CIVIL WAR FRONT LINE #9: A Blue Flash?

[starwolf_oakley]

When I first posted pages from CIVIL WAR FRONT LINE #9, the first conversation between Sally Floyd and Captain America, I mentioned how Cap looked like a blue version of the Flash. Now, in the DARKEST NIGHT crossover, we have the Flash as a Blue Lantern. Wild, huh?



char: sally floyd, char: captain america/steve rodgers, series: civil war front line, creator: paul jenkins, creator: ramon bachs





Point one? Cap is $%^$in' lying. The scene near the end of CIVIL WAR #1 went like this.

MARIA HILL: So, you'll help us hunt down all the street-level heroes who won't comply?
CAP: Well, I really don't know if it...
MARIA HILL: GET HIM!!!!



FRONT LINE had a lot of "The Civil War is a scam to turn the American government into a plutocracy." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutocracy) Then it didn't. The fact that CIVIL WAR divided the heroes between rich and poor didn't help matters.



It is rude of Sally to keep looking at her watch while Cap is talking.

I wonder where the SHRA will be once SEIGE ends and "The Heroic Age" begins. One flaw with CIVIL WAR (out of many) was that half the creative teams didn't know what the other half was doing. Was the SHRA good or bad? Do the writers at Marvel still think the SHRA is a horrible, horrible idea that will ruin the Marvel Universe forever. Keep in mind, a lot of the "real world" things that inspired CIVIL WAR are still around. Even with Barack Obama as our president, we still can't hash out where we should try captured terrorists and who should pay for their defense lawyers.

Comments

[an-idol-mind.livejournal.com]

1) Sally Floyd is a terrible reporter.

2) I hate her so very fucking much.

[auggie18]

Ditto ditto ditto. Motto. Yes. Agreed.

Lois Lane needs to cross over and kick her ass.

[freezer]

I'd settle for Ben Urich telling her she sucks and why.

[shadur]

Ben Urich found out just how much Stark Enterprises was profiteering from the SHRA and then decided to bury the evidence rather than break the story because "we have to look at the bigger picture" which apparently didn't include such inconsequential things as the truth.

[amaniwolf]

Word! I detested her by the end of this whole mess...and still do.

[kagome654]

She's a thoroughly unpleasant character, and not even in an entertaining way.

[proteus_lives]

Motto.

I'm a freelance writer and I want to slap her silly.

[freezer]

I'm almost positive Floyd was supposed to be a Devil's Advocate/Audience Surrogate. Someone who would ask the the questions non-capes would ask and not just accept the word of the heroes she liked.

So how is it that that concept morphed into the shallow ball of ignorance that is Sally Floyd?

[lonewolf23k]

"I'm almost positive Floyd was supposed to be a Devil's Advocate/Audience Surrogate. Someone who would ask the the questions non-capes would ask and not just accept the word of the heroes she liked.

So how is it that that concept morphed into the shallow ball of ignorance that is Sally Floyd?"

Bad writing.

[icon_uk]

Good God, SHE'S what we're supposed to believe passes for a journalist in the MU? Really? Someone who walks out a unique interview opportunity early because she doesn't agree with them?

Frell this dren!

[nezchan]

Given how stupid the average civilian is in the MU ("Sure they saved the world and my life more times than I can count, they're mutants dammit! I have to despise them at the drop of a hat!"), I'd say she's pretty much the reporter they deserve.

What...

[enygmatix]

What does "War isn't about who's right, it's about who's left" even MEAN in that context. I might be slow, but if someone could explain it to me...

Re: What...

[starwolf_oakley]

I've read stuff like "Wars aren't won, just survived."

Re: What...

[tammy_moore]

From the context that she places her OWN remarks in she's claiming that had Hitler won the war the histories would have framed him as being in the right.

Which is factually true, but nothing to do with actual morals, right and wrong or good and evil.

There might have been an interesting hook in there - pointing out that by turning this into a battle it becomes might makes right rather than about the principles involved instead. Or that no matter what Cap thinks of what Tony is doing - that most people involved in the Civil War aren't evil.

Unfortunately, Sally Floyd is a horrible human being and a terrible reporter (not the only one in Marvel either) and the Cape-Killers and Thunderbolts were rather villainous.

Re: What...

[icon_uk]

It essentially means that both sides believe they are right when they fight, but that the perspective on who was "right" in retrospect is usually only written by the winners (eg, those "left" alive)

[darkblade]

I thought the general idea behind the SHRA was a good idea but it was executed in the worst possible way in order to make bad political parrelles and maximize conflict.

The idea of making sure heroes are trained and deputized is well a good idea. But making them directly answerable to the government and deploying the absurd amounts of SHIELD (which was a UN Organization pre-Civil War and had no business enforcing American law) resourses that if they threw that kind of muscle around there wouldn't be any supervillians and we wouldn't need the heroes anymore.

I didn't even mind the concept of the Negative Zone prison. If anything it would make a better place to keep the supervillains to prevent them from breaking out every week. I drew the line at the Clor and the nanite controlled Thunderbolts because throwing more dangerous barely controled people calling themselves "heroes" makes no sense at all under the pro-reg.

Thats not saying the Anti-reg were much better. If they just stuck to fighting criminals from the shaodws and stayed underground I would have been fine with it but once they start going on the offensive there is the fundamental problem. The only way to change a law through force is revolution. Let's say if Cap hadn't surrendered when he did and they somehow beat all the pro-reg forces, then what? That is a road that leads to the Authority and the Justice Lords, not a road anyone wants to see Cap go down.

TLDR: Civl War and the SHRA could have been good but Marvel fucked them up.

[thanekos]

" WHAT IF... Phil Sheldon was kind of an idiot? "

[mcity]

Point one? Cap is $%^$in' lying. The scene near the end of CIVIL WAR #1 went like this.

MARIA HILL: So, you'll help us hunt down all the street-level heroes who won't comply?
CAP: Well, I really don't know if it...
MARIA HILL: GET HIM!!!!

I think it was mightygodking who pointed out that they were trying to arrest him for a law that wasn't even on the books yet. All he would need would be to go quietly, have his lawyer alert the media, and the SHRA goes down before it even properly exists.

[twigcollins]

This is why when I said Maria Hill started the whole thing, I feel I was only being mildly hyperbolic.

... and essentially, attempts to redeem her character do not match up to the sheer Epic Fail of her crash and burn, no matter how much Marvel Editorial would conveniently like for them to be.

Also, I enjoy the way Sally Floyd is written, even for how much I hate her, because man, she feels very realistically stupidly pathetically aggressively self-inflictedly messed up.

I mean, who else would cut out on talking to Captain America? Who else in the entire Marvel universe would ever do that and then have the gall to feel self-righteously proud about it?

Godspeed, Sally Floyd, you utter trainwreck.

iawtc

[jazzypom]

... and essentially, attempts to redeem her character do not match up to the sheer Epic Fail of her crash and burn, no matter how much Marvel Editorial would conveniently like for them to be.

I know, right?

Re: iawtc

[shadur]

The problem with redeeming someone is that before you can start the redemption process, they're going to have to acknowledge that they were wrong in the first place.

Sure, it sucks to be Tony right now, what with having his entire company seized, being a fugutive from 'justice' by a law he fought everyone he respected to get enacted, having a corrupt sociopathic villain in charge of all the technology he'd been developing, blah blah yadda yadda, but the last I checked he's STILL insisting that he's a FUTURIST and that registration was the right thing to do despite the fact at this point pretty much everything its opponents predicted would go wrong with it has gone wrong almost exactly as predicted.

Same with Floyd. For her to start redeeming herself, she'd first have to realize and acknowledge that she's a whiny, jealous, resentful and spiteful bitch* and a shitty reporter, and THEN start actively working on not being those anymore.


*) In other word, perfectly representative of 90% of the Marvel Universe civilians.

[valtyr]

Actually, I think the efforts to redeem Hill's character have matched her Fail quite well; if you assume she felt the SHRA was the right thing to do, she's got a pattern of doing crazy-brave shit in the pursuit of doing what she believes is right. Right from telling the Avengers to get stuffed, then telling the President to get stuffed when he wanted her to nuke the Avengers, through attempting to capture Cap, to holding the UN hostage and most recently attacking the Dark Avengers with a rocket-laucher to rescue Thor.

So while I think she was totally wrong about the SHRA, I can respect the fact she does go balls-out committed regardless of personal risk in favour of the things she believes in. (And she catches blame from people who are willing to give Reed and Tony a free pass.)

[shadur]

I think Cap suspected (with good reason) that if he were to 'come quietly', he'd likely never get a chance to talk to his lawyer.

After all, she's just dispensed with due process in order to arrest him for...

... for what, exactly? Trying to talk to people about how this new law and the way they're planning to enforce it is a bad idea? Right up until Hill gives the order to fire, that's /all/ he's doing.

[valtyr]

She gave him an order that I don't think she had any right to give him, as he's not a SHIELD agent or in the military. It was also an illegal order (Enforce a law that's not on the books? Uh, no.) so even if she had been in a position to give him orders, he would have been legally obliged to refuse it. So yeah, it was never really going to work.

Why Cap went straight underground instead of straight to the media is another question, but if Sally Floyd is representative, I can't really blame him. "The Government just tried to illegally detain Captain America... oh, but I have a date..."

Everyone in Civil War carried the idiot ball.

[valtyr]

I think it was mightygodking who pointed out that they were trying to arrest him for a law that wasn't even on the books yet. All he would need would be to go quietly, have his lawyer alert the media, and the SHRA goes down before it even properly exists.

Not even that - Steve's certainly in compliance with any registration law, he's been registered since the 1940s and works closely with SHIELD. He was being arrested for refusing to enforce said law that wasn't on the books!

[mcity]

Even if that were in any way legal, all they should be able to do was fire him.

[valtyr]

"Within twelve seconds I knew where that story was going."

Ugh, what an embarrassment this person is. And her employer gave her a second chance at interviewing Cap? No way, no how. She should've been fired for this ridiculous crap.

Cap should probably have been better at explaining himself, but I can justify that on the grounds that he realised she wasn't listening because she'd already made her mind up.

[shadur]

Cap should probably have been better at explaining himself

He wasn't allowed to by authorial mandate, I think.

[e_307]

Every time I see something related to Civil War or Flyod here I just think of the one 'What if?' that ended with the heroes running the SHRA themselves and this link:
http://i150.photobucket.com/albums/s102/Linkara/AT4W/Capsright.jpg