Thursday, February 22, 2007

Civil War #7 - A Review










Writer: Mark Millar, Artist: Steve McNiven, Inker: Dexter Vines.

Premise: The Marvel heroes are dealing with a tragedy that killed 600 plus innocent civilians. The tragedy was caused by a super-villain Nitro who was being chased by the New Warriors. The resulting political fall out caused a registration bill to be passed and some heroes were in favor of the bill and some were opposed, causing a Civil War. Iron Man lead the pro-registration forces and Captain America the anti-registration forces.

What I Liked:

1) The art was good, but I actually preferred Steve McNiven's earlier work. The panel layouts were okay but not spectacular.

2) Production quality was high. Nice paper all very slick and pretty.

What I Didn't Like

1) The whole idea. The end of the story is Captain America sees what great destruction they are causing and surrenders and the pro registration forces win. This is a real total change in the whole premise of the Marvel Universe. Every hero is essentially signing up to be a super cop. Being an officer of the government and being their agent is totally different from being a hero. Many of the heroes of the old Marvel universe did it because it was the right thing to do and often did it at their own expense. This takes away the heroic ideal and essentially destroys it.

2) The characterization. Who are these people. More then half of these characters don't even sound like themselves. "no, I'm just thinking about my pal up there kicking your butts into next week.." - is that something Captain America says? Reed Richards is watching Spider-Man fight and says "Amazing", then Spider-Man kicks him and says "Spectacular", hell why didn't Reed say not very Friendly - how chessy was that scene (answer very). Heracles has the line that I know Thor and you are no Thor(thank you Lloyd Bentsen) as he kills Clor (I'm not quoting as it was all darest and thoust were added). My favorite example of who the hell is this is a line from a letter Reed is sending Sue "I saw you during the clean up...you looked so beautiful...I cried a full ninety-three minutes when I returned home that night" - BLECHHH. Plus Reed has a new power to be able to cry for over an hour and a half.

3) This not the Watchmen, this is not Kingdom Come, or Absolute New Frontier or even Crisis on Infinite Earths and I think it is less then Infinite Crisis. So why the frelling delay to let Steve McNiven draw all of it. This is not a timeless book that will last for the ages. The actual seven issues themselves were not that good and did not tell even half of the story. The fall out may have some good stories, but this was nothing more then a glorified super-hero fight that is the springboard for setting a new status quo that I think is a bad idea. Hopefully the execution of the individual series will over come this horrible status, but it has already destroyed She-Hulk.

Grade F

My grade is so harsh because this book failed on many levels, story, characterization and creating a more interesting Marvel Universe. It really missed the mark. The biggest sales numbers do not always equate to the best product.

6 comments:

  1. This wins the award for the Worst Series Ever. Total piece of garbage. Millar has ruined the universe that Stan Lee built. The fact that everyone was in NYC made the Marvel U feel like a cohesive universe. Now that's all gone. Tony Stark is the hero who risked everything for what was right?!?!? NO FRIGGIN WAY! Cap was the one who risked all. And we're expected to believe that the public is on Tony's side? And on top of that the public wants the villains sent away to the negative zone?!?!?!
    Tony is the hero with the Prez's approval and great new job and public respect. Cap rots away in prison. Spidey is now a hunted criminal living life underground and has to take MJ and May there too so they won't be hassled. This is all such trash.
    So if you want to be a superhero in the Marvel U, you have to register with the gov't, get drafted, wait to see what state you are assigned to(pray it isn't North Dakota), and only serve justice in the ways your master, the US gov't, commands. This is now a much different universe than the DCU and I pray that it fails miserabley. Who can like this trash like this?

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  2. Can you imagine Captain America having the same attitude in World War II. Yeah, Hitler is bad, but we got to quit for the sake of the real estate.

    Richard
    http://1rightopinion-comics.blogspot.com/

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  3. This comic made me want to vomit.

    Thank you for an honest review.

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  4. Palladin - Your welcome.

    Richard - This Captain America would have been helping Chamberlin.

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  5. I was really trying to get through it. I really was. I went "ooh, cool SPIDEY moment." Oh, HERCULES laid a smackdown on inbred THOR. Then....then....

    ...

    CAP went all EMO, cried and gave up.

    It came out of nowhere. It threw me out of the story.

    We can bitch all we want. It will still be the highest selling comic this month and Marvel will tout it as a victory.

    We should all be mourning the loss of NEXTWAVE. The scene in the first issue where FING FANG FOOM tries to put BOOM BOOM in his pants was better than the entire CW.

    BTW: CASANOVA #7 was awesome. Tied up the first volume, and made everything that happened in the previous 6 issues come together.

    Mike Carey also wrote a great single issue of HELLBLAZER this week.

    Cheers.

    -SJD

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  6. Shawn - Next Wave was awesome and left me sad as there will be no #13 next month.

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