Super-Villain Style

Just finished reading the first issue of Civil War, Marvel Comics new crossover mini-series. And I have to admit, I really enjoyed it. The art, by this Steve McNiven dude, has evolved over the year or so since I first saw his work, and it’s actually very detailed and unique. I was really impressed. Now I see what the big fuss about this guy was about.

I haven’t been keeping up with comics for over the past two months. I have about a stack sitting on the table, and a folder full sitting on my computer hard drive, so I really don’t have the details that lead to the events in Civil War. But that’s okay, because I was still able to follow the story. The story seemed pretty self-contained, only referring to recent events that most readers would already know about, things like Avengers: Disassembled, Wolverine: Enemy of the State, and that crap that happened last year, House of M. So, I didn’t feel out in the cold trying to figure out what the big issues were going into issue number one. Plus, the book’s opening sequence helps catapult the primary conflict to the forefront.

It focuses on the New Warriors, who I haven’t seen in a while, trying to nab a bunch of no-names I can’t seem to recognize, while doing some reality Cops-style show. They expect the gang to be an easy catch, hopefully upping their rep and their television ratings in the process. But, things go terribly wrong. And one of the bad guys goes nuclear, killing everyone in the process. I think the explosion wipes out the town or something. but I could be wrong because several townspeople are at the funeral, including a grieving mother, who spits a wet one in Tony Stark’s face.

After the incident, the government, sensing growing public concern, starts on the road of inacting a super-hero registration act. Funny thing. But wasn’t there a mutant registration act about a decade or so ago. I wonder whatever happened with that? Anyway, the registration act has several heroes divided, including Spider-man, who wouldn’t mind keeping his secret identity secret, and Luke Cage, who for whatever reason, just can’t stand or trust the man. And who can blame them. Look at Daredevil. His life is in complete shambles, and all because his secret identity became public knowledge.

The story progresses as we see a suprising development, Captain America possibly becoming the head of the group of heroes against the registration act. He’s attacked by Shield when he refuses to join them in rounding up the rest of the anti-registration heroes in one of the best action packed comic book fight scenes I’ve seen in recent history. Marvel has done a good job rebuilding Captain America, from his hokey red, white and blue one-dimensional past, to the dynamic new age action hero of the present day.

The book ends as we see Iron Man standing with Mr. Fantastic and some other dude whose name I can’t recall, promising some governement figurehead that they will bring in Captain America and the other anti-registration heroes.

I usually rip on these big comic book events, and this one may eventually suck in the end. The problem with crossovers is that you have to read a million books to figure out what’s really going on. It’s one of the problems I had with Infinite Crisis. Half the time I was lost. And by the end, who knows what the hell really happened. But as a starting point, this book was pretty much on point. And if Marvel can keep most of the main story points self-contained within the main books, this could turn out to be one of the most intriguing comic book miniseries in a long time.

I’m not a big fan of Captain America. I didn’t grow up reading those old Stan Lee/Jack Kirby books, although I have read several of those mid to late 60s classics. But I think we can all agree, Captain America has pretty much sucked balls since then, outside of those few stretches where the series has been decent.

I think some might think foundly over those 70s Cap and Falcon stories. My first look at Cap was during the whole Captain No More period. I can’t recall those stories completely, but Steve Rogers either quit or was replaced by this other dude who later became the US Agent. I can’t recall US Agent’s real name, so I’ll just call him Agent. Agent took over as Captain America. I think there was a slightly redesigned suit. He was a harder hitting version of Cap. I think Marvel wanted to toughen up the image of Cap. I honestly can’t recall how that story ended. All I know is that I haven’t read a Captain America story since then. At least until now.

Why now, you might ask. Well, Marvel’s bringing another person back from the dead. It’s getting ridiculous. First, Jason Todd. Now this abomination.

I forgot to tell you who they dug up. Bucky. That’s right, Bucky. Hasn’t that bastard been dead since the 40s. Bucky was like the sacred cow. You could bring anybody you wanted back from the dead, except him. Until now. And I wish it made me sick. But it doesn’t. Because, I guess, I’m desensitized to the reanimation effect in comics. Plus. I like how the creative team on the book is doing this up. Especially with issue number 11 of the new Captain America series.

The issue begins with Rogers hitting his pad and finding a top secret report on the table. He opens it and finally discovers the truth. Apparently, the filthy commie Russians discovered the dead, blown up body of Bucky. They ran tests on the body, hoping to gain insight on the secret soldier formula. They eventually brought him back to life. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the secret soldier formula in his veins. So, they decided to use Bucky for other purposes. Evil purposes.

They gave him a robotic arm, and taught the brain damaged sidekick the art of assasination. They used Bucky to take out their enemies across the globe, placing him in stasis between missions. Apparently, Bucky, deep down, knows he’s Bucky. And apparently, Bucky tended to go off the radar at times, and do other weird things that the commie Russians didn’t like. So, to better control him, they placed him stasis between missions. And when they needed him again, they took him out, reprogrammed him, and set him on his killing way.

Eventually, he was decommissioned. Until now. Now he works for another filthy bastard named General Lukin, a former Russian commie. And under Lukin, Bucky has done the impossible, including taking out the Red Skull, and Caps old partner, Nomad. Now, we, along with Cap, find out how the sweet lovable Bucky became the cold-blooded murderer, the Winter Soldier.

And I must admit, I’m getting into this new Captain America series. The books have a nice pace. There’s non-stop action. And Steve Epting is doing some of the best artwork of his career. In fact, I was thinking, if they ever were to do a Captain America movie, it probably should have the same feeling as this book, like Alias meets 24, or some other top secret espionage crap like that.

That’s what the Scarlett Witch said at the end of issue seven of House of M, the big summer crossover event for Marvel. Although, it seemed at times like this crap would never end. And here we are at issue number eight, which also could be known as the aftermath. At the end of the last issue, after Wanda speaks the ominous words, the world turns to white like it did at the end of issue one. And what do we find? Chaos, the world in utter chaos. Most people have no recollection of what happened in the House of M world. All they know is that something big happened. And, oh, I forgot the important part, there far fewer mutants in the world.

The media’s buzzing. The government is protecting its ass, making sure the world knows that the mutant decimation was no part of some government conspiracy. And our heroes, the avenging ones, try to make sense of what just happened.

I should have put a spolier warning here, but this whole site is filled with spoilers. That’s just the way it is. I can’t help it. So, here we go.

Back to the story. We return back to the “real” world and find that only a few remember what happened in the House of M world, those apparently protected by the White Queen when the world faded to white. One of those that remember includes Spider-man, who turned out to be a whack job in the “fake” world, married to his old sweetheart, Gwen Stacy, with a kid and his Uncle Ben still alive. And when he returns to the “real” Marvel Universe, boy is he pissed. But he’s not alone, because over at the X-Mansion, there’s emotional chaos going down as half the students at the school realize that they don’t have their powers anymore.

The kids are crying like beyotches, and the White Queen, whatever her real name is, I forgot, is busy tracking down how big the epidemic is. And she finds out that most of the world has been hit, with most of the mutant population wiped out, power-wise. We learn that the mutants didn’t die. They simply lost the mutant gene. Although it looks like the only mutants that will really be affected are the ones no one gives a rat’s ass about, like Iceman, otherwise known as Bobby Drake. For a while he’s been stuck in ice mode. Now, he’s back to being flesh and bone.

Also, another mutant who isn’t showing up on the map is Professor X, who was last seen dead in the House of M world. He seems to have dropped off the face of the planet.

Afterwards, the mutants, or the astonishing ones, fly down to Genosha and meet up with Magneto, who now is powerless as well. He can’t even lift a fork. I wonder how they found him so quickly especially since he isn’t a mutant anymore. Anyway, they do some NYPD Blue crap on him and question him about the whereabouts of his kids, Pietro and Wanda. But Magneto knows nothing. Why do they want those two. Well, in the previous issue, we find out it was Pietro, not Magneto, who helped Wanda create the House of M world. It was his idea. And because of this, the X-Men leave Magneto behind in the dusty waste of Genosha to suffer in self-pity over the loss of his powers.

And the story comes to a close with a powerless Wanda wandering some third world market, most likely unaware of who she was and what power whe wielded.

There are several other revelations throughout the story, two most notably being the return of Hank Pym, who I believe died during that crap at Avengers mansion, and possibly Hawkeye, whose costume and arrows show up, like crappy comic book foreshadowing. But I’m guessing it probably won’t be Hawkeye since they didn’t show him. Or it could be House of M Haweye who jumps over from that world to the the “real” Marvel Universe, which would be kind of interesting.

Oh yeah, I’m forgetting the real big revelation, about Wolverine. It was speculated that he would lose his powers, but he didn’t lose anything. Instead, he gained something from the experience, his memories. That’s right, Wolverine now remembers everything, which is what I’m assuming will be the basis of his year long journey in his own book. Now maybe we’ll finally be able to make sense of his convoluted history.

So, there you have it. You sit through six crappy issues to get to the good two at the end, which is my take on this crap. House of M was another crappy crossover event. The actual individual issues served no purpose but to jumpstart the many tie-in issues, and that even suffered because many of the tie-in books were late. In fact, I think there are still a couple of House of M stories that haven’t been published yet. I don’t know. I found the majority of M to be an utterly uninspiring mess, although I did like the art in the main book. And like I stated earlier, the last two issues were top notch. I’m especially looking forward with what they do with a Marvel Universe with far fewer mutants. I doubt much. But there’s hope that this story will get rid of a lot of B-level character who were created for all those B and C-level mutant books.