The Road to Civil War: review
May. 2nd, 2007 08:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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honorh wrote me a Dr. Who/Torchwood crossover which I adore, Smith and Harper.
In unrelated news, the trade collection The Road to Civil War arrived. I have read bits and pieces of the Marvelverse-spawning Civil War saga, individual issues and scans, but I thought I'd give the collected prelude a shot. It collects the following invidual stories New Avengers: Illuminati (Brian Bendis), Fantastic Four: The Hammer Falls (J. Michael Straczynski, Amazing Spider-Man: Mr. Parker Goes To Washington (J. Michael Straczynski), and ends at the point where the Civil War saga starts.
Observations by yours truly:
The Fantastic Four story is easily the worst of the lot. If I hadn't seen JMS in the credits, I'd not not have believed it. The return of DOOM is easily the most entertaining part, and incidentally reveals that the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
theatrical_muse version is dead-on, but otherwise: dull. Which thankfully can't be said of the other stories, though they already hint at what, according to likeadeuce, would turn out to be a problem for Civil War: the writers being not all on the same page as to what kind of story they were actually writing, and how the characters picked were supposed to fit in it.
Brian Bendis clearly thinks he's writing a tragedy, with Tony Stark/Iron Man as the tormented hero. (Actually, Tony Stark is the most interesting character in this volume, full stop, but I'll get to the difference in JMS' characterisation later on.) The backstory which kicks off New Avengers: Illuminati, set "many years ago", has various superheroes of the Marvelverse meeting shortly after two alien races nearly wiped out the Earth. Iron Man thinks they should have seen this coming and would have if they had pooled their resources, and suggests getting organized; unite all the various superheroes, mutants or otherwise, in one organization. Everyone else is against it, and all the pro and con arguments are fairly written, i.e. the writer doesn't make anyone look stupid, though Namor comes off as a bigot; he does get to make an excellent point, though ("how many convicted criminals and supposed ex-mutant terrorists do you have on the Avengers right now? (...) And you want to shine a spot light on all of this?"). The best argument against is given by Reed Richards, and they're going to be important in the long term ("who decides who runs it? Who would it answer to?"). None of these arguments, however, devaluates the point Stark originally brought up: that the superhero status already carries a responsibility, and assumptions of responsibility on the part of the world in general. After this prologue, we move to present time action, when the Hulk apparantly has leveled Las Vegas (more or less), and Tony Stark has a very meta comicverse discussion with Maria Hill, Commander of S.H.I.E.L.D.
"You know all those people Norman Osborn killed as the Geen Goblin? When does it become Spider-man's fault? (...) Spider-man's the onewho has Osborn by the throat three times a year. But he never does what he has to do. He webs him up, they throw him in jail, then Osborn breaks out and he goes on another homicidal rampage. How many times does that have to happen before the whole damm thing becomes Spider-man's fault?"
This is usually known as the fan discussion of "are the Joker's victims Batman's fault by now?" There is an inherent unfairness in the narrative - supervillains breaking out and getting resurrected from the dead on a regular basis, instead of a believable prison sentence actually being the end of the story - but the characters themselves can't make that argument. Maria Hill goes on to make the direct comparison to the Hulk/Bruce Banner, in case Iron Man has missed her point ("the thing I want to know is - why do you let this continue? I'm doing everything I can to stop the Hulk - my question is, are you?"), and Tony S. goes on to make the first of his morally ambiguous decisions in the Civil War (well, prelude to, in this case) saga, though here after consulting and arguing with the gentlemen of the earlier flashback, those other superheroes - he does take action, tricking Banner into capture and shooting ihm into space. The whole chapter ends with another meeting, in which Tony informs the rest that there are rumours of a superhero registration act being considered in the wake of the various events on the Marvelverse (which included former superheroes going crazy and changing realities), and that in his opinion, it will pass and predicts the plot of the Civil War saga:
"Sides will be taken and people will get hurt. Friend against friend. Friends dying at the hands of a forme rally or teammate. That is what will happen. But if we come to them now as representatives of the most powerful of all the heroes, cooperate and incorporate ourselves into the process, we can diffuse it." In other words, his old idea of getting organized. This isn't taken any better than the last time, except by Reed Richards, who now sides with Stark but leaves with the rest, and we end on a page-size panel with Tony sitting alone, in brooding posture, with his Cassandra-like predictions and the awareness of what he might do to deal with them, and mourning the break with friends which has already started. This is all very consisted with the later Civil War issues written by Bendis which I have read, like Casualties of War or The Confession.
Meanwhile, JMS is writing a slightly different story. Now I had read several collections of his Spider-man run before - the first five or so volumes - and the first thing that strikes you about how he writes Peter Parker in this prelude to the Civil War saga and especially in his relationship with Tony Stark is that he writes him younger than he did in his earlier tales. It's not the ambigous mentor/student dynamic per se - JMS did that already with Peter and an OC character, Ezekiel. And it might have had external reasons; while Marvel did allow Peter Parker to age instead of keeping him an eternal teenager, age enough to let him marry, have several marriage crisis but stay married and carry out adult jobs years and years before JMS came along, the Spider-man movies had drawn in a new audience and they might have been afraid it wouldn't relate to an adult Peter half as well. Still, it's striking. In the early JMS run our Mr. Parker decides to use his non-Spider-man time to do something about the bullies and general misery he suffered from at school as a teenager by becoming a teacher himself and be there for the students. Which is both ic for Peter Parker, but a position that changes something quintessential; as Dr. Strange points out in New Avengers: Illuminati, Spider-man is defined as a "rebel. Counter-culture, not the establishment". A teacher, by definition, has to be a part of the establishment. As being against is sometimes way easier a trying to work for, I thought that was rather mature of Marvel, but I can see the problem if you want your hero to be an easy identification figure for rebelling teenagers.
So, several trade collections and ups and downs in the Marvelverse later, you have Peter Parker not just in a mentor/protege relationship - which, as I mentioned, JMS did before - but in one that is very overtly an ersatz father/son one. This is a different thing, which emphasized both by the fact that Peter now isn't shown as a mentor himself anymore, and by the fact that the banter in his relationship with Tony Stark, soon to be shaken and then broken through Civil War events, aren't just the usual Spidey quips but very much teasing from a position of a half-admiring, half rebelling adolescent, not an equal level verbal sparring. While JMS has both Ezekiel and Tony Stark manipulate Peter to reach their respective goals, Peter is far more aware (and far less naive) in the earlier relationship than in the later. See what I mean about the character having grown younger instead of older?
Which brings us to Tony Stark/Iron Man, early JMS version. His Stark is far more opaque than the Bendis version, partly we see him mainly from Peter's pov and (nearly) not in scenes on his own, as the one Bendis wrote for Tony and Maria Hill; charismatic and very deliberately and ruthlessly manouevring our hero into an ominous promise of complete loyalty. Which doesn't mean that JMS, at this stage at least, writes Iron Man unsympathetic; the Chico Marx exchange with Peter is great fun, he gives him a deadpan humour, his fondness for Peter seems to be genuine, and his motives might be good. But as opposed to the Bendis version, this one is all drive forward and doesn't show self doubt; instead, he displays a distinct case of hubris at one point, when passing the Lincoln memorial with Peter and clearly casting himself as Abraham L. ("Under his administration, brother hunted down brother, friend turned against friend. It was terrible. It was bloody. It was necessary. Because in the end, the republic held, and the nation was restored. I sometimes wonder if I would have had the courage to do as he did.") We also see him deliberately lying to Peter and organizing an attack on himself in order to sway the commitee that's discussing the planned registration act; as opposed to the equally morally ambiguous shooting-the-Hulk-into-space decision in the Bendis tale, the fact that the scenes of doubt and regret are missing here make Tony look Machiavellian rather than torn.
As for the arguments pro and anti registration themselves, JMS basically voices three positions here - the comittee (pro, with basically arguing the problem of vigilantism), Peter (against), and Tony Stark (arguing the necessity of superheroes but agreeing that registration - and superheroes being answerable to a legal authority - makes sense). At this stage, there is no Patriot Act allegory apparant, let alone a Guantanamo one, though one problem is already hinted at - if a law gets passed, what will happen to superheroes who refuse to register?
In Babylon 5, JMS wrote an Earth going from democray to fascist dictatorship in the course of three seasons (which ends through a Civil War), and the early warning signs are rather blatant, so I'm not sure that at this stage, this was where he was going for in his own (Spider-man) corner of Civil War. But he definitely was setting up Peter's initial position in Civil War as a misguided one, as it is achieved via personal loyalty to a manipulative mentor rather than his own convictions; a position which consequently has to be faulty and has to be replaced by the opposite decision.
In summation: Bendis seems to be going for a "both sides have a point, but I'm slightly favouring Tony, who knows everyone will hate his guts but does it anyway because he thinks that's the only way to save them, whereas the rest of the gang is unwilling to get their hands dirty until its too late" approach, whereas JMS' line is "there might be some points to this registration business, but it inevitably will lead to lessened democracy and loss of individual freedom, so I'm against it, plus Tony Stark has a case of potential hubris with his conviction which will only get worse".
I'm half anxious, half looking forward to form an opinion on what Mark Millar thinks he's writing...
honorh wrote me a Dr. Who/Torchwood crossover which I adore, Smith and Harper. In unrelated news, the trade collection The Road to Civil War arrived. I have read bits and pieces of the Marvelverse-spawning Civil War saga, individual issues and scans, but I thought I'd give the collected prelude a shot. It collects the following invidual stories New Avengers: Illuminati (Brian Bendis), Fantastic Four: The Hammer Falls (J. Michael Straczynski, Amazing Spider-Man: Mr. Parker Goes To Washington (J. Michael Straczynski), and ends at the point where the Civil War saga starts.
Observations by yours truly:
The Fantastic Four story is easily the worst of the lot. If I hadn't seen JMS in the credits, I'd not not have believed it. The return of DOOM is easily the most entertaining part, and incidentally reveals that the
theatrical_muse version is dead-on, but otherwise: dull. Which thankfully can't be said of the other stories, though they already hint at what, according to likeadeuce, would turn out to be a problem for Civil War: the writers being not all on the same page as to what kind of story they were actually writing, and how the characters picked were supposed to fit in it. Brian Bendis clearly thinks he's writing a tragedy, with Tony Stark/Iron Man as the tormented hero. (Actually, Tony Stark is the most interesting character in this volume, full stop, but I'll get to the difference in JMS' characterisation later on.) The backstory which kicks off New Avengers: Illuminati, set "many years ago", has various superheroes of the Marvelverse meeting shortly after two alien races nearly wiped out the Earth. Iron Man thinks they should have seen this coming and would have if they had pooled their resources, and suggests getting organized; unite all the various superheroes, mutants or otherwise, in one organization. Everyone else is against it, and all the pro and con arguments are fairly written, i.e. the writer doesn't make anyone look stupid, though Namor comes off as a bigot; he does get to make an excellent point, though ("how many convicted criminals and supposed ex-mutant terrorists do you have on the Avengers right now? (...) And you want to shine a spot light on all of this?"). The best argument against is given by Reed Richards, and they're going to be important in the long term ("who decides who runs it? Who would it answer to?"). None of these arguments, however, devaluates the point Stark originally brought up: that the superhero status already carries a responsibility, and assumptions of responsibility on the part of the world in general. After this prologue, we move to present time action, when the Hulk apparantly has leveled Las Vegas (more or less), and Tony Stark has a very meta comicverse discussion with Maria Hill, Commander of S.H.I.E.L.D.
"You know all those people Norman Osborn killed as the Geen Goblin? When does it become Spider-man's fault? (...) Spider-man's the onewho has Osborn by the throat three times a year. But he never does what he has to do. He webs him up, they throw him in jail, then Osborn breaks out and he goes on another homicidal rampage. How many times does that have to happen before the whole damm thing becomes Spider-man's fault?"
This is usually known as the fan discussion of "are the Joker's victims Batman's fault by now?" There is an inherent unfairness in the narrative - supervillains breaking out and getting resurrected from the dead on a regular basis, instead of a believable prison sentence actually being the end of the story - but the characters themselves can't make that argument. Maria Hill goes on to make the direct comparison to the Hulk/Bruce Banner, in case Iron Man has missed her point ("the thing I want to know is - why do you let this continue? I'm doing everything I can to stop the Hulk - my question is, are you?"), and Tony S. goes on to make the first of his morally ambiguous decisions in the Civil War (well, prelude to, in this case) saga, though here after consulting and arguing with the gentlemen of the earlier flashback, those other superheroes - he does take action, tricking Banner into capture and shooting ihm into space. The whole chapter ends with another meeting, in which Tony informs the rest that there are rumours of a superhero registration act being considered in the wake of the various events on the Marvelverse (which included former superheroes going crazy and changing realities), and that in his opinion, it will pass and predicts the plot of the Civil War saga:
"Sides will be taken and people will get hurt. Friend against friend. Friends dying at the hands of a forme rally or teammate. That is what will happen. But if we come to them now as representatives of the most powerful of all the heroes, cooperate and incorporate ourselves into the process, we can diffuse it." In other words, his old idea of getting organized. This isn't taken any better than the last time, except by Reed Richards, who now sides with Stark but leaves with the rest, and we end on a page-size panel with Tony sitting alone, in brooding posture, with his Cassandra-like predictions and the awareness of what he might do to deal with them, and mourning the break with friends which has already started. This is all very consisted with the later Civil War issues written by Bendis which I have read, like Casualties of War or The Confession.
Meanwhile, JMS is writing a slightly different story. Now I had read several collections of his Spider-man run before - the first five or so volumes - and the first thing that strikes you about how he writes Peter Parker in this prelude to the Civil War saga and especially in his relationship with Tony Stark is that he writes him younger than he did in his earlier tales. It's not the ambigous mentor/student dynamic per se - JMS did that already with Peter and an OC character, Ezekiel. And it might have had external reasons; while Marvel did allow Peter Parker to age instead of keeping him an eternal teenager, age enough to let him marry, have several marriage crisis but stay married and carry out adult jobs years and years before JMS came along, the Spider-man movies had drawn in a new audience and they might have been afraid it wouldn't relate to an adult Peter half as well. Still, it's striking. In the early JMS run our Mr. Parker decides to use his non-Spider-man time to do something about the bullies and general misery he suffered from at school as a teenager by becoming a teacher himself and be there for the students. Which is both ic for Peter Parker, but a position that changes something quintessential; as Dr. Strange points out in New Avengers: Illuminati, Spider-man is defined as a "rebel. Counter-culture, not the establishment". A teacher, by definition, has to be a part of the establishment. As being against is sometimes way easier a trying to work for, I thought that was rather mature of Marvel, but I can see the problem if you want your hero to be an easy identification figure for rebelling teenagers.
So, several trade collections and ups and downs in the Marvelverse later, you have Peter Parker not just in a mentor/protege relationship - which, as I mentioned, JMS did before - but in one that is very overtly an ersatz father/son one. This is a different thing, which emphasized both by the fact that Peter now isn't shown as a mentor himself anymore, and by the fact that the banter in his relationship with Tony Stark, soon to be shaken and then broken through Civil War events, aren't just the usual Spidey quips but very much teasing from a position of a half-admiring, half rebelling adolescent, not an equal level verbal sparring. While JMS has both Ezekiel and Tony Stark manipulate Peter to reach their respective goals, Peter is far more aware (and far less naive) in the earlier relationship than in the later. See what I mean about the character having grown younger instead of older?
Which brings us to Tony Stark/Iron Man, early JMS version. His Stark is far more opaque than the Bendis version, partly we see him mainly from Peter's pov and (nearly) not in scenes on his own, as the one Bendis wrote for Tony and Maria Hill; charismatic and very deliberately and ruthlessly manouevring our hero into an ominous promise of complete loyalty. Which doesn't mean that JMS, at this stage at least, writes Iron Man unsympathetic; the Chico Marx exchange with Peter is great fun, he gives him a deadpan humour, his fondness for Peter seems to be genuine, and his motives might be good. But as opposed to the Bendis version, this one is all drive forward and doesn't show self doubt; instead, he displays a distinct case of hubris at one point, when passing the Lincoln memorial with Peter and clearly casting himself as Abraham L. ("Under his administration, brother hunted down brother, friend turned against friend. It was terrible. It was bloody. It was necessary. Because in the end, the republic held, and the nation was restored. I sometimes wonder if I would have had the courage to do as he did.") We also see him deliberately lying to Peter and organizing an attack on himself in order to sway the commitee that's discussing the planned registration act; as opposed to the equally morally ambiguous shooting-the-Hulk-into-space decision in the Bendis tale, the fact that the scenes of doubt and regret are missing here make Tony look Machiavellian rather than torn.
As for the arguments pro and anti registration themselves, JMS basically voices three positions here - the comittee (pro, with basically arguing the problem of vigilantism), Peter (against), and Tony Stark (arguing the necessity of superheroes but agreeing that registration - and superheroes being answerable to a legal authority - makes sense). At this stage, there is no Patriot Act allegory apparant, let alone a Guantanamo one, though one problem is already hinted at - if a law gets passed, what will happen to superheroes who refuse to register?
In Babylon 5, JMS wrote an Earth going from democray to fascist dictatorship in the course of three seasons (which ends through a Civil War), and the early warning signs are rather blatant, so I'm not sure that at this stage, this was where he was going for in his own (Spider-man) corner of Civil War. But he definitely was setting up Peter's initial position in Civil War as a misguided one, as it is achieved via personal loyalty to a manipulative mentor rather than his own convictions; a position which consequently has to be faulty and has to be replaced by the opposite decision.
In summation: Bendis seems to be going for a "both sides have a point, but I'm slightly favouring Tony, who knows everyone will hate his guts but does it anyway because he thinks that's the only way to save them, whereas the rest of the gang is unwilling to get their hands dirty until its too late" approach, whereas JMS' line is "there might be some points to this registration business, but it inevitably will lead to lessened democracy and loss of individual freedom, so I'm against it, plus Tony Stark has a case of potential hubris with his conviction which will only get worse".
I'm half anxious, half looking forward to form an opinion on what Mark Millar thinks he's writing...
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Date: 2007-05-02 08:13 pm (UTC)The only way I can directly square this with Illuminati is that Tony is (rather vainly) hoping that he can get more heroes on his side before the inevitable passage of the act.
That was my interpretation, that he's playing for time. After all, at this point the only one who committed himself knowingly was Reed Richards, and Peter unknowingly.
Though I think it's interesting that Peter DOES ask Tony whether he manipulated the situation; so it occurs to him. What doesn't, apparently, occur to him is that Tony would bold-facedly lie about it
Well, as opposed to Steve, he didn't know Tony when Tony was an alcoholic and thus really good with lying to his nearest and dearest to get what he wants... But yes, he's aware it might have been a set up, so he's not presented as completely naive.