I've been thinking about Marvel in the aftermath of Civil War, and the dichotomy between what we're being told, and what we're seeing. Quesada and Millar insist Iron Man's side was right, and Cap was wrong, but we see all this... morally questionable stuff the Pro-Reg side did to help their plans come to fruition.
Sometimes Iron Man looks like a hero (hooray!), like when he saved those hostages in Australia in his book. Other times he's lying about Cap being alive to trap his old friends, because 'it's the law'. Then he looks the other way while Warbird helps reunite Julia Carpenter with her daughter, even though Julia had lost custody, thus breaking the law.
The Initiative is supposed to be training inexperienced supers, but then decide to take away those powers (if they can, see that girl from the first issue of The Initiative) if the kids screw up a training exercise. All this while some former Nazi Scientist (or at least stereotypically evil-looking old German scientist) looks on, standing next to the poster boy for Government Jerkwards, Gyrich. Not to mention the absurdity of giving Norman Osborn a government position and control of a super-team.
Marvel is telling us one thing, but showing us quite another. So I'm wondering whether you think that's by design, or whether the guys writing these stories that seem to run counter to the company line are playing at being subversives.
I really wouldn't put it past Joe Quesada to stand there and tell us all one thing, while actually going a different direction with the books, but Millar seemed pretty insistent that Stark's side was "right". Of course, I base that on excerpts of comments he's made, that I've read on the Internet, where I can't read facial expressions, tone, or body language, so he could be joking around too, and I'd have no clue.
The other possibility is guys like Warren Ellis and Dan Slott are being told to write these books; they don't particularly care for the particulars of the assignment (Pro-Reg is right, Cap and his people just didn't get it), and so they're pitching things as part of the story on the grounds that they're "cool" and "edgy" (like that girl, Armory?, having her high-tech arm thing forcibly taken away for accidentally killing one of the other recruits), but really it's intended to undermine what the honchos have been saying.
I have to admit, the subversive idea sounds kind of nifty, but I think I'd prefer if Quesada were messing with us, saying things he doesn't believe, and that aren't true, just to rile us up.
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Well, it certainly COULD be Ellis and Slott doing as they please. We already know for a fact that Marvel doesn't actually, you know, EDIT anything. Witness the "it is permanent," "it isn't permanent" comments from Stark about the Negative Zone prison.
What's the excuse. Oh, JMS' story doesn't count, it isn't canon. You know, despite actually being published by Marvel and ostensibly going through an editing process ...
I would love to think Brevoort, Quesada and the others know full well Iron Man is a mere whisper shy of being the next Doctor Doom, but then they speak again about how he's right, and I wonder how any human being can be that abysmally stupid that they can't see what they actually wrote versus what they are saying.
Then, I go to a message board like Newsarama where people defend Tony like zealots, and then I think, maybe it isn't so far fetched. If living, breathing fans actually still think Tony is a hero (and defend things like Clor, the Thunderbolts, etc), maybe Quesada, Brevoort et al ARE justified in being that self-delusional. After all, they still have defenders.
Or maybe it's the times. What, with '24' and the like, maybe they really, honestly believe that the ends justifies the means.
Or, more cynically, they think they can keep this going for awhile, and rake in the cash on a crossover down the road where they "fix" things.
So, to sum up, I just don't know :)
I hope there is a big 'GOTCHA' moment coming, but the longer Quesada and the others play straight man to this status quo, the less likely it seems.
Take it and run.
24 has also been my metaphor for what Marvel think they are doing. That is, we are supposed to admire Tony/Reed/etc even more for the awfulness of the things they do, because it shows how dedicated and self-sacrificing they are. They are brave enough to Do What Must Be Done; lesser men like Captain America would Let The Terrorists Win because they flinch at a little nail pulling and unjust imprisonment.
It fits in with Sally and the Mad Thinker go on about how self-sacrificing Tony is, and how no one will ever know how heroic he is, etc.
Or, I suppose it could all be a great big joke. But I'm not inclined to pay lots of money to read about people I now despise, in the hopes that some time down the road they'll get theirs. Because if it never happens, you know what? The joke's on you.
Tony Stark is a villain. The Government can't be trusted not to trample on your rights, and the Constitution is considered a quaint antique.
The average citizen in the Marvel Universe seems to be a racist, anti-mutant, anti-hero bigot, who will stand stupidly in the middle of a skyscaper-toppling fight, and then complain. They don't believe in aliens, despite the fact that Galactus and various aliens have invaded Earth about a million times.
Bah!
I can only assume that Quesada is sitting in his office snickering to himself.
earl allison: The reason i think Quesada could be screwing with us, is because he seems to like doing so. The whole "I'm gonna kill Speedball, because I hate him so much" comes to mind.
Though I suppose they did kill Speedball in a sense.
laura: I think you and earl are on to something with the comparison to 24. We are supposed to root for Tony because he doesn't mind screwing over friends to accomplish what he thinks is right. Maybe it works better for Mr. bauer because he's not attacking people we like, whereas Tony's running around punching Spider-Man and Captain America?
And to your last point, I think that's why I find myself reading so many books outside the 616 universe, and the few within mostly star anti-reg characters.
sallyp: I agree about the average citizen of the Marvel Universe. They certainly aren't the sort of people I could see myself leaping into battle to protect.
Maybe it works better for Mr. bauer because he's not attacking people we like, whereas Tony's running around punching Spider-Man and Captain America?
I agree with this -- someone on scans_daily said something like "When Ben Grimm, the third most decent guy in the Marvel universe, is having to risk arrest to hang with his friends, including Peter Parker, as they mourn Captain America, you *cannot* convince me that Iron Man is right." Steven and Peter being the other two of the three most decent. Add in that Stephen Strange, canonically one fo the wisest and most compassionate people in the MU, is so disturbed by the result that he's running an antireg team out of his sanctum.
Against them you have a bunch of technocrats with frankly fairly hideous records of fucking up.
There is no way that Marvel is really taking the pro-registration side seriously. You don't have the "good guys" arrest Captain America, let him get shot, then use his body for bait. Marvel has never bothered to really get into the specifics of the Superhuman Registration Act or present that side's arguments in anything but the most simplistic terms (hell, even She-Hulk, the lawyer didn't notice she had signed up to be drafted into SHIELD).
They seem to be putting Tony in position as a "reasonable moderate" between Captain America's radical libertarianism and some bigger, more sinister force that wants to regulate superhumans even further. But they never bother to identify that other force, so Tony just looks like an asshole. Again, the pro-reg side doesn't get a fair portrayal.
I think Civil War actually could have been an interesting idea, but political stories don't work if you want simple "good guys" and "bad guys". Everyone needs to have their motivations clear, especially when politics cause friendships to break down and stuff. That just didn't happen here. I dunno, maybe that was the short timeline for publishing. Maybe it would have worked better if it had just been a year-long storyline in the books?
I still think that this will only last as long as the Next Gigantic Evil Menace (probably From Space, but possibly From Hell). Which is too bad, because I don't think including political divisions in a fictional universe like Marvel's 616 is such a bad idea.
laura: Yeah, those kinds of things do make it hard to believe Marvel's serious, don't they?
nothingstopstheblob: I totally agree about needing motivations clearly defined if you're going to do a politcal story. It's one thing for the other characters not to understand why another character does what they do, but as readers, I think it helps if we do understand.
Plus it would have helped to go a different direction with the whole thing, assuming that Marvel had really wanted to delve into the legal aspects of all this, rather than use it as an excuse for heroes punching each other.
Someone on rpg.net did a nice rethink where you had four groups -- radical anti-reg, moderate anti-reg, moderate pro-reg, and radical pro-reg. Cap and Iron Man leading the moderate anti and pros, someone like Luke Cage leading the radical antis, and the radical pros are SHIELD. The moderates try to compromise and make some moderate version of registration work, the radical antis violently resist, the radical pros do all the evil shit. Eventually the compromise fails, and Cap and Tony are driven to the radical edges.
This had a number of advantages; for one, it concretizes Tony's fears; he's genuinely desperately fighting against an imminent and active danger, not going "hey, the government keeps thinking about screwing you all, so we'll hand them control of all the superhumans!". Cap starts out, as you would expect, moderate and attempting to compromise. No one has to act dreadfully out of character, yet there's still plenty of room for big bangs and showpiece battles.
Yeah, those kinds of things do make it hard to believe Marvel's serious, don't they?
They half do, but you read interviews with editorial and they seem perfectly sincere in thinking that Cap is old-fashioned and out of touch. And it fits in with things like Casualties of War, where Tony's going on about how no one can live up to Cap's standards because he's perfect. And so maybe they are deliberately rejecting their past history, in the name of "realism". Steve Rogers is too good a person to be "real", and so he had to die. It's not "realistic" for the super community to be more consistently ethical and heroic than the government, so the retcons about past casualties, and all the superheroes are turned into government employees. Thus all the comments in Iron Man and the Initiative and the implications in CW and Frontline that first responders and soldiers in Iraq are the "real heroes."
It seems to me a dim drab world that results, and I can't see the long term salability, but well. I'm not Marvel's intended audience.
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