Some comic thoughts

I had the day off today and managed to only spend about 1/3 of it reading work e-mail and conversing with co-workers over Messenger. A good chunk of the other 2/3 of my day was spent catching up on my comic reading. It was only a little over a month ago that I declared, for possibly the first time in over a decade, that "I've now read all of the comics I own!" I usually have at least a week or two worth of unread comics in the house, and at times have had hundreds of them in the unread stack(s) when I was buying back issues faster than I could keep up with them.

In the current climate, where both DC and Marvel are doing large scale storylines that span multiple titles and can, when they're done well, keep the average comic reader on the edge of his seat, it's hard not to have plot twists ruined by others even if you do read 'em the day they come out. So my long-standing habit of building up a couple weeks' worth of comics before cataloguing them (read: entering them into my home-grown-in-Java inventory system) and only reading them after cataloguing has more than its share of peril right now. Hence, I've tried to keep the unread pile small, and to even read some (gasp) uncatalogued issues, just so that I can experience them as I read them, not as I have all of the new developments spoiled by the Internet. Inspect and adapt!

So one of the big storylines right now is Civil War, running through many of the main Marvel titles this Autumn. I'll freely admit I had little or no anticipation for this mini-series when I first heard about it. The premise: a calamity of some sort occurs, caused by a battle between heroes and villains, and the government reacts by introducing a new law requiring all 'powered' individuals to register with the government or go to jail. Now, I've read over 25,000 comics in my lifetime, and you tend to get blase after all that time about a comic company's willingness to shake up the Status Quo. I used to refer to it as "the illusion of change." A good example that's stood the test of time for 45 years now: while the membership of the Fantastic Four changes from time to time (eg. remove Invisible Girl, add in Crystal from the Inhumans) you could always count on it eventually getting back to being Reed, Sue, Johnny and Ben. Four and a half frigging decades later, and it's still the same foursome! The illusion of change.

So telling me that the government is going to impose a new law that requires all heroes (and villains, theoretically) to register with the authorities, including revealing any secret identities they have, just smelled like the illusion of change to me. So I made a mental note to at least check out the first couple issues, and more-or-less forgot about it in the months leading up to the start of the mini-series... as much as anyone can forget about something being hyped up in the media every week.

And now we're about 4 months into the storyline, and I'm left wondering if I'll have to eat my words, in the final analysis. It's still possible, and some fans are convinced it's more than possible, that by a year from now some magic wand will have been waved and the more dramatic events will have been undone. But while we wait for that to happen... or not happen... here are a few of the more interesting applecarts to have been upset during this storyline:

1) The granddaddy of them all: Spider-Man reveals his Secret Identity as Peter Parker on live TV! If there's one sacred cow of an SI in the Marvel Universe, it's Spidey's! (DC has 2: Superman's and Batman's; 3 if you count Robin's, and how stupid would the world have to be if Robin's identity were revealed, not to figure out Batman's?) So I'll come right out and say: I was shocked! I kept waiting for the "it's only a dream" follow-up, but so far, it's stuck. Time will tell.

2) Longtime buddies and Avengers teammates Iron Man and Captain America are on opposite sides of the war. Tony "Iron Man" Stark is one of the driving forces behind the registration act (along with Reed Richards of the FF) while the Super Soldier of WWII has been around long enough to recognize a violation of civil rights when he sees one! He's seen the Nazis do it (and much, much worse) to the Jews and the Americans do it to the Japanese-Americans during the 2nd World War, as well as more recent examples like what Bush and his cronies are doing right now in spades. Which is of course one of the more obvious allusions within the story itself: it's clearly, and unashamedly, an allegory for our post-9/11 world, right down to a trigger event and a "not on American soil/not bound by US laws" detention centre (in the case of Civil War, it's a creepy looking gulag squirreled away in the Negative Zone.. you know, where Annihilus hangs out.. you do know Annihilus, right? don't make me school you!) Anyway, back to IM and Cap. Could they be back to working out together and seeking advice from each other a year from now? Anything's possible, but there's a lot of bad blood spilled recently that's going to be an absolute bitch to get out of the carpet!

3) Taking the Iron Man and Cap situation to a wider scale, the hero community has been split down the middle by what's happening. You've got the camp that supports Stark and Richards (and the current law) and is actively working to round up non-registrants, and you've got the rest who know that, at least sometimes, the law is an ass. I have to say, in my best geek-out voice, that seeing Cap, and Luke Cage, and Sue Richards (of the FF) stickin' it to the authorities in the defense of civil liberties has reinvigorated those characters for me. They say that "war is the ultimate stage" and I guess that's even true in fiction.. even comic book fiction. So should those in the Pro camp and those in the Con camp ever be able to work together again? Will time heal all wounds? Or will some wounds never mend? I'm happy to say I'm intrigued to keep reading and find out the answer.

And I haven't even mentioned DC's 52, or how cool the 4 flagship DC titles (Action Comics, Batman, Detective Comics & Superman) are at the moment, or the incredible job Brad Meltzer has done on Justice League of America. Stay tuned. ;-)