A Marvelous Civil War

Yes, I am going to write a post about Marvel Comic's Civil War series. As some of you readers know, I am an avid reader of Amazing Spider-man (yes the official name has a hyphen) and have a healthy collection.  Hopefully one day I'll have enough disposable income to buy Amazing Fantasy 15.  Anyway, at first I thought this was going to be just another giant cross-over series that would mostly appeal to kids who wanted to see their favorite Marvel super heroes fight each other.  Holy hot wheels Batman, was I ever wrong.

Civil War is much more than just a giant battle royal, but the kids that are reading it will probably think that was what it is about.   Civil War  is a scary look at how civil liberties can be eroded with a simple passage of a law in congress that is then enforced by people who interpret the law to be much more than that. Under the typical super hero bam, boom, pow content is a powerful message on how absolute power corrupts absolutely.

In a nutshell, Speedball who is a tertiary hero in the Marvel Universe decides to take on more powerful villians to film it for a reality TV show in the hopes of boosting ratings of his New Warriors show.  Instead of planning an attack, he is more worried how his team looks and gets into a fight with a villain who ends up blowing up part of Stamford Connecticut killing hundreds including all of the New Warriors except for Speedball.  In response to this, congress passes a law requiring all heroes to register with the Government and become civil employees.  Otherwise the non-registering heroes are considered enemy combatants and have to worry about having the registered heros hunt them down.  For more details check out this entry over at Wikipedia.

What follows is: Spider-man reveals his secret identity, Speedball gets stripped of any rights and is thrown in jail without being allowed a phone call, Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four builds a clone of Thor all in the name of pursuing the enemy (non-registered heroes), the Government tags real villains and sets them free (including Spidey's arch enemy the Green Goblin) from jail to track down the enemies, and the Government follows reporters and other civilians in the hopes of finding the enemy.  Quite a lot has been set in motion from that day in Stamford.

This fictional story certainly is a warning sign from what happens when a Government is allowed to run unchecked all in the name of protecting civilians from another attack.  It is no secret what side of the political fence I sit on, but I can't help but be totally engrossed in this story line.  Sure it has pictures, but a good story is a good story.

I can't help but feel that Speedball was wrong and deserves to be punished, however, the Government in the Civil War storyline is out of control as is a lot of heroes on both sides of the fight.  Heroes registering with the government seems ok, but chasing them down and using force is uncalled for. Plus, you find what many readers would consider to be upstanding heroes like Iron Man (Tony Stark) and Mr Fantastic orchestrating highly questionable tactics all in the name of the law.

The true question that Civil War is trying to ask is when is enough, enough when it comes to giving up certain liberties.  In the name of preventing another attack, how much are we willing to give up?  As always, I follow what Spider-man is doing - I'll give up my secret identity because that is the law, but hunting down and jailing heroes without due process is much too far.  Excelsior...

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Comments

[brian]

I can't get too emotional about the story lines in modern superhero comics as they get overwrought about something or other and yet in the end are still 2-dimensional characters.

[PardonMyFrench]

Brian,

I wouldn't normally disagree with you, but I think Civil War might be the exception. Personally, I cut back on almost all of my books except for Spider-man and Batman, both of which I consider not to be 2-dimensional characters. Thanks for the comment.

Eric