Blogathon 20: Civil War Wrap-Up, Initiative Kick-Off

[Discussed in this post: Civil War: The Return #1, Civil Wardrobe #1, What If? Civil War #1, Civil War: The Confession #1, and Civil War: The Initiative #1.]

A bunch of quickies, honestly:

* Civil War: The Return #1: Two stories, one about Captain Marvel returning that simply recaps his history with a lot of melodramatic captions and doesn't really go anywhere. The other about the Sentry as he fights the Absorbing Man before registering (how does that fit with New Avengers #24?). The Sentry story isn't that bad, but the Captain Marvel one is a stinker.

* Civil Wardrobe #1: I include this because I own it and it relates to the subject matter. A fun little comic that has Tony Stark reinvent Marvel's superheroes for the 21st century through a series of splash pages. Some jokes land, others don't. Some great art for the splashes -- some awful Rich Johnston art for the framing sequences. The jokes I like best: Spider-Mart; Captain Beckham (Captain Britain); the Mighty Thor of the Church of Scientology; Nick Fury, Bad Transvestite of SHIELD; and the Jailbait Avengers.

* What If? Civil War #1: There are two stories here with some framing stuff written by Ed Brubaker that's... alright. It's framing sequences -- what do you want from the man? The first story, by Kevin Grevioux is pretty weak. Somehow, a senator uses the authority of the president to single-handedly pass the SHRA (a way to move a scene forward, I know, but still...). That story basically has Iron Man die from the Extremis and Captain America be the man they have debate the SHRA in congress instead of Stark. It all goes wrong and people die and it's not that great. The second story, by Christos Gage, is the story that shows how Civil War would have gone if written by a sane person: instead of fighting, Captain America and Iron Man talk, compromise, and work it all out so that the SHRA goes into effect, but under the Avengers' control with Captain America being the only one to know the true identities of everyone. It ends with everyone happy and a brand new status quo of unity. Brilliant.

* Civil War: The Confession #1: The third Bendis/Maleev collaboration we'll be looking at. There are two speeches/discussions here. The first, has Iron Man discuss the war and his regrets to Captain America's dead body, admitting that it wasn't worth it. The second has Cap, under arrest, just screaming at Iron Man, laying into him, demanding to know if it was worth it -- and Iron Man responding, "Well... you're a sore loser, Captain America." What a fucking douchebag. This is actually a strong comic, Bendis working in monologues, which is different from his usual rhythm of speech. Maleev continues to just be impressive as hell.

* Civil War: The Initiative #1: Three teasers for future books! Omega Flight! Thunderbolts! Mighty Avengers! With art by Marc Silvestri! Goddamn, I wasted my money!

In 30 minutes, New Avengers: Revolution.

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