Civil War: Iron Man
Jun. 22nd, 2007 08:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakStill working my way through various Civil War titles in English and German. With Millar's run, I've arrived at issue 4, aka the one with the Thor Clone. As I told ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
likeadeuce, I had assumed this would be the one where Millar starts to portray Tony Stark as the unquestioned bad guy, so I was somewhat surprised this wasn't the case; Tony S. gets a brooding scene during the funeral of Goliath, where he explicitly rejects the "stuff happens" excuse provided by his friend Happy. If anyone comes across as creepy here, it's Miriam Sharpe who uses to the opportunity the funeral provides to tell Tony not to forget "what he's fighting for", i.e. her dead son and the other Stamfort victims.
However, I can see why Millar's way of writing Sue Storm and her (temporary) break-up with her husband Reed Richards made people furious. Greato Scotto, as Hiro would say. But then, bearing in mind how Millar wrote Lois Lane in Red Son, I'm not the least bit surprised.
On to better titles: the trade collection Civil War: Iron Man which arrived at my doorstep today is so far the best assembly of Civil War related titles in one volume I've read. (The others being Road to Civil War and Civil War: Spider-man, reviewed in these ramblings earlier. Oh, and I also read Civil War: Frontline, which is very uneven, sometimes very good and sometimes dull as dirt in its caricature-ness.) It consists of the following invidual stories: Rubicon (Casualities of War), a Captain America/Iron Man crossover (written by Christos Gage), Iron Man #13 and #14 (by Daniel and Charles Knauf, who are still writing the Iron Man titles), and The Confession (Brian Bendis). Despite thus employing four different writers, the characterisation of Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, remains consistent. (Which contributes to the quality of the collection to no end, seeing as Iron Man is the Rashomon of the Marvelverse right now, being either hero or villain depending on who tells the story, which can be either interesting or confusing.) It also avoids going in the opposite direction of sympathy direction: while it makes an eloquent case for Tony Stark's atittude towards the Registration Act and the Act itself, there is an ongoing red thread in which the (human) cost of this is pointed out, and the concluding devastating question and answer from The Confession, which bookends this volume. is a far more effective way of tearing Tony's self justification apart than any of the OMG EVIL characterisation in the later Spider-man issues or as I hear in Dan Slott's run does.
Rubicon, which I had read before as an individual issue and had talked about before, is very much like fanfic, and I mean this in the best way; a two characters only story symbolizing a greater conflict, former best friends turned enemies, much talk about the past mixed with talk about the present, and finally the mixture of old affection and present argument finding physical form. (Except in fanfic, they'd have had angry sex instead of fighting.) (Said fight, btw, is a great use of the visual medium by keeping cross cutting between Steve Rogers and Tony Stark having a fun sparring session in the past and the bitter fight in the present, ending with vows of eternal friendship and walking away respectively.) The arguments each character gets aren't stupidities of the "MacCarthyism Yay!" type which poor Reed Richards is saddled with in Civil War: Spider-man, i.e. something that hits the reader over the head with how the speaker is clearly in the wrong. It's "people in our position need accountability" (Iron Man) versus "The registration act takes away any autonomy we have; you don't know who could get elected" (Captain America), both of which are plausible positions, and the increasingly personal arguments ring both true as well. Tony Stark is a manipulative alcoholic with control issues and the conviction he knews best; Steve Rogers is blinded by the rightousness that occasionally ventures into self-rightousness, and the refusal to compromise.
The two regular Iron Man issues following Rubicon pick up on something Tony says to Steve inRubicon - the admission that one of the reasons why he feels so strongly about what happened in Stamford was "because it could have been me", i.e. the abuse of superheroic power without consideration of civilians during any of his active alcoholic phases - in a conversation between Tony and Secretary Kooning where the later first offers him the positon of S.H.I.E.L.D. director (which he initially rejects): "Do you have any idea," says Kooning, "what kind of strings I had to pull to bury that mess you made with Yinsen's kid? (...) If it hadn't been for me, Speedball wouldn't be the poster boy for the Registration. You would." Despite some obligatory fight scenes, these issues are intensely character focused.
"Einstein said he wouldn't join a club that would have him as a member," says Tony, gets interrupted by his sidekick Sal with "Actually, that was Groucho Marx", and continues: "Same difference. Anyway, that's how I'm feeling these days."
But he still continues, convinced it is the best of a couple of bad choices, and we get an equivalent to the death of Goliath over in the main Civil War titles, as one of the few old friends of Tony Stark's who are still with him, the aforementioned Hap Hogan, gets lethally wounded and ends up in a coma, which for various plot reasons Tony could end via euthanasia, something the other remaining friend from day one, his secretary Pepper, Hap's girlfriend, asks him to do and he can't bring himself to, leading to him nearly hitting the bottle again and an encounter with Sue Storm who is the one instance where I think the writers of these titles handle a character as badly as Millar does. (And again, it's poor Sue. What did she do to deserve this?) Because as opposed to everyone else arguing for the pro-Registration side in this volume, she does get the type of ridiculous phrases that are meant to signal rather anvilly she's wrong, notably when she blames Tony for her husband's choices - because, really, not a single one of the Civil War writers has presented the guy as being pro-Registration out of misguided hero worship for Tony Stark. Peter Parker in the beginning, yes, but not Reed "I've read this in Isaac Asimov" Richards.
...actually, come to think of it, Sue is written exactly the same way her husband is by JMS in Spider-man, just with reverse positions. Huh. Marvelverse writers, do you have it in for this couple?
Anyway, the end of #14 with Tony praying the Our Father, culminating in Happy Hogan's death (it's somewhat ambigous whether Tony cuts the life support of or whether the man dies by sheer coincidence when Tony finishes his prayer, though I certainly thought he ended the life support) while we cut from Reed Richards to Peter Parker, both brooding as well in their various corners of the Civil War, manages to get the steadfastly increasing human cost of that war across in a way that Millar hasn't managed to in the main title so far.
The Confession by Brian Bendis bookends not just this particular volume but also works as a bookend to the story opening Road to Civil War, i.e. Illuminati. It's basically one long monologue by Tony Stark, and a flashback (which had not been in the issue I had read before; that one ended with Tony's reply, not with the flashback that gives us Steve Roger's question). Tony basically makes again the argument that he made when this all started, in Illuminati. That he has this monologue over Steve Rogers' dead body is an answer itself, even before he arrives at the conclusion. At the same time, it's meta for the entire event:
"But that's just that holier-than-thou attitude," says Tony, "that we're always the good guys and all we fight is bad guys. But in a war, there are no good guys and there are no bad guys. There are opposing forces."
It's what Marvel tried to do, but not always succeeded, possibly because to this day, the writers still haven't made up their mind whether it wasn't good versus evil after all. Within this particular issue, by the way, Tony's position isn't final or left unanswered, either. In that flashback that concludes it, to his last encounter with a living Steve Rogers, after the later had surrendered, Steve first confronts him with a quote ("Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, war"), continues "and in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood of his hands wand works for the universal brotherhood of man" and then deals out his last verbal strike, which goes to the core: "I want to know what the hell made you think this was your job to do? Who made you the moral compass of us? How could you lay down with the people you've laid down with? (...) Tell me, was it worth it?"
And there you have it, the question which Tony after his entire monologue answers in that panel that has him sitting next to Steve's corpse: "No. It wasn't worth it."
What made him think it was his job? To lead the pro-Registration effort, to decide what was good for the superhero community (if there was such a thing) at large? Presumably the same thing that originally made him become a superhero. But it's not enough anymore, not when confronted with all the results, success or not, and so you have the big Marvel event of last year ending with something that feels like a World War I story: the emotional devastation of the survivors, and the realisation that somewhere along the lines, the conviction that sustained them had become not enough anymore.
As effective storytelling as I've ever seen, in any medium.
likeadeuce, I had assumed this would be the one where Millar starts to portray Tony Stark as the unquestioned bad guy, so I was somewhat surprised this wasn't the case; Tony S. gets a brooding scene during the funeral of Goliath, where he explicitly rejects the "stuff happens" excuse provided by his friend Happy. If anyone comes across as creepy here, it's Miriam Sharpe who uses to the opportunity the funeral provides to tell Tony not to forget "what he's fighting for", i.e. her dead son and the other Stamfort victims.However, I can see why Millar's way of writing Sue Storm and her (temporary) break-up with her husband Reed Richards made people furious. Greato Scotto, as Hiro would say. But then, bearing in mind how Millar wrote Lois Lane in Red Son, I'm not the least bit surprised.
On to better titles: the trade collection Civil War: Iron Man which arrived at my doorstep today is so far the best assembly of Civil War related titles in one volume I've read. (The others being Road to Civil War and Civil War: Spider-man, reviewed in these ramblings earlier. Oh, and I also read Civil War: Frontline, which is very uneven, sometimes very good and sometimes dull as dirt in its caricature-ness.) It consists of the following invidual stories: Rubicon (Casualities of War), a Captain America/Iron Man crossover (written by Christos Gage), Iron Man #13 and #14 (by Daniel and Charles Knauf, who are still writing the Iron Man titles), and The Confession (Brian Bendis). Despite thus employing four different writers, the characterisation of Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, remains consistent. (Which contributes to the quality of the collection to no end, seeing as Iron Man is the Rashomon of the Marvelverse right now, being either hero or villain depending on who tells the story, which can be either interesting or confusing.) It also avoids going in the opposite direction of sympathy direction: while it makes an eloquent case for Tony Stark's atittude towards the Registration Act and the Act itself, there is an ongoing red thread in which the (human) cost of this is pointed out, and the concluding devastating question and answer from The Confession, which bookends this volume. is a far more effective way of tearing Tony's self justification apart than any of the OMG EVIL characterisation in the later Spider-man issues or as I hear in Dan Slott's run does.
Rubicon, which I had read before as an individual issue and had talked about before, is very much like fanfic, and I mean this in the best way; a two characters only story symbolizing a greater conflict, former best friends turned enemies, much talk about the past mixed with talk about the present, and finally the mixture of old affection and present argument finding physical form. (Except in fanfic, they'd have had angry sex instead of fighting.) (Said fight, btw, is a great use of the visual medium by keeping cross cutting between Steve Rogers and Tony Stark having a fun sparring session in the past and the bitter fight in the present, ending with vows of eternal friendship and walking away respectively.) The arguments each character gets aren't stupidities of the "MacCarthyism Yay!" type which poor Reed Richards is saddled with in Civil War: Spider-man, i.e. something that hits the reader over the head with how the speaker is clearly in the wrong. It's "people in our position need accountability" (Iron Man) versus "The registration act takes away any autonomy we have; you don't know who could get elected" (Captain America), both of which are plausible positions, and the increasingly personal arguments ring both true as well. Tony Stark is a manipulative alcoholic with control issues and the conviction he knews best; Steve Rogers is blinded by the rightousness that occasionally ventures into self-rightousness, and the refusal to compromise.
The two regular Iron Man issues following Rubicon pick up on something Tony says to Steve inRubicon - the admission that one of the reasons why he feels so strongly about what happened in Stamford was "because it could have been me", i.e. the abuse of superheroic power without consideration of civilians during any of his active alcoholic phases - in a conversation between Tony and Secretary Kooning where the later first offers him the positon of S.H.I.E.L.D. director (which he initially rejects): "Do you have any idea," says Kooning, "what kind of strings I had to pull to bury that mess you made with Yinsen's kid? (...) If it hadn't been for me, Speedball wouldn't be the poster boy for the Registration. You would." Despite some obligatory fight scenes, these issues are intensely character focused.
"Einstein said he wouldn't join a club that would have him as a member," says Tony, gets interrupted by his sidekick Sal with "Actually, that was Groucho Marx", and continues: "Same difference. Anyway, that's how I'm feeling these days."
But he still continues, convinced it is the best of a couple of bad choices, and we get an equivalent to the death of Goliath over in the main Civil War titles, as one of the few old friends of Tony Stark's who are still with him, the aforementioned Hap Hogan, gets lethally wounded and ends up in a coma, which for various plot reasons Tony could end via euthanasia, something the other remaining friend from day one, his secretary Pepper, Hap's girlfriend, asks him to do and he can't bring himself to, leading to him nearly hitting the bottle again and an encounter with Sue Storm who is the one instance where I think the writers of these titles handle a character as badly as Millar does. (And again, it's poor Sue. What did she do to deserve this?) Because as opposed to everyone else arguing for the pro-Registration side in this volume, she does get the type of ridiculous phrases that are meant to signal rather anvilly she's wrong, notably when she blames Tony for her husband's choices - because, really, not a single one of the Civil War writers has presented the guy as being pro-Registration out of misguided hero worship for Tony Stark. Peter Parker in the beginning, yes, but not Reed "I've read this in Isaac Asimov" Richards.
...actually, come to think of it, Sue is written exactly the same way her husband is by JMS in Spider-man, just with reverse positions. Huh. Marvelverse writers, do you have it in for this couple?
Anyway, the end of #14 with Tony praying the Our Father, culminating in Happy Hogan's death (it's somewhat ambigous whether Tony cuts the life support of or whether the man dies by sheer coincidence when Tony finishes his prayer, though I certainly thought he ended the life support) while we cut from Reed Richards to Peter Parker, both brooding as well in their various corners of the Civil War, manages to get the steadfastly increasing human cost of that war across in a way that Millar hasn't managed to in the main title so far.
The Confession by Brian Bendis bookends not just this particular volume but also works as a bookend to the story opening Road to Civil War, i.e. Illuminati. It's basically one long monologue by Tony Stark, and a flashback (which had not been in the issue I had read before; that one ended with Tony's reply, not with the flashback that gives us Steve Roger's question). Tony basically makes again the argument that he made when this all started, in Illuminati. That he has this monologue over Steve Rogers' dead body is an answer itself, even before he arrives at the conclusion. At the same time, it's meta for the entire event:
"But that's just that holier-than-thou attitude," says Tony, "that we're always the good guys and all we fight is bad guys. But in a war, there are no good guys and there are no bad guys. There are opposing forces."
It's what Marvel tried to do, but not always succeeded, possibly because to this day, the writers still haven't made up their mind whether it wasn't good versus evil after all. Within this particular issue, by the way, Tony's position isn't final or left unanswered, either. In that flashback that concludes it, to his last encounter with a living Steve Rogers, after the later had surrendered, Steve first confronts him with a quote ("Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, war"), continues "and in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood of his hands wand works for the universal brotherhood of man" and then deals out his last verbal strike, which goes to the core: "I want to know what the hell made you think this was your job to do? Who made you the moral compass of us? How could you lay down with the people you've laid down with? (...) Tell me, was it worth it?"
And there you have it, the question which Tony after his entire monologue answers in that panel that has him sitting next to Steve's corpse: "No. It wasn't worth it."
What made him think it was his job? To lead the pro-Registration effort, to decide what was good for the superhero community (if there was such a thing) at large? Presumably the same thing that originally made him become a superhero. But it's not enough anymore, not when confronted with all the results, success or not, and so you have the big Marvel event of last year ending with something that feels like a World War I story: the emotional devastation of the survivors, and the realisation that somewhere along the lines, the conviction that sustained them had become not enough anymore.
As effective storytelling as I've ever seen, in any medium.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-06-22 06:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-22 07:00 pm (UTC)Also I didn't realize you'd only seen part of The Confession before. The second bit certainly did make a difference, though I can't decide whether the reverse chronological order worked better than a straight up telling would have. Anyway, the Confession is the main reason I'm still on speaking terms with Bendis (umm, you know -- so to speak).
no subject
Date: 2007-06-22 07:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-22 07:36 pm (UTC)I'm still working my way through a huge stack of Civil War trade paperbacks I borrowed from a friend, and I haven't gotten to JMS's Spider-Man stuff yet, but I'm already bracing myself for some shrill anti-Registration polemics. I gather that the almighty Dwayne McDuffie completely revamed Reed's motivation when he recently took over Fantastic Four, bringing it more in line with the main CW title instead of the "fascism yay!" that JMS apparently used. Perhaps we should consider that a characterization retcon?
As for Dan Slott's Initiative title, I'll reserve judgement until I read it for myself. I have a pretty high opinion of Slott from his She-Hulk run, so perhaps he can sell me on this too. :-)
no subject
Date: 2007-06-22 08:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-23 05:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-24 12:29 am (UTC)I didn't get the impression that Reed's tearjerking story about his uncle was meant to show that Reed supports Joe McCarthy. Rather, I think he's saying has no choice other than to obey the law and follow orders: "Whether HUAC was right or wrong wasn't the point. It was the law."
Either way, though, this seems rather out of character for the rocket-steaiing daredevil leader of the Fantastic Four. As I noted in my comments (http://toysdream.livejournal.com/34084.html) on the JMS stories, replacement writer Dwayne McDuffie seems to have made a deliberate point of overwriting this characterization and giving Reed a motive that's more consistent with his depiction in the other Civil War stories.