Page 33, Vol. 1, #18 -- Civil War

What's so Civil about War Files Anyway?

Never in the history of my comic reading has something with which I had so little expectations disappointed me so thoroughly.

I'm speaking, of course (of course!), of Marvel's Civil War Files. It's a one shot… publication… that claims to be a dossier written by Tony Stark (more commonly known as Iron Man) to be the primary intelligence resource for the U.S. Government about superheroes.

I suppose I should give you some background on why the esteemed Mr. Stark would be writing such a thing.

For those of you who have, at best, been under a rock in the world of comics, the current mega-super-crossover story arc that Marvel's marketing group has unleashed upon us is known as "Civil War." In the wake of a horrible accident, partially due to the irresponsible behavior of a less experience super hero, a school in small town, USA blew up, killing hundreds, mostly children. In response, the U.S. congress passed the Superhero Registration Act, requiring all individuals with superhero abilities or vigilante tendencies to notify the government of their abilities and equipment and true identities.

This divided the superhero community sharply, with Tony Stark being one of the lead proponents of the new law, and being appointed an administrative head, coordinating with S.H.I.E.L.D to capture non-compliant vigilantes. Which includes Captain American, who objects to the law on grounds of human rights and the questionable constitutionality of the law. One of the most interesting choices of who's on whose side is our beloved Peter "Spider-Man" Parker, who held a press conference to reveal his identity. Because, y'know, his life isn't a case study in why revealing your secret identity is a Bad Thing. Of course, he's also received a number of new powers and a high tech suit. He literally doesn't resemble the Spidey we all fell in love with anymore.

But I digress. This information surely explains why the Man in the Iron Underpants would be collecting information to brief government officials and agents about all the superheroes everywhere.

The book has a lot of potential. Strictly speaking, it's not a comic, since that wouldn't really be a format government dossiers are written in. If you read between the lines, there is a lot of material here that really enhances the story arc of Civil War. One of Stark's primary arguments for registration is mandating training and supervised experience for new heroes. He picks on the Runaways and the Young Avengers quite frequently. However, in the entry for Hercules, (yeah, The Hercules, the son of Zeus and so forth), he says, "You would think that this experienced warrior would have the wisdom to appreciate the benefits of super hero registration. You would think that, as a god, he would have a paternalistic relationship with mortals and appreciate the responsibility those with great power owe… You would think, as a former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, he would see the advantages of once again becoming a licensed super hero."

Irony abounds! The entry itself notes that he's a "poster child" for the need for this registration act, with his drunken debauches and violent temper. Hercules is, literally, the single most experienced hero in the Marvel Universe, with the possible exceptions of Thor or the Silver Surfer. Yet neither this experience nor the sure knowledge of his true identity (there can be no one on the planet who doesn't know exactly who he is) has done anything at all to prevent him from causing collateral damage on massive scales.

The egotism displayed here is rampant in the entries. And that's what makes it so intriguing. It only takes a small knowledge of comic books to realize that this law is the sort of thing that you can't permanently do to a property -- it's a fundamental conceptual shift about how superheroes work. The law will be repealed somehow and eventually the world will return to normal (after all, it always does). The sheer arrogance that Stark displays in his infallible correctness foreshadows the failure, and probably his own conversion.

These elements, as you can see, got me very excited about the book.

However, there are also numerable flaws.

Die hard comic fans will naturally buy and read it. You can keep up on your nerd discussions if you don't know all the minute details about characters. However, it, as I said, is not a comic. There is one portrait (often quite, quite small) of each hero. Visually, it's uninteresting, especially the white text on black. As far as I can tell, the only original art in the book is the front cover. All the portraits are grabs from other comics. Some of them quite old. The style and quality of the illustrations is inconsistent and often quite poor.

Now, while the concepts are there, the book also contains a large quantity of text that just didn't fit. Stark is constantly referring to his alcoholism problems, which, on the one hand, enhances the problem with his stance, which is interesting, but it's also not information that would be put into a dossier. He takes the time to comment about similarities between him and anyone else he can find a similarity to, such as someone with a heart condition or someone who uses power armor. Worst, he takes the time to comment about the looks of every female he documents. "She's also a knockout, but I'll keep that observation to myself!" is at once a horrible piece of prose (and self-contradictory) and entirely inappropriate for a government intelligence document. Also, it hardly seems like something Tony Stark would say about the wife of Reed Richards.

The style of writing is quite conversational. Which, while appropriate for this column, hardly makes the book believable in its own frame of reference.

And that's what's really irritating about it. It's not a comic. As a work of primarily text, it necessarily relies on the strength of its writing to carry it. And the writing is, at best, on and off.

Which is doubly irritating. These guys are getting paid to write about really cool stuff, and they're doing a poor job of it. While I'm stuck writing help files. There is no justice in this world. Perhaps we should have superhero writer registration and training.

Discuss it in our forums.

Written by SaintEhlers on October 10th, 2006