One of my more favorite Marvel events gets the Secret Wars tie-in experience today and it’s got even more buzz on it because it’s soon to be a movie. Well sort of, because this isn’t a direct representation of the original series but what the fallout of the event could have looked like if it all went bad. Is it good?
Civil War #1 (Marvel Comics)
The issue opens with a whopping nine pages of narration telling the reader what happened in this dimension’s version of Civil War. It’s a lot of explanation with not a ton of pretty pictures or awesome fighting to be had. It’s a bit slow and monotonous, but also sort of interesting because in a very quick way we get a lot of story. Then the book opens up to where we’re at now, a nation literally divided between The Iron and The Blue, one side run by Iron Man and the other by Captain America. The war still goes on and for the remaining pages of this issue a negotiation takes place. If you can call it that.
Pretty…
Charles Soule writes what could be summed up as a very talky and boring affair. If you’re at all interested with the original story it’ll tickle your fancy because it’s basically a What If story. Unfortunately it’s only the first few pages of such a story stretched out into one long issue. This is because when the negotiations begin it’s really just a circular boring argument between two stubborn men. Soule adds in a bit of Spider-Man to mix it up a tad, but for the life of me I can’t recall why Iron Man would have had his wife and child. When something does actually happen it’s deemed pointless, partially because I don’t care about the person who gets hurt, but also because I have no idea where this is going. Cap leaves the negotiation table in a huff but for reasons that are childish and unexplained.
Best scene in the issue…also available via the free preview!
The best scene in this first issue is one with Ms. Marvel who stops a young teen from flying off. She explains she needs to be trained and it’s sweet how she treats the child. At the same time it’s scary as the child will be torn from her family. It’s a nice moment showing how Iron Man’s registration isn’t so perfect.
That’s epic!
The art by Leinil Francis Yu is pretty and nice as always. The armor he fits Ms. Marvel with is jaw droppingly detailed and his recap of what happened in the first nine pages are gloriously epic. Really it’s what you come to expect from Yu. I did have some irksome feelings about his depiction of the desert. Given Yu’s style of heavy inks which tend to imbue a sense of dread and darkness it looked a bit off set in the blazing sun of the desert.
Snore.
Is It Good?
This is without a doubt a boring read because it doesn’t actually do anything but showcase a grisly backstory and two bickering old men. It also fails to make one care what will happen next, a decidedly important task for a first issue.
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