Marvel’s Civil War & The New Face of Comic Books
I’m a big fan of comics, almost to a fan-boy state of mind. I’ve followed Marvel and DC Comics since the early 90’s, although I tend to lean more to the Marvel set of characters since the names and backgrounds aren’t nearly as hokey as DC’s second tier of heroes tend to get. I’m not talking about Superman or Batman, but people like “Elongated Man” or “Captain Atom.” Never heard of em? Me neither, at least until Paul Dini’s Justice League Unlimited cartoon. I’m more of a Spider-Man and X-Men fan.
Anyway, I take a break every few years due to terrible story lines or poor artwork. This happened big time in the late 90’s, when all of Marvel and DC’s good artists and writers jumped ship and started their own comics company (Image Comics). The stories and artwork dipped horribly, and I lost interest.
Jump forward to around 2001, and suddenly the face of Marvel Comics was changing. The good artists all returned for freelance projects, they hired even better artists, and commissioned Hollywood writers such as Joss Whedon (Buffy The Vampire Slayer), J. Michael Strazenzski (Babylon 5), and Damon Lindloff (Lost) to work on projects. The biggest change? They dropped a severely archaic and ridiculous rating system established in the 1950’s (and only slightly updated since) called the Comics Code Authority.
Comics came under heavy fire in the early 1950s, thanks to a public’s rising fear of juvenile delinquency and one prominent psychiatrist’s willingness to pin the blame on the vastly popular comic books of the era. Under intense public pressure, the comics industry agreed to adopt a code of ethics and to establish a “voluntary” authority that would approve every book prior to its distribution. In truth, there was nothing voluntary about it; in the days before independent comic shops — when most comics were sold in supermarkets, department stores, and mom-and-pop corner stores — comic publishers had no choice but to comply with the CCA if they wanted to survive.*
Almost every comic from the 1950’s to 2001 had the CCA stamp on it’s cover except for a few key issues in the past, such as Amazing Spider-Man #96 which featured a story about Harry Osborn turning to drug use to deal with his problems, or D.C. Comics’ Green Lantern/Green Arrow #85 that featured Green Arrow’s sidekick Speedy on the cover as a prominent drug user–complete with paraphernalia and all. DC & Marvel pushed the envelope at the time when they released these comics. The CCA threatened to block distribution on these issues, however when they released each of the titles made history making sales.
Today’s comics are not what they were in the 1960’s, 1980’s, or even the 1990’s. Because of switching to a more ratings-type system like movies and television have, they are free to publish all sorts of stories from tame children-safe comics, to much more mature (read: violence and profanity) titles like The Punisher.
A good example of the huge and entirely impressive change in storylines can be seen in the recent multi-title crossover event in Marvel Comics’ Civil War series which pits hero-vs-hero and will change the face of the Marvel Universe forever.
Ground Zero - Stamford, CT
It all started like this: A band of third-rate superheroes called “The New Warriors” became reality TV stars by allowing cameramen to follow their exploits of beating up third-rate supervillains. They track down a group of them to a suburban house in Stamford, Connecticut and begin fighting with them. One particular villain by the name of Nitro, whose power is the ability to explode himself, plays his trump card and ignites his power which destroys the entire suburban community, including a schoolhouse full of children with casualties in the hundreds of thousands, all caught on live television for millions to see.**
This caused an uproar in all of the comic titles when the government calls for an enactment of the “Superhero Registration Act” which would require all “costumed” people to reveal their private identity and work solely for the government, or be hunted down and incarcerated. This has split the cavalcade of characters down the middle, dividing long-time friends Captain America and Iron Man, and even splitting the perfect-marriage couple of Reed Richards and Sue Storm, ie Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Woman from the Fantastic Four.
Most surprisingly, Captain America is on the OTHER side of the War, the side that is against the Registration Act. Cap goes into hiding and takes a few other heroes (and even a few villains) with him. Reed Richards is obsessed with a secret he calls “Project 42″ which is looking to be some sort of superhero prison, and is completely alienating his wife as a result of his actions. Iron Man, who reveals his identity to the public (er.. again***), is the main supporter of the act and even drafts Spider-Man to his side, although from the looks of things it may turn out that Spider-Man is going to be a double-agent.
Spider-Man reveales his identity to the public
By issue #2, Spider-Man reveals his identity to the public (as already reported by several real-life media outlets out there), and the Superhero Registration Act goes into effect. Not five minutes after the midnight enactment, a hero, drunk out of his mind and enraged about the ultimatum he’s been given (reveal yourself or go to jail), climbs on top of a building and calls out Iron Man in the middle of Times Square. The red-and-yellow Avenger shows up, first announcing that he is an “unlicensed superhero” and threatening to arrest him loudly to the public gathering below, before quietly asking him to step down. The hero refuses, and Iron Man beats him violently and arrests him.****
The shocking deaths of the entire suburb and school of children from Nitro, the fugitive Captain America, Spider-Man revealing his true identity, and the violent beating of a rather harmless hero by Iron Man has made this storyline the most compelling and interesting tales I’ve ever read. Marvel has elevated the level of storytelling in comics way past any previous author has tried to do. I’m excited every month when another Civil War title is released, and always dissapointed I have to wait another month to find out what happens next. Not since D.C.’s The Killing Joke or Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns have I been so profoundly disturbed and interested in what happens next. This is truly what good comics should be.
Marvel’s Civil War is set to run through almost all of their titles through September-October, where is promises an ending that will shake the continuity to it’s core, and changes what a superhero will be forever after.
For more information about the Civil War, check out these pages:
Marvel Comics’s Civil War Page
Civil War Wikipedia Entry
IGN
* Courtesy of Mitchell Brown’s “100 Greatest Comics of the 20th Century”
** Civil War #1
*** Iron Man #73
**** Civil War: Frontline #2
Link: Marvel’s Civil War & The New Face of Comic Books
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