Whose Side Were You On? Marvel Civil War

[Mikekerr3]

Honestly, I can't see why most heroes especially in the Marvel universe would be against Registration, 90% barely have secret IDs these days, majority of them work with SHIELD or local law enforcement in some capacity. The whole thing with Civil War had the anti registration team seem really kind of dumb in some aspects, especially since in real life cops and law enforcement really wouldn't stand for all the free lance crap and property damage the various heroes cause.

Yep, completely on Tony's side which why I sort of hate CW because a majority of the writers really went out of their way to make sure Pro-registration looked like the bad guys even after the end.

How about they did not want not be treated like slaves at the beck and call of thugs like Gyrich and Hill? Or how about not wanting super-powered kids abused at that super Cluster-F that was the school, where they made the kids more dangerous as government weapons and abused even basic rights abd put sadistic and incoptent clowns in charge. Or how about those that diod not want anything to do with Super-heroing who l just wanted to use thier powers lawfully and privately?

[Mikekerr3]

It doesn't have to be so, but sometimes it just works out that way!



I thought Millar was portraying it as a head versus heart type of thing. I think he showed the flaws of either side. Logic without emotion and you get the pro-reg side. Emotion without focus and you get the anti-reg side.

I honestly think that Millar did a decent job with the series. The majority of the crap that marred the story was in the tie in issues. Many of those we're utter nonsense and I think they certainly demonized the pro-reg side and idealized the anti-reg.

Which is a shame because in the core book, I felt it was fairly well balanced.

I think Milllar showed it as morality Vs pragmatic cowardice.

[hawkeyefan]

I think Milllar showed it as morality Vs pragmatic cowardice.

No, I think he showed both sides as flawed. That's why it ended how it did. Even Cap realized he was wrong.

I suppose one could argue that at least Cap recognized his errors whereas Stark didn't. At least not in the main series. I think they saved that for the Confession one shot.

[jackolover]

Tony's side, all the way


I would disagree, I actually felt Tony's side was show to be right by the event... which is in many ways why (like with AvX) it was a well balanced event. If both sides think they are right, clearly the writers did a good job.

Okay. I might be wrong then.

[jackolover]

Anti-registration. The writers made the actions of the pro-registration to speak more than their philosophy. It makes sort of sense for heroes having to take responsibility, but using super-villains to hunt down heroes, imprisoning them in the negative zone and creating a mad clone that kills off a hero made them the outright villains, at least in the main series. It wasn't balanced at all. Cap uses the Punisher, and Iron Man uses Clor. I read that the creators thought that pro-registration was the only choice, and they had to overcompensate to make the anti have more of a chance, but I think both sides were balanced already if taken at their most basic stance, and Millar went overboard to make pro-reg "balanced". They sorely miscomprehended what the fanbase would do.

I never knew this, overcompensating the Anti-reg side. That's not how I saw it. Is there a reference for this.

I was anti-registration, just like Reed was back in Simonson's Fantastic Four run until Millar decided he wasn't. It could have been done much better because there is some legitimate concerns about heroes acting as vigilantism. But then can the NYPD handle Galactus anytime he shows up?

It was more to do with belligerence. The Government passed a Law and so the super heroes had to obey. There was a demarkation between the need for super heroes against Galactus, and the need for the community to feel safe with super humans.

If I was a citizen in the MU, I'd sure as hell want all super powered beings registered & accountable for their actions.

Reed & Tony were portrayed as horrible villains though, which is such a shame. And this is the one event that should actually have had huge consequences for every anonymous hero in the universe. Therefore, retconning Spidey's massive character development is just atrocious.

Well, CW had a massive consequence on Spider-Man, so much so that Marvel were forced to make Spidey negotiate so that his Aunt May could survive. The Poor guy could not rationalize that his Aunt had to die because his secret Identity was now well known. It was a major trauma to Spidermans mythos, that whole affair.

I understood both sides. i thought about why they were doing this because of the nenew warriors. it was to make the general population of normal humans feel safer. but i also thought that's what the guys in tights whose loved ones they were endangering have been trying to do from the start, with some exception of course. i didn't think they really did anything too bad with tony but show the lengths he will go to to do what he thinks is right. he just kind of had to be a little crazier to achieve his objective. i wouldve sided with cap because i saw that as bad in comparison but understand his views as well. i wouldve fought with all my powers in order to keep my identity and therefore my loved ones safe.

How many here think identities need to be secret for the super humans to operate effectively? The whole point of CW was that the country didn't believe the super humans needed to be secret, because the beaurocracy needed to hold super heroes responsible for death or damage, and the only way they could that was to take names. Has that situation changed?

Pro Registration.

Young teenagers with flame, telekinetic, super strength, and other varieties of super abilities, with NO training, going round doing as they please, with no one to answer to? No, thank you.

They should be properly trained, and have to answer to someone/held accountable for their actions.

Also, on the subject of secret identities, the police put their lives on the line, tackling all kinds criminals, that could track them down and hurt their loved ones. Yet they still do their job. No masks. That's heroic.

The thing about police uniforms is they tend make them all look generic, so to locate one police person, they have to isolate him from multitude out there and then not be caught doing it. Of cause once a criminal does take down a policemans loved one, then the full force of the organization won't rest until that person is dead. I'm not too sure the super heroes are that organized. They never had to be, because they had secret identities. The super heroes were based on a traditional need that the police could not fulfill, so they went out and took down the robbers and 5th columnists that the cops were powerless to contain. If the Super Heroes didn't do this, then the country would have fallen into chaos with so much criminal and Nazi activities in the country when the SH's first made themselves useful. I don't think that situation has changed in modern times either. The SH's slink around and fix problems that the cops have no way to fulfill. And the scope of this super criminal activity has exploded to enormous lengths from the times when the Fantastic Four first appeared.

True, but the police in the MU are always exposed to the many super villains. Yet, they still do their job, knowing full well, say, Hydroman might have a bad day, and kill that one cop's family, that pissed him off that one time trying to apprehend him.

Isn't Officer Mulaney glad that Spiderman deals with Hydroman then?

As for the actual argument, I was totally on Iron Man's side. Cap was trying to frame this as a "fundamental rights" issue. Here's the thing, getting superpowers is NOT a "fundamental right." Dressing up in a costume and going out to commit vigilante acts (which is illegal btw) is NOT a "fundamental right." Cap's argument was essentially "these people should be able to anonymously go out and commit acts of illegal vigilantism and accountable to no one but themselves." Bullcrap. Having some way to hold them accountable if they screw up, or go crazy, or prove incompetent (which happens quite a lot with heroes in the MU) and giving them some level of training so that they know what the Hell they're doing, I'm not seeing the problem with that. And apparently Marvel realized that to because they had to paint Tony and his side as cartoonishly over-the-top fascists just to try and make Cap seem right.

Back then, in 2006, I would have given you an argument, but after the Illuminati did what they did recently, I wouldn't argue with you. Now, the FF are getting torn down, Tony will be hated by the rest of the super comminity, and Thor will lose his status as holder of the hammer. Some things come back to roost. Who knows what the Earth community will do to the super humans if all the Watchers secrets are exploded onto the world if Nick Fury gets the Watchers eye to function?

Superheroes in general are set up to follow the mind set that these are fantasy characters that do what they do because other people can't or won't.

They're vigilantes that go places the law can't.

Trying to say you have to have a liceanse to be a vigilante doesn't work in any possible way. How do you do that? "Oh, daredevil broke all the bones in your hands to get information out of you and Moon Knight kidnapped you from your house and dangled you upside down off a skyscraper, but that's okay. They have a license to do that!"

It's either that or

"I know you're 88% sure that the popular politician with lots of power and influence is secretly red Skull, but you can't sneak into his office to investigate without proof! he's very well connected."

Neither way really works for superheroes. Saying superheroes are just cops or soldiers that can shoot fireballs and fly doesn't work. It's trying to force realism in a place where realism doesn't need to be.

This is where the argument needs to be. There are illegal methods used by vigilantes, and to rein them in to be law abiding would negate the wild west status these tomes derive from. It's trying to apply civilization to the Negative Zone bugs. Super villains are a symptom of the "lets go out and take what we want, when we want, and any way we want to". Super villains can't be apprehended by law enforcement, and they can't be hunted down because they evaporate as soon as they have what they want. The Super villain breaks the rules of civilization, and laws of the land don't cover them. So you leave it to the other clique that secretly takes these super villains down. If you've read the series of books about fays, where a fay detective handles fay problems in human society, its the same principle. You use a super hero to get a super villain, and don't try to apply laws to the process.

[jackolover]

Since the Avengers had been registering its members with the US Government since the late 70's and since pretty much every hero of note is already an Avenger, the whole argument never made sense to me as it was presented.

You had to willfully ingore about 20 years of comics history for that story to make any sense.

Were the Avengers actually giving names of super heroes to the government? I know I saw a huge register of super humans in a hellicarrier screen during the Michael the Postman of Alaska, story (New Avengers first series #16-20). SHIELD does have a data base, but does SHIELD pass that on to politicians?

[Mikekerr3]

No, I think he showed both sides as flawed. That's why it ended how it did. Even Cap realized he was wrong.

I suppose one could argue that at least Cap recognized his errors whereas Stark didn't. At least not in the main series. I think they saved that for the Confession one shot.

Cap was flawed with his methods, Tony ws flawed with his methods and his goal. Tony was also dumb enough to think the MU govement could be trusted father than a child can throw the Washington monument.'

Cap was fight eveil no matter what the cost, Then he decided the cost was too high and slavery was more acceptable a solution. Becasue rthe SHRA basically made the Super humans unwilling servants of a evil govement under penalty of life in prison or death,

a Stark was accept evol and get the best deal you can for yourself and your friends. and if you have to break few laws ignore people rights and kill a few that is no big deal if you ended up in charge and could stop worse things form happening.

[jackolover]

a Stark was accept evol and get the best deal you can for yourself and your friends. and if you have to break few laws ignore people rights and kill a few that is no big deal if you ended up in charge and could stop worse things form happening.

It's interesting that Tony wasn't averse "to breaking a few laws", either. That seems to fit in with the idea super heroes need to break laws in their line of business.

[Kusanagi]

Anti-registration 100% and that's before the registration side was doing shit like attacking Luke Cage for sitting in his home doing nothing.

Why? Well in a vacuum I fully believe the registration side would make sense however that ignores the fact that prior to Civil War Marvel's US government had routinely been best described as...

1) Incompetent (jesus, basically any shield cameo that Nick Fury wasn't in.)

2) Easily Infiltrated. (Red Skull says hi)

3) At times flat out fucking evil (even ignoring the X-men this is a trait that ran through Cap's books often. http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/un...olitics021.jpg)

Why the hell would I trust an organization like that?! The fact that the next guy to hold top dog was Norman effing Osborn says it all.

[hawkeyefan]

Cap was flawed with his methods, Tony ws flawed with his methods and his goal. Tony was also dumb enough to think the MU govement could be trusted father than a child can throw the Washington monument.'

Cap was fight eveil no matter what the cost, Then he decided the cost was too high and slavery was more acceptable a solution. Becasue rthe SHRA basically made the Super humans unwilling servants of a evil govement under penalty of life in prison or death,

a Stark was accept evol and get the best deal you can for yourself and your friends. and if you have to break few laws ignore people rights and kill a few that is no big deal if you ended up in charge and could stop worse things form happening.

I don't know if that's exactly it. It kind of depends if you look at the broad view or if you narrow your focus.

If you look at the broad view, Cap's goal was freedom, which of course is a worthwhile goal. Iron Man's was safety, which of course is also a worthwhile goal. If you narrow the view though, Cap's goal was the freedom of a minuscule percentage of the population to act dangerously with little oversight, simply because their goals seemed altruistic. Iron Man's goal was the safety of the majority of the population.

So both of their goals were worthwhile in a general way, but Stark's holds up better when scrutinized more closely.

The application of Stark's plan is questionable. Again, I think it was better in the main book than in the tie ins, where there was all kinds of conflicting info. But even in the core series, Stark and his side made errors in judgment and got Bill Foster killed. But Cap's approach was equally flawed. He should have joined up and tried to control the application of the plan, and voice his concerns as a part of the process. Instead he went rogue and forced confrontations.

I'm not really defending either side so much as trying to look at it objectively. They were both wrong, but that was the point. They were given a shitty situation with no clear right or wrong answer.

[Lando Calrissian]

ya why would you want people that have the power of a nuclear weapon to have checks and balances on them.. In the real world where I live you need to go through steps to drive a car.

Since this is comic book land where NYC gets destroyed every week and time travel is possible I can look the other way. But on real world planet earth why would you want these people walking around with no checks and balances. For gods sake, even though it doesn't seem like it at times this entire country runs off of checks and balances.

[Mikekerr3]

ya why would you want people that have the power of a nuclear weapon to have checks and balances on them.. In the real world where I live you need to go through steps to drive a car.

Since this is comic book land where NYC gets destroyed every week and time travel is possible I can look the other way. But on real world planet earth why would you want these people walking around with no checks and balances. For gods sake, even though it doesn't seem like it at times this entire country runs off of checks and balances.

Where in the whole SHRA described did they have checks and balances? they had villains controlling superheroes, Abuse of Super-powered kids, and a program to make them more dangerous, but no check and balances were shown.

Checks and balances cant work when all the power is on one side and the other has no recourse. If the courts worked in the MU the SHRA would have failed before implementation.

Where was the balance for folks like Hill and Gyrich who were outright criminals?

[Lando Calrissian]

Where in the whole SHRA described did they have checks and balances? they had villains controlling superheroes, Abuse of Super-powered kids, and a program to make them more dangerous, but no check and balances were shown.

Checks and balances cant work when all the power is on one side and the other has no recourse. If the courts worked in the MU the SHRA would have failed before implementation.

Where was the balance for folks like Hill and Gyrich who were outright criminals?

like I said I can look the other way because its a comic book but on real world planet earth you would never want these people running around wth not checks and balances.

[megaharrison]

Thor controls the weather and has a floating city of warrior gods over Oklahoma, but the gov should ttly respect his privacy and let him do whatever he wants guyz cause the constitution.

[Marvel_Is]

Cappy's side.