Civil War #5

Released: November 15, 2006

Publisher: Marvel

Writer: Mark Millar

Pencils: Steve McNiven

Cover: Steve McNiven

 

It’s finally here. Yay.

 

Everything I said about the delays of these types of series, like what I said about Astonishing X-Men this week, holds here, only double, nay triple that. This is the parent book for a line wide event and Marvel has ill-planned their venture and not taken into account easily predicted problems. Nothing new to report, it’s still a problem and they will most likely just do it again next time.

 

There really isn’t anything new about this issue that we haven’t seen coming since the series was first announced. People switch sides, end of story. Sue and Johnny go Anti-Reg and so does Spider-Man. The only real surprise is the Punisher’s arrival as Spider-Man’s savior and an Anti-Registration member.

 

Now the stage is set for a raid on multiple locations as the Anti-Reg begins to form a plan to free those heroes locked up in the N-Zone. And that’s the plot. It’s great action, very dramatic and a very good action movie, but no where is any of the ‘relevancies’ addressed here. We’re now firmly in normal super-hero genre story-telling with no big issues fleshed out or explored here. Since they’ve decided to let all the little titles do the real work of what this event set out to do, we get a substance void that makes the series a comic equivalent of a blockbuster action movie.

 

Hype is a double edged sword and Marvel can't seem to wield it correctly. Their answer evidently is to ignore the inconsistencies, mock the readers who question the delays, and ask the retailers to ‘suck it up’. This is not a great story with real-world allegories or political messages no matter what Quesada and Millar might say to the contrary. Or if it was taken as such, then it must surely be noted as a horrible example at addressing serious topics. A good attempt would involve consistency and a clear message (or at least a well developed discussion on the topic). This book has none of that, and more importantly, neither does the line wide crossover taken as a whole.

 

Sure, it’s easy for YOU to point out all these problems in hindsight, you might say. Yes, it is and I’m sure someone at Marvel did it before the fact too. The person ultimately responsible for not heeding those warnings must be Joe Quesada. No one of the faithful is going to stop reading Marvel because of this and it hardly counts as a reason to do so in any event, yet Marvel can’t think they’ll attract non-comic book fans with this stuff, if that person wasn’t already latently inclined to like the superhero genre in the first place.

 

This isn’t a series or event that lends itself to bringing in new readers. What it does do is lend itself to making Marvel more money. I’m sure all the board members are very happy about that, they’ve finally found a business where a product can be late, the creators can mock the consumers and the company can screw over the retailers they rely on with no real consequence in the short term.

 

It’s finally here. Yay.

Rating - 4