Your Civil War Week – 8/23/2006

Despite promises that its delays will end comic books and the universe as a whole, we still get three crossovers this week. And with every purchase, I feel a little bit more like a whore. Today we’re blessed with Heroes For Hire #1, New Avengers #23, and Wolverine #45.

Heroes For Hire not only deals with the pros and cons to registration – and the Registration Act as a whole – but it even paints the Pro side in a positive light. I’m stunned. B+ / A+ for that bad boy.
New Avengers reaffirms that Iron Man, SHIELD, and (by default) the whole Pro side is full of tools. It gets a C / F.
Wolverine deals with that Atlantis sleeper agent plot from Frontline, and it’s a nice story to boot, warranting a B / C-.

Read on to for details, and prepare get spoiled like that month-old salmon in my fridge.

Heroes For Hire #1
Written by Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti, art by Billy Tucci and Tom Palmer

Overall grade: B+

Civil War grade: A+

Wow. Talk about a surprise. I had never read the pseudo lead-in book Daughters of the Dragon, starring some of these characters, so I wasn’t really excited to be jumping on board in the middle of their story. Also, with characters like Humbug and the ALL NEW (hurrah?) Tarantula on the cover, I wasn’t especially sold on the team. That said, I was pleasantly surprised to see clear and thoughtful discussion explaining why registration in itself may be a good idea (hey, they can get medical and dental now!), and more discussion on why the Act may be the wrong way to implement the good in this idea. And there are more subtle ways of dealing with the issues – For example, placing someone as dangerous as Tarantula on the team is one of the more subtle ways of displaying that ‘registered’ is not synonymous with heroic.

What’s more, it’s a book where two-thirds of the team (not counting the back-up duo of Paladin and Orka… really scraping the bottom of the barrel for quirky characters in this book… which isn’t necessarily bad) … what was I saying? Oh yeah, 4 of the 6 are chicks. It’s nice to see smart chicks in comics – not just in terms of battle-smarts, but in terms of dealing with the social and political quandries the Registration Act causes in who you’re supposed to be fighting, and who’s supposed to be your allies. (They’re also drawn super hot. Not as original of a concept, but like hell I’m gonna be complaining about it.) And also, a lot of martial arts characters. This book gets many bonus points in my book for not only being so smart, but going out of its way to be different, and doing it well. I’m really so surprised to have liked this book.

New Avengers #23
Written by Brian Michael Bendis, art by Olivier Coipel

Overall grade: C

Civil War grade: F

I’d heard that Luke Cage’s issue was a good discussion as to why the character chose the side that he did in Civil War. Sadly, there’s very little of this here. The issue focuses on Spider-Woman and her bizarre multiple-agent status. (She works for SHIELD, and Hydra, and she’s an Avenger, and she’s been reporting directly to Nick Fury, who happens to be in hiding right now. Convoluted enough for you?) It might’ve been interesting to see things played off of each other, but to be fair, we do get a functional deck-clearing exercise – removing all of that multiple-agent business – and giving Bendis a clean slate to work with from this point on.

Basically, the Avengers were aware of her multi-agent status, and Cap was (apparently) a big backer on staying with the team. But Cap’s gone underground, and Iron Man’s calling the shots in the Marvel U at the moment. So instead of sitting down and discussing it with her, he send SHIELD to arrest her, which they do pretty easily. Hurrah, more of Iron Man being a douche!

More stuff happens, but what it boils down to is that she joins the resistance simply because she got jerked around by the other side. We see nothing at all about her personal decision making process (save for the fact she doesn’t want to work for Hydra – tough call, lady). She basically got cornered into where she is. This might make for nice character interactions for her later, but all this issue does in terms of Civil War is make me detest the irrational Iron Man even more.

Wolverine #45
Written by Marc Guggenheim, art by Humberto Ramos

Overall grade: B

Civil War grade: C-

It’s a good enough story here – Wolverine’s still chasing down Nitro for the Stamford Incident, which isn’t a bad idea at all. Namor, however, is fighting Wolverine for possession of Nitro, as the bad guy did happen to recently fricassee his cousin. Those sleeper agents from Frontline’s fish story are involved in the act of capturing him. Ultimately, Namor and Wolverine sort things out and develop a mutual respect for each other over the matter. What a shocking outcome for a super-hero fight. What’s nice though, is the little character moment that helped Wolvy to figure out how to get along better. Also, Namor wasn’t written as a total pile of turds, but instead as an indignant, regal badass, which is a much cooler and interesting way of portraying him.

So, this has very little to do with the themes of Civil War, but it very much has to do with the story of Stamford Incident, which you might have heard is a big issue. Ultimately, it’s hard to be too hard on a book that entertains as well as this one does. It doesn’t try to be fancy or heady – it’s just Wolverine fighting like mad, and then having to use his head to diffuse the situation. Also, kinda gory, at points.

Interesting tidbit – The letters pages discusses that moment a couple issues back where Nitro incinerated Wolverine down to his metal bones, and then almost instantly healed himself up. In the words of Guggenheim –

“First and most important, I don’t want anybody blaming Humberto for this. He drew what I told him to. Period.
Second, this level of injury/regeneration has been done before: Morrison did it in his first X-Men arc; Millar incinerated Logan in his last Wolverine issue (the Holocaust story); Way hit Logan with a nuclear missile; and Claremont even had Logan regenerating from a single cell of blood in Uncanny X-Men Annual #11.“

He goes on to reference how this matter will be further dealt with in issue #48, which you may have already seen noted at various places online.