Mark Millar, et al., Civil War (Marvel Comics, 2006-07); various issues and titles.

by Jared Gardner

The premise of the Event is familiar, but it remains a good one, and part of the pleasure of genre is the ways in which a familiar formula can become new and newly relevant with an expert flick of the wrist. And for long-time Marvel readers, the struggle between heroes who have fought side by side is new. A skirmish here, a misunderstanding there, but on the whole this slice of the Marvel universe has been a relatively stable confederacy. But all of that changed one fateful day when the New Warriors—superpowered minor celebrities and stars of their own reality show—battled Nitro in Stamford, Connecticut. When the villain chose to blow himself up along with 600 innocent residents, all of the suspicion that had long been gathering around the superpowered exploded to the surface. As new legislation was railroaded through Congress requiring all superheroes to register their powers and their identities, the entire superhero community was forced to choose sides.

There is much to be critical of in this “event,” as with all such comics crossover circuses: the bald-faced pandering, the sacrifice of minor characters for melodramatic effect (and that the War’s first victim is African American only makes the sacrifice more suspect), the endless milking of the storyline only to arrive at a sudden and completely unbelievable resolution. But after more than 100 issues, with the War now over but its effects still being felt in every corner of the Marvel universe, I cannot help be impressed by what has been accomplished. The series cuts to the heart of some of the most significant political issues of our day—most especially of the zero-sum game between freedom and security with which we must all wrestle in the age of endless war. And by the end, even this jaded old comics reader cannot help but newly care about heroes he has long taken for granted. And not a moment too soon.

In a sense we know who is going to “win” this war before it has even begun. It is only the surprising disaffection of Captain America to the side of the resistors that threatens to shift the balance of power. But it is an act of resistance on Cap’s part that seems to be sparked less from consideration of the relative merits of the arguments than from his personal affront at having his blind loyalty taken for granted by S.H.I.E.L.D. In the end, it is the justifications of the other resistors that serve as the most interesting reading in the series. For instance, in an episode at a farmer’s market in the Young Avengers & Runaways storyline, one hero openly refuses the demands of the guards to search his bag (he is “of above average physique”), insisting on superpowers as the last “truly independent power structure” in the face of the mounting hegemony of U.S. power. This ties in with arguments running through the Black Panther tie-in to the Civil War drama, as discussed in our last issue, but Panther is head of a foreign government and his opposition is sanctioned by international law. The claims of a lone superpowered individual to his rights to resist U.S. hegemony comes as close as a comic dare come (or should come) to justifying terrorism. It is decidedly risky stuff, and there are enough such moments to make the long and ponderous series crackle with some much-needed energy.

Although I am a big fan of Mark Millar, I was somewhat underwhelmed by the main series of Civil War which he guided, and more intrigued by the writing of some of the related titles. Millar, for all his radical sensibilities, had the difficult charge of providing an infrastructure to hold the 100+ issues across a dozen or so series together—and the even more stultifying responsibility of attempting to provide balance to the representation of both sides (although the “cool kids” staffing of Cap’s team stacked the deck decidedly in their favor). It was Paul Jenkins who got the best gig in this massive enterprise, as writer for Civil War: Front Line, the one trade book I had to have at war’s end. As one of the reporters covering the war in Front Line muses, “The problem with war is that it’s so big. And yet the ideas behind it are always so small.” Only Front Line really confronts this painful reality: the smallness of the ideas with which we have all been bludgeoned for these past seven years. Whatever one’s personal politics, whether listening to the President defend his war or standing with a rally opposing it, one is subjected to an endless litany of small ideas, jingles, nursery rhymes. Might does not make right, and power does not make powerful thoughts. Watching the war unfold through the eyes of two reporters on the streets, the whole enterprise on both sides seems remarkably hollow—and sad.

There are some predictably weak notes, of course (Heroes for Hire comes to mind), and some pandering for attention to titles that should never have been launched in the first place. But on the whole the project was consistent, thoughtful and well organized (if anything, a bit too well organized, making it ultimately a bit tiresome). Like all political debates, the points become talking-points and war-weariness comes to dominate. And so it was not without some relief that I read the final chapter in Millar’s Civil War, in which Captain America, on the verge of striking the killing blow to Iron Man and claiming victory for his side, suddenly surrenders. The justification for his surrender—the realization how much his war has hurt the very people he had vowed to protect—is patently absurd. After all, the war had been raging in the streets of major cities for months, and for Cap not to have noticed the collateral damage until this moment strains credulity. But like his opponent and former-BFF, Tony Stark, Steve Rogers never was the deepest thinker—a fact that the series does not shy away from exploring.

Of all those who oppose the registration act, it is Captain America’s justifications that ring the hollowest. “This is no longer the country I vowed to defend,” he muses. “We’re becoming swathes of red and blue on an election-night map.” So he is resisting the registration act because the country is politically divided?  When pressed by reporter Sally Floyd in Front Line, he tries to justify himself via an extended and incoherent analogy to the war against the Nazis—first suggesting that he must fight all dictatorships, then suggesting that the war itself had been a colossal and tragic waste. It is quite clear by the end of the series that Captain America has no idea why he is fighting. Don’t get me wrong: this is not bad writing. In fact, it is some of the most subtle writing superhero comics have seen in some time. The others who join Cap’s standard have some good reasons for their choices: Spider-Man has seen the dark face of Stark’s self-serving Manichaeism up close and personally; Spider-Woman has become so twisted in the webs of counter-espionage allegiances that she literally has no where else to turn; Luke Cage is defending his family and his neighborhood against the jackbooted thugs who are always ready to make Harlem their stomping ground. But Cap? Some S.H.I.E.L.D. agents shot at him while he was making up his mind and, lo, his mind was made up.

Ultimately Cap is brought down not by his superpowered enemies but by the people on the street, lashing out in anger at him for the havoc his war has brought to their lives. His bewilderment in the face of their anger is paralyzing, and his decision to surrender—to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory—is as irrational as his initial decision to rebel. Sally gets it right when she accuses him of defending a country he does not know. As she salts his wounds during their prison interview, he reveals that he has not visited MySpace, YouTube, or watched American Idol. He does not know the country whose ideals he claims to be defending. He fought and ultimately “died” (um, sure…) for nothing, in the true blue American spirit.

Of course, Tony Stark does know MySpace and YouTube and can, with a push of a button, determine the results of American Idol. When Sally and her fellow-reporter Ben Urich finally figure out the big story, it is something of an anticlimax. Tony Stark had been the “traitor” in the midst of the registration crowd, reprogramming the Green Goblin to start a war with Namor and the Atlanteans in order to galvanize the nation against a common enemy.  In the capstone to the series, Civil War Initiative (April 2007), which sets up the next wave of titles and story arcs for the coming year, Iron Man is triumphant precisely because he is now plugged into everything and everyone. “Tony Stark is now the protector of the world,” we are told. And with his body now jacked into every network in the world, he is also the controller not only of every hero, but of all information—down to the winner of American Idol or the next presidential election. But Iron Man is also victorious because, unlike Captain America, he never doubts—never questions that he is in the right. And as he settles down to start up his new Mighty Avengers and to oversee the Initiative that will bring superpowered security forces to every state in the union, we wonder what on earth can possibly shake his confidence of his own rightness with the universe. For Marvel, where self-doubt and vulnerability has long been the secret ingredient that differentiated its heroes from its cross-town rival, one might wonder where the motivating energies of the future will come from.

One possibility might lie in the birth in the pages of Front Line of a new perverse masochistic superhero, Penance, who rises from the ashes of the glory-hound he was when his actions led to the death of all those kids in Stamford. Penance is a twist that offers some hope that from the Cold War angst of the early 1960s, Marvel might now be ready to open itself up to a more complex and twisted 21st-century psychology. But with Iron Man pulling Penance’s chain, there is a real danger he will be straightened out very quickly.

Now Tony Stark leads The Mighty Avengers and S.H.I.E.L.D. into the brave new world of registered superpowered security forces, while in the New Avengers, Luke Cage leads his ragtag team of political refugees (including Wolverine, Spider-man, Iron Fist, and Dr. Strange) into their new identities as post-War criminals. And there is a sense that the very nature of what it means to be a super-hero has changed forever. The choices are now etched across the Marvel Universe: Troops or Terrorists, Patriot or Enemy of the State. This is a Hobson’s choice if ever there was one, and in backing themselves into this corner, Marvel has shown more courage than I ever would have given them credit for. How they inhabit this corner in the months to come will determine whether they have the convictions to go along with that courage.  But for now, for all the justifiable complaints about the resolution of the story arc, perhaps the most impressive aspect of the story is how much is not resolved. The Civil War may be over, but the police state, the branding of individuals as terrorists and enemies of the state, the fear and the surveillance continues. Let the brave new world begin.