Civil War #4

[informationgeek]

Story By: Mark Millar
Art By: Steve McNiven

And we reach rock bottom and by god is there so much crap packed into this issue...





















Then Susan ditches Reed and leaves him behind this letter. Here it goes:

My darling Reed...
I know Johnny's out of the hospital and the family's back together again. I know I should be happy, but I'm not. I'm so ASHAMED of you right now, and ashamed of myself for supporting your fascistic plans. I hate what I've become, and that's why I'm joining Cap's SECRET AVENGERS team.
Please understand: This is not another cry for attention. This is not me trying to distract you from your all-important work.
This is because our hands are soaked in Bill Foster's BLOOD and you're so blinded by your graphs and social projections that you can't even SEE it.
Johnny and I will be working UNDERGROUND from now on, and that's obviously no place for Franklin and Valeria. That's why I've left them in your care and beg you to give them the time you have so often DENIED them in the past.
I also didn't want your last memory of me to be tainted with all the blazing fights we've had in recent weeks. Hence the oily-fish dinner (good brain-food), the bottle of your favorite claret (an excellent antioxidant) and making love one final time (good for the immune system).
I hope I don't look like a coward for leaving this way. I hope you don't think I'm a bad wife or, worse still, a bad mother. I'm doing this for the best of reasons and pray that your genius can RESOLVE this thing before one side ends up slaughtering the other.
I love you, Reed. More than anything in the world. Please fix this.
Susan
XXX

Comments

[scorntx]

Having said stuff about Bill's death and how horrible it was last night...

Tony makes a robo-clone of Thor. (Alright, okay. Suspension of disbelief and all.)
One of their friends gets a hole blown clean through him...
And no-one thinks maybe they shouldn't use Clor anymore.
"Nah, we'll trepanate him a bit. That'll solve all the murdering."
"Could we maybe... maybe not use a robot that murdered some in cold blood?"
"... I don't follow, Peter."

And then they decided to set folks like Bullseye and Lady Deathstrike on them.
How exactly did the writers think Tony was in the right in all this? How?!!

Also, while I'm here:
-"Just to remind you why you're doing this."
*hands Tony an Iron Man figure*-
MOICHENDISING! Where da real money of the crossovah is made!

[balbanes]

"I don't think so"? What kind of bargain-basement Thor clone did Tony/Reed whip up, that couldn't manage a proper "I say thee nay"?

[lyricalswagger]

Probably a variant of Ultron AI, tbh.

[lordultimus]

So has Miriam Sharpe shown up at all after Civil War ended? The only other time I can recall her was in that territory in Secret Wars.

[scorntx]

She showed up in the Iron Man comics directly after CW.
... Don't know if she did much, though.

[starwolf_oakley]

Miriam was in FEAR ITSELF: THE HOME FRONT, drawn to look remarkably like Lena Headey.

[cyberghostface]

We had this bit with Speedball during Fear Itself.

[mastermahan]

Also, what the hell was she doing at Bill Foster's funeral? She didn't know him or anyone who cared about him. I know you lost your son, but please don't crash people's funerals to make a political point, lady.

[deathcrist2000]

So basically, Peter's reaction to Clor killing Goliath is to ask "Are we the Baddies?" to which the comic replies "Ha ha NO! In fact, you're the baddy for siding against this law that has you fighting against your friends".

[oakie620]

Personally, what bothers me more about that part is that Peter's reaction is very underwhelming, given his history with clones. I realize this came out at a time Marvel was seemingly pretending the Clone Saga never happened, but the very act of cloning a person (hero or not) to use him/her as a living weapon is a patented villain behavior that should've elicited a stronger response than what we got. In fact, I was quite surprised that Peter didn't switch sides right then and there.

[doctor_spanky]

This issue was the first time I'd ever even heard of Goliath. Marvel hadn't used him for anything since forever. It's pretty toothless

[icon_uk]

It's a common enough (and bloody annoying enough) trope, see also minor league Doom Patrol members Blaze and Karma in Forever Evil, and Alchemy in the recent "Death of Cyclops" thing.

The only people who will actually care that the character who hasn't been used in 20 years has been killed are the few people who actually liked them enough to remember them in the first place, everyone else will go "Hunh? Oh okay..."

[cyberghostface]

One of the biggest missed opportunities IMO was there was never any blow-up over Norman Osborn being on Tony Stark's payroll at the time. Peter was more pissed over supervillain rights than he was that the guy he considered to be a father figure at the time was employing (if even grudgingly) the guy who threw his girlfriend off a bridge.

That being said the Ellisbolts run was genuinely good, I might post it here soon if that's alright.

[informationgeek]

I'm just doing a post on each issue of the main event book every day until it's done. Go for it.

[captainbellman]

And so, having reached rock bottom, instead of trying to limb back up or dig down we find ourselves rolling around in it...

[gnarll]

Yes put your Thor clone on a battlefield with a Giant on it. See what happens. Smart guys.


Should have made him Vali.

[icon_uk]

Y'know, that's perhaps the closest thing to an explanation I've heard of that scene.

Like baby birds are born able to recognise the outlines of raptors (and so hide) Asgardians have genetic memory that anything giant sized should be killed on reflex. So it's not that Goliath was seen as an actual threat, he just fit the "Giant KILL! KILL! KILL!" template in Clors brain.

[thehood]

I'll say this for this the first Marvel Civil War, it at least actually felt like a war.

CW2 didn't feel like that, it felt like argument between Tony and Carol.

[icon_uk]

The marriage of Reed and Sue disintegrating like this was both ghastly and almost plausible, so it's more or less completely being ignored ever after (AFAIK) is just another weird blip on this trainwreck of a story.

[tcampbell1000]

Well, there was a reconciliation between them in the final issue, and some consequences in concurrent Fantastic Four comics.

[tcampbell1000]

"Oh, wait, there's Bullseye! Bullseye looks thrilled. And with Jack O'Lantern and Taskmaster it's kind of hard to tell. Also, a lot of 'nice people' aren't thrilled about the prospect of teaming up with the Avengers lately, that's kind of what this whole war's about. Did we rewrite these last two panels on the fly or what, and if we did, what was so bad that this clunkasaur of an exchange was an improvement?"

[silicondream]

Yeah, Jester looks pretty happy too. In fact, the only people on the team who look conspicuously unhappy are Lady Deathstrike, who pretty much always frowns, and Songbird, who actually is a nice person.

This could just be nostalgia talking, but...

[deh_tommy]

I still don't really have any sense of why this story is supposedly a complete atrocity and whatnot. Do I have awful taste in media for actually liking this book, or are my thoughts on the book wrong?

Re: This could just be nostalgia talking, but...

[mistersandman]

At scans_daily, it's never just you, but for me, I'm not crazy about this story because everyone seems to be acting so out-of-character. Millar tries to be balanced by making everyone look like an asshole.

For me, whatever merits the story had are slightly dampened by the fact that Civil War kicked off an era where it seemed like the MU was in constant crossover mode: Civil War to Secret Invasion to Dark Reign to Fear Itself to Siege...

[bradygirl_12]

Geez, if I didn't have post-holiday blues before reading this, I sure do now!

No one ever pointed out that the Pro-Reg forces were acting like supervillains, hunting down those heroes who didn't want to register and putting them in jail without a trial and making it permanent until they agreed to register? Making clones of gods as enforcers? The supervillains might as well have retired because the heroes were doing all the bad guy stuff.

[starwolf_oakley]

I've heard that was originally going to be Thor with Don Blake's mind. Because why not? Also, Don!Thor was pro registration because doctors can't practice medicine without a license. Anyone know if this is true or just conjecture. Thor with Don Blake's mind makes more sense than "Tony and Reed cloned Thor."

[bruinsfan]

"Oh. Lord,. This is horrible. I can't even look..."

When did Sue get Fourth Wall-breaking powers like She-Hulk and realize she's in a comic book?

[q99]

Who are those two characters in the first panel?

Iron Man asking a still-standing Captain America to surrender? Captain America calling Iron Man a pampered punk?

Clearly these aren't the 616 versions!