twenty-something, and you’re right on. You’re really a teenager? Dang, you write well.
December 1st, 2006 at 1:51 pm
HATE MONGER
December 1st, 2006 at 2:18 pm
Civil War was a story that was placed into the Marvel U. and all the characters are mere actors on the stage.
’nuff said.
December 1st, 2006 at 2:58 pm
The second Clor appeared, my interest was killed….
December 1st, 2006 at 3:32 pm
My problem with the Registration Act is that I can’t figure out what justifies it under the Constitution. The Constitution enumerates 18 powers to Congress, and there’s nothing explicitly stating that they can force superheroes to register their identities.
That, and the whole denying-people-trials thing. Definitely precluded by the 4th and 14th Amendments. You can’t fairly compare this to the Guantanamo situation, since that was a Geneva Convention issue, not a U.S. Constitutional one.
Now, if the State of New York (where 90% of all superheroes live) wanted to require registration, and allowed trials for non-registrants, that would be ok. Legally speaking.
December 1st, 2006 at 3:37 pm
my problem with the pro-reg side is creating fake Thor who kills one of thgier own and sending out known super villains to take out the anti-reg group. yeah, go Tony, kill your friends over a disagreement.
December 1st, 2006 at 4:23 pm
Actually, his argument about “harmful liberty (anonimity and a lack of responsibility) and … the destruction and harm those staples have caused” is the gun control argument writ large in the US. Anti gun-control advocates would perhaps take Cap’s side in the matter – its a matter of personal liberty to own or not own and use a gun and you should only punish those who are actually acting irresponsibly with it (i.e. those who kill someone with a gun, use it to start a panic, give it to a baby panda, etc.), while the pro-gun control advocates would argue that these sorts of irresponsible behaviours should be cut off before they become a problem by limiting who can own a gun and what types of guns they can own. (The American Civil War argument that he gives is a bit of a mess to because there are many, many different causes – political, economic and social – for the Civil War and they blend together into a vile stew that led not only to the Civil War, but to the last century and a half of aftermath of the war that we’re still dealing with in this country.)
The real argument is whether to allow vigilantes to fight crime in your country without being members of a sanctioned law enforcement agency. In a “real world” setting this is clearly a non-starter – a society ruled by laws does not allow any yahoo with a gun to enforce those laws as he undertands them. How much you want your comic book superhero worlds to be like the real world is left as an exercise to the reader and his or her wallet.
December 1st, 2006 at 5:07 pm
Umm.. in Authoritative Action wasn’t Reed admittedly pushed over the edge and a little crazy. Also, it wasn’t really a law that was going ot affect them for the rest of their lives, it was Reed stripping Doom of all his toys and imprisoning him.
Thats a reeeeeally bad argument.
December 1st, 2006 at 5:55 pm
If ‘Civil War’ were about licensing and training superheroes, and arresting violators under threat of fine and imprisonment (after some sort of due process), then the pro-reg side would be absolutely right. In the United States, before you are allowed to do things that have a high potential for endangering the lives of others, you are usually required to get training and licensing–driving, owning a gun (though I think there ought to be more training there), practicing medicine, teaching, selling alcohol, piloting an airplane, hunting, etc. If you’re found doing something like that without the proper training or licensing, you usually face a fine and possibly prison time, depending on the severity of the violation.
This bears, as you may note, little resemblance to Civil War. In Civil War, the government is forcing superheroes to register and work for the government, otherwise they will be imprisoned indefinitely without due process. This would be as if the government forced everyone who got a driver’s license to pilot government transports at their whim.
And if you drove something else, they would send serial killers out to catch you.
It is, in that way, that the pro-registration side is wrong. That, and their cavalier attitude toward associating with criminals and endangering the public.
December 2nd, 2006 at 11:37 am
The biggest problem I have with Marvel’s handling of Civil War as a story has been the vast inconsistencies throughout the line. In one book, there are complexitites and shades of grey to the argument. In another, the pro-registration side is villainous and wrong wrong wrong. In one book, registration doesn’t mean you have to work for the government. In another, it does.
I can understand how exact story points (like the details of the Reed/Sue breakup) might get muddled between books. It’s annoying, but I can understand how it could happen. But it just seems like they could have prevented a lot of the larger problems with a one- or two-page memo outlining both sides of the debate and defining exactly what the Registration Act says.
Of course, the kinds of things I’m talking about would require solid long-term planning and communication with the talent pool. And those are things that neither Marvel nor DC seems very good at.
December 2nd, 2006 at 4:35 pm
“This bears, as you may note, little resemblance to Civil War. In Civil War, the government is forcing superheroes to register and work for the government, otherwise they will be imprisoned indefinitely without due process. This would be as if the government forced everyone who got a driver’s license to pilot government transports at their whim.”
Actually it’s more like if you wanted to arrest criminals and solve crimes then you’d have to become licensed and work for the government. Which…you do. It’s not like driving a car at all. It’s like being a vigilante versus being a police officer. Now there are other arguments you can make against Civil War, but likening it to getting your car license is a flimsy one.
December 3rd, 2006 at 1:17 pm
In these days of worldbuilding and overly ambitious subtext in the present day comic book narrative, I sometimes miss the days when an Iron Man comic could be released with a nose on the faceplate.
December 3rd, 2006 at 3:24 pm
The funny thing about this whole Civil War thing is that it seems to ignore the bulk of Marvel history. As a young(er) reader I was always under the impression that the super teams and individuals were either given some sort of governmental oversight or they were illegal and treated as vigilantes. Hence the Avengers were always quasi-governmental to varying degrees and were allowed to operate legally (while the FF are often treated as beloved adventurers friendly to government, not to mention a group deeply tied to their local economy). Meanwhile characters like Hulk, Spider-Man, Daredevil, Power-Man, etc etc are often seen to have tense if not adversarial relations with law enforcement agencies.
So it is assumed that while some vigilantes garner some goodwill over time (Spider-Man) or are tolerated and protected by their communities (Daredevil, Power-Man), for the most part they are seen as having tense relations with the cops (usually with the “exception” inside the force who helps individual heroes out).
The X-Men are a wonderful case in point. They have always had an “outside the law” feel to them. Usually having to dodge government forces hostile to them in order to survive. A thematic trend that continues mostly unmolested by Civil War.
Looking closer at the Civil War we see the problems when super-hero books try to mimic the “real world” with its “real” problems. Because in the real world there are already laws against people like Spider-Man. It would just be a matter of enforcement. The only “legal” groups would work under the auspices of state or national government. Forced conscription into SHIELD (which I always thought was a UN venture), would never happen in the “real” world. So really, if your talking about the real world, Cap is right that these new laws stamp on freedom and are redundant.
But really, it seems that most of us are so used to thinking about these books within the context of a shared universe that we are constantly trying to rationalize the poor thinking and planning of this series. The boosters have to acknowledge this to some level. The characters *are* acting out of character. Arguments that would be settled in a couple issues back in the good old days are turned into friendship-destroying calamities.
I would be far more receptive to the “Pro-Reg” side if they were merely out to improve enforcement of existing laws and were introducing the “50 State Initiative” in order to make illegal vigilantes redundant. In effect to make the government step up to a need that super-powered folks have been pointing out.