Disclaimer: I'm talking about Civil War II, so I'm talking directly about the plot which means there are spoilers. So, if you guys don't want to hear about it, go ahead and jump ship now. Otherwise, there are spoilers after the jump. I've warned you.
For those of you that haven't given enough of a fuck to pick it up, Revenge of the Civil is NOT a retrospect of the original epic Mark Millar classic clusterfuck (Sorry, guys, but it doesn't hold up very well over time). It's more of a spiritual sequel in the regard that it's a huge divide among the Marvel heroes, but this time it's all over the implications of Ulysses, a recently awakened Inhuman who can see big horrible events happening in the future because fuckIdontknow. Captain Marvel and the Ultimates want to co-opt Ulysses as a part of the Ultimates' initiative to stop major catastrophes before they happen. Iron Man, in an uncharacteristic moment of good moral judgment, sees a lot of the problems with playing with the complicated nature of free will and what leads us to the choices we make. Also, Tony Stark is presumably the only person in the Marvel Universe who has ever seen Minority Report.
By the way, pre-crime is unilaterally stupid for pretty much all the same reasons the Superhero Registration Act was PROVEN stupid fifteen years ago. It's weird that giving these sort of superhuman McGuffins over to the government (yes, SHIELD still counts as the government) is still up for debate in a universe where the Green Goblin was given government oversight and, as a result, used it for maximum evil the last time heroes fought over this kind of shit.
Anyway, eventually, the Ultimates use one of Ulysses visions to figure out that Thanos is on Earth because apparently, fuck Earth. So, the Ultimates show up and jump Thanos, whose power level at any given moment ranges anywhere from "the most powerful villain in the universe" to "takes all the Avengers dogpiling him to beat him" to "can be put down with a shot in the face from Starlord's gun." Since the Ultimates have the tactical advantage, this should make for a walk in the park except that they showed up on a day when Thanos' power is at "Mortal Kombat fatality" level, so She-Hulk ends up in a coma and War Machine gets a critical hit to the gut and dies horribly.
So, right there in the first issue, Brian Michael Bendis brings back the thing we loved the most about the first Civil War: the part where a black guy dies horribly for the specific purpose of pissing off white characters enough to advance the plot. And the fans responded in such a wonderfully appropriate fashion to show their appreciation. With Marvel clearly having their finger on the pulse of the average reader, they had Tom Brevoort respond to the backlash because he's so good with talking to people on the internet. And he did everything wrong. First off, in a quick game of Racist Pokemon (where white people throw out their black friends to fight their battles for them), he essentially says, "We talked to Ta-Nehisi Coates about it and he warned us that it was a stupid idea and we realized we killed off a black guy last time and might be developing a bad theme here, but come on, guys...we advanced the plot!"
So we're not off to a great start. And that was only Issue #1.
(I'm not going to talk about Issue #2 because, basically, the bare minimum amount of things happened. Tony Stark breaks into the Inhumans' stronghold, abducts Ulysses and ties him up in his lab....pretty much to give him a check up to make sure his visions aren't subject to any of his human emotional biases, something the Inhumans would have probably been fine with him doing with fucking kidnapping and torturing the kid. Oh, and Hulk is going to go apeshit in the future because that never happens.)
Also, as usual, you can check out my reviews for The Mighty Thor and Cyborg on Black Nerd Problems for your viewing pleasure. And don't forget about my weekly webcomic with Katie Coats, Neverland: The Untold.
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