An Update on Marvel's Civil War

I posted awhile ago about Marvel's current mini-series event, Civil War. The fifth issue came out last week, and while it didn't have quite the same impact as some of the earlier issues (such as the one where Spider-Man unmasked on national TV!), it still delivered some fascinating moments.

This was the issue in which all of Spider-Man's doubts about whether or not he was on the right side reached the boiling point. He'd been Tony "Iron Man" Stark's right-hand man in defending the need for the Superhuman Registration Act, believing that it was becoming too dangerous to allow superpowered people, good or bad, to just wander around with impunity and anonymity when each one had the potential to cause unimaginable damage. But some of the developments in the War had obviously preyed on Peter's mind more than they had on Tony's, including the decision to imprison (indefinitely) any non-registered metahuman in a gulag located in the Negative Zone. From a purely logical point-of-view, this makes a lot of sense: no normal prison, located anywhere on our planet, could hope to hold someone with the ability to teleport, or move at superspeed, or smash tanks to rubble. But the reality of seeing friends and foes of his locked up in an otherworldly fortress, without legal representation or any hope of release unless they registered, weighed heavily on the Web-slinger's sense of morality and justice. And then watching helplessly as Black Goliath, one of the Anti-Registration heroes, was cut down in battle by "the good guys" pushed Spidey over the edge. In Civil War # 5 he bails, sends Aunt May and MJ to a safe location, and goes on the run himself. Stark and the government dispatch several agents after him, using registered former-baddies like Jack O' Lantern and the Jester to hunt down their wayward ally. In the course of their conflict, the villains are laughing it up about how the tables have turned and now they're the ones bringing him to justice, when suddenly they're taken out by gunfire. Who's come to Spidey's rescue in his darkest hour? None other than the Punisher! Quel ironique!

The parallels between this storyline and the current 'War on Terror' playing out in the real world have been unmistakeable from the start. But author Mark Millar amped it up another level in this issue, which ends with Spidey interrupting a local news broadcast to announce to the world that he's switched sides. He makes a brief but passionate speech to the stunned viewing audience about the loss of civil liberties in the pursuit of safety, and how the protection of those liberties was always supposed to be worth dying for, so why were people so quick to give them up just because things had gotten dangerous? Of course, this is exactly what's happening in the U.S. right now, with the Patriot Act, and Guantanamo, and the Homeland Security Advisory System keeping everyone bouncing between Elevated (yellow) and High (orange), saving Severe (red) for those times right before an election or major speech. Millar's writing what he's seeing, just putting it into a fictional backdrop for our entertainment. And I'll admit that Parker's speech moved me, even though he was preaching to the choir in this particular case.

With only a couple issues to go, I'm not sure how they're going to leave things at the end of this series. The worst answer would be: right back where they started, since that would not only stretch credibility but also make one wonder what the point was. The most interesting result, for me at least, would be if we're left with a new, divided landscape within the Marvel Universe, although common sense would demand that eventually some new status quo would have to be established. I'm happy to just go along for the ride right now, though.