Hey everybody, welcome to another exciting episode of the number one comics podcast. We are the only podcast dedicated to the review and discussion of first issues. I'm your host Jonah. With me as always is Bill. Bill, how's it going? Good, Jonah, how are you? Good, I'm doing well. And today we are talking about, we're kind of finishing off our series of event books with...
One of my favorite events. Yeah. Not to spoil the review, but tonight we're talking about 2006 Civil War, published by Marvel Comics. Cover date, July 2006. Cover price, $3.99. Civil War was written by Mark Miller. Artist, Steve McNiven. Inker was Dexter Venus. I'm probably mispronouncing that last name. I think it's Vines. And then the colorist was Maury Hallowell. Now...
It was just a few years before this event began that I had gotten back into comics after a break in the late 90s. It was New Avengers, as we talked about in our very first episode, that brought me back. So be sure to go check out that first episode. It's out there. When this event rolled out, I was all in to comics. I was obsessed. I didn't get all of the tie-ins necessarily to go along with this, but...
This was a pretty big event. It was. It was this event that largely expanded my Marvel comic polls. I did start buying Captain America, Spider-Man, Thunderbolts, Wolverine again because of this event. And I wasn't necessarily buying those leading up to it. I stuck to nearly all of those titles after as well, which we'll talk about in a bit. I don't recall that ever happening before or even since with an event other than what we talked about a few episodes ago with DC's KO, where that did turn me on to a lot of DC titles that I may not have been reading before the event.
One of the nice things with this event is there's not really a lot of context needed to get into it. So let's get right into it. Yeah. Like the cover, the cover we have is a split cover with art on the upper half showing cap Spidey, the fantastic four and others. The lower half is empty white space filled with the names of the creators. We have a big number one at the bottom and right beneath the title, it says a Marvel comics event in seven parts. I find this cover simple, but also incredibly striking. I do like the cover. It reminds me kind of like a letterboxing, like on a movie or something like that.
I really like it. It grabs your attention. And it kind of stands it apart from a lot of the covers that were out at the time. Right. Yeah. Like I said, I like this cover. The fonts and the title, like you mentioned, they're huge. There's no mistaking that this is a big event. Yeah. Let's get into the issue itself.
We open up in Stamford, Connecticut, where the New Warriors, which, as an aside, one of my favorite Marvel teams from the 90s, has turned into a reality television stars. They're going to try and apprehend a collection of villains that had previously escaped Rikers as seen in that first issue of New Avengers that we had talked about. The Warriors are staked out across the street, bickering with one another about these villains being a little out of their league. Speedball believes that this will be the episode that puts them on the map. One of the villains who had escaped, her name's Coldheart. She's taking out the garbage outside this home that they're kind of holed up in, and she spots them across the street. She rushes inside and yells for everyone to suit up as they're about to get raided. The new warriors bust in. Speedball crashes through a window, takes Speed Freak right through a wall out the back of the house and lands in the backyard. Speedball wallops the villain with punches and kicks.
Also, in the yard, Coldheart faces off against Night Thrasher and Namorita. They make quick work of her while Microbe subdues the villain Cobalt Man. The last remaining villain, Nitro, tries to slip away, but Namorita flies up and over the house and spots him. He's out on the street out front. Now she dive bombs him, shoving him hard into a parked school bus.
An angry Nitro warns her that they're not tangling with the bargain basement losers they're used to. They're playing with the big boys now. And then he explodes. It's a massive explosion, taking out nearly an entire neighborhood block, including a school where kids were outside enjoying recess. This is when we cut to the title page. It's a double page splash page of our Marvel heroes at Ground Zero. They're tending to wounded, moving rubble, aiding first responders. Iron Man tells Captain America they may have a lead on Nitro who had gotten away.
A solemn cap comments, there could be as much as 800 or 900 casualties, a number of them children. And all for a stupid reality TV show. A few first responders call over Marvel Girl and Cyclops to help move some debris as they've detected movement underneath. Marvel Girl moves the rubble with her telepathic powers, revealing a small group of survivors. Wolverine scoffs at the Sentinels that are towering over them standing guard. The X-Men volunteered to help with this recovery and rescue mission, and the Sentinels follow them around like the mutants are the threat.
Goliath comments that after this, it won't just be mutants that they're watching. She-Hulk is appearing on Larry King Live, where the topic of discussion is a ban on superheroes. We then cut to a funeral service for the Stamford victims, and Tony Stark is attending this funeral. This is Iron Man. The mother of one of the dead children approaches Tony outside, and she spits in his face.
She blames him as someone that finances the Avengers and has spent years telling kids they can live outside the law as long as they're wearing tights. While cops have to train and carry badges, anyone with powers can be a part of a super gang. In the crowd outside the funeral is Peter Parker and J. Jonah Jameson. Parker is snapping photos as he's currently working at the Daily Bugle at this time. We see a news snippet of some government officials commenting that it's time for the superheroes to be registered.
We cut to a New York City nightclub where Johnny Storm, a.k.a. the Fantastic Four's Human Torch, he flies in to meet a date out front of the club. As Johnny and his date are getting VIP access and skipping the long line out front, the crowd that's waiting in line, they turn hostile towards him. Johnny is hit from behind with a glass bottle, and then the crowd stomps on him while he's down. Later, the heroes have met at the Baxter building, where everyone is talking about the Superhuman Registration Act. It's clear that the heroes are all landing on different sides of this. Cage and Falcon aren't keen on the idea. Iron Man and Hank Pym think that it does make sense. Not like anyone should listen to Hank Pym. He's a woman-beater. Anyway. Spider-Man shows up. Invisible Woman doesn't think the secret identity thing is a big deal, as the Fantastic Four have never had them, but Spider-Man disagrees with her. On board the SHIELD helicarrier, Captain America is meeting with Commander Maria Hill.
Maria asks Cap if he thinks all his pals meeting in the Baxter building will go for it. Cap responds that he thinks this plan will split them right down the middle. Cap believes most of the rebels will be street-level heroes like Daredevil and Luke Cage. So nobody that you can't handle, Maria asks Cap. Maria goes on saying the vote for the Superhuman Registration Act or SHRA is in two weeks. They're already developing an anti-superhuman response unit, but Hill wants to ensure the Avengers are on the right side of this. Cap states that she's asking him to arrest people that risk their lives for this country. Maria corrects that she's asking him to obey the will of the people.
Captain defies Maria Hill, refusing to allow the government to be the ones to tell them who the supervillains are. Maria retorts that she thought the supervillains were the guys in masks refusing to obey the law. With that, Captain America finds himself surrounded by dozens of armed shield agents. Cap deduces this is the hit squad that Maria had alluded to. Cap tells them to lower their weapons. Maria tells them to stand their ground at heat as Cap is not the one that's in command. Cap warns that he won't be responsible for what comes next.
Maria orders her men to ready their tranquilizers, and she damns Captain America for making her do this. The men fire on Captain America, but they're too slow. He moves in close, using those near him as human shields. Cap uses his shield and fists to take them one-on-one. He shouts, one of them shouts to take him down, and Cap sneers, don't even think about it, little man. Cap uses his shield like a battering ram, knocking the shield troops out of his way. Maria calls for all units to take him down. Cap dives through a glass window to the outside of the shield helicarrier. He uses his shield to deflect a volley of gunfire, twisting and contorting his body in every direction as he freefalls. A shield jet is coming in for a landing on the carrier when Cap lands right on the canopy, thrusting his shield through the cockpit glass. He tells the startled pilot, keep flying.
The jet roars through the hangar and out the carrier's other side, cap riding on it like it's a giant surfboard. The jet disappears over the horizon. Back at the Baxter building, the Watcher has just appeared. Dr. Strange comments that he only appears to record moments of great change and enormous upheaval, and his presence does not bode well. In Washington, D.C., a large group of protesters have amassed. Inside a White House Situation Room, the president is briefed that Captain America had the jet land in a football field, and he then took the pilot out for a burger and fries. The president does not see the humor in Captain America's actions, as the registration plan is already controversial enough.
Cap going underground means that every superhero who disagrees with them has a figurehead. Iron Man is in the room and tells the president they'll find a leader of their own. Accompanying Iron Man is Yellow Jacket, a.k.a. Hank Pym, and Reed Richards, Mr. Fantastic. Iron Man reassures the president to push ahead with the registration and leave Captain America to them. And with that, the battle lines have been drawn and we are to be continued. Bill, thoughts? First of all, I'd like to say in this too, I really like when...
Comics go from let's all team up and fight the big bad to having a story more grounded in reality. This one's very... I think it's something that really kind of shifts everything. It takes the focus away from a world-ending threat to it's something happening in our own backyard kind of thing. I do like the fact that the New Warriors were involved in this or kind of kicked this off because I've always been a big fan of the New Warriors. Now, this is a story that just has like...
absolutely catastrophic results for a lot of people in the Marvel universe. A hundred percent. And if you, I would like to apologize to Marvel fans out there, because if you, if you went back to read this after seeing Captain America Civil War, thinking that this was going to be like that, I apologize because the MCU let you down. this is something that like, if they would have done this in film, it couldn't have been done with the scope of the films they had out at the time. No, this would have been like a phase four, phase five type story, right? But it's also really, what I find is that it's also a really cool story because this was always something that was a debate with the X-Men comics was registering the mutants, you know, having them oversight, having oversight of them because, oh, it's dangerous to have a kid who can, you know, walk through walls or blow shit up.
Just having them going to school like a normal kid. I really like this story. I really like this. This first issue is definitely going to get you into a huge rabbit hole with Marvel and in a good way. Now, I never read when this came out. I never read Civil War. I listened to one of my favorite YouTubers, the comic storian, Benny, who is no longer with us, passed away in 2024. One of his friends is now running the channel. He did a complete recap.
like a deep dive, a deep dive recap of this entire story. And it's amazing. So I very much recommend you going out and checking that out if you can. And this is probably one of my favorite Marvel events of all time. Yeah. This is the event that I compare all subsequent events to, because this is what set the bar for me. Right. And like you, I was a big nineties new warriors fan. So it was a gut punch to see the team obliterated like in the opening. Yes. Now.
Granted, the team wasn't as recognizable to me as the 90s version. Right. But you still had Namorita in Speedball and Night Thrasher, who's a personal favorite of mine. Yes. And to see them getting taken out was a kick in the pants. Yes. I remember with Nitro, I remember seeing him in the 90s Cage series. I think it was probably the only place that I read that character at the time. And even in that, he wasn't too big of a threat. But I totally remember that he has the ability to explode himself. And I just didn't know he could explode himself that big. Yeah.
I like the cleanup scene where you got the mutants and the heroes kind of come together for the rescue and recovery because so often it seems the two are, unless they're fighting each other, they're kept in their own like swim lanes and they don't in this day and age cross over much. Again, unless it's an Avengers versus X-Men type story. The tension between the heroes and the rest of the population ratchet up quickly, but I think it's well paced. My favorite scene is the standoff between Hill and Captain America, both of which are characters that I adore. And the reason I adore both of those characters is because of what you see in that scene. We're like,
Captain America stands for what he believes in. Hill's going to stand for what she believes in. She's, she's not going to cow toe to Captain America because he's Captain America. Uh, I've always really liked both of those characters. And so seeing them kind of stand off that way was good for me. Yeah. It was also challenging for me. Uh,
Captain America is a complete badass here. And my soul really needed that after we did Secret Empire in the last episode. And having read Secret Empire a few times while I was doing my notes, I really needed this version of Captain America. Because this is the version of Captain America that I still remember. The part where he takes on the shield guys is well choreographed. Where he dives out the window, he's doing kind of the acrobatics down. I thought that was dope. Landing on the roof of the jet.
20 years later, I still get giddy revisiting that, and the one image of him on the roof of that jet remains one of my favorite Captain America images of all time. The appearance of the Watcher is creepy and ominous. The last scene with Iron Man, Yellow Jacket, and Mr. Fantastic siding with the registration, I think that does a good job of setting the stage for what comes next. Overall, I think that Miller's dialogue and plotting is good. McNiven's art, unlike Secret Empire, it is cinematic here. Even when the characters are talking, it feels different. It feels wider in scope. And what I had said in the last episode when we were discussing Secret Empire, where I wasn't a big fan of the art. I am a big fan of the art in this one. And I know it's the same artist and everything like that, but he gets so much more to do in this one. Yeah, it's easy to follow from a story perspective as an issue. It's easy to follow regardless of whether it's someone new to the Marvel Universe or...
if they're deeply ingrained, I've got all of civil war collected in trades, like all the, the tie-ins, all of the one shot, you know, the frontline series, all of it collected in different trades. And I've loaned like the main event out in trades to friends who are not necessarily comic book people because it's that easy of a read. This, in my opinion, this is how you set the stage for a massive event. Yes. Yes. There's talking as we mentioned, but the action in the very beginning and in the middle are great. I got to, you get that feeling that, that.
feeling of excitement when I'm doing my notes for this that I didn't have when I was doing my notes for Secret Empire. Any other thoughts that you want to mention and then we'll talk about what came next? I'll say what got me interested in this in the first place and made me kind of go back and check it out. I'd been out of comics for a while when this came out. I kind of did this little check-in of like, where is the story of Spider-Man at now? Because I didn't pick up anything in a while. And I found out about like a brand new day, you know, one more day, all that stuff. And I'm like, how did we get to this point? So I went back and checked out Civil War and I absolutely fell in love with it. So this is a, whether you're a seasoned comic book reader or if you haven't read comics in a while, looking for something to jump off at, this is a good place to do it. I had to look it up because I wasn't quite sure. According to Marvel editor Tom Brevoort, there was a...
roughly 70 to 80 tie in comic books with this as well i i kind of figured this was a bigger it was huge on a bigger side because it wasn't there as part of this wasn't there like that whole 50 state initiative and yeah a lot of that's what came after right so the event itself but you had like not only did you have civil war one through seven you had Amazing Spider-Man, Wolverine, Fantastic Four, New Avengers, Captain America. But there was also like dedicated limited series, like the Frontline that I'd mentioned, Choosing Sides. There was one called War Crimes. So it was a big event. There was a lot of books out there that all tied in with it. So now when you're talking about collecting the trades and stuff like that, are there several different trades for this? Yeah, I've got several different trades all lined up. Gotcha. In terms of what came next, because unlike a lot of other events, this one did change the landscape of the Marvel Universe for...
at least for a few years, I'd say three or four years until the Siege event in 2010 kind of set a new status quo. And like I said, it's not often that an event actually changes a universe that way, even if it's for, you know, a brief couple year period of time. So one thing I want to mention, focusing on some things that came next within the main event itself in like subsequent issues. So spoilers for a 20 year old comic series here, people. Some of the moments that made this continue feeling like an event, you had the return of Thor, or just kidding, it was Klor, the cyborg or the Thor clone. His arrival coincided with the death of Goliath, whom I believe still remains dead to this day. And when he was killed...
he was killed in his giant state and so he remained a giant and when they buried him they just like wrapped him in chains and didn't even give him like a proper coffin. Yeah. And like buried him like barely under the ground. So it was very unceremonious how Goliath was treated. Spider-Man unmasks revealing his identity of the world which ultimately led into Back in Black and One More Day and then Brand New Day. Yep. By the end of this Captain America had victory in his grasp but realizing it would be a pyrrhic victory he surrenders which then leads into the Death of Captain America storyline.
In true event fashion, there were tons of secondary and tertiary characters appearing at some point or another in all of this. As you mentioned, it led to the launch of the initiative story, which... In real life, it led to the launch of some of my favorite Marvel Comics readings ever. Titles like New Avengers, they focused on the Resistance with Luke Cage. I was still all over that. Mighty Avengers came out, also written by the same person doing the New Avengers, Brian Michael Bendis. That was the pro-superhuman registration team, and that focused on more big, superheroic action. I loved both of those titles. You actually had Avengers The Initiative title, which was a great title about the training of newly registered heroes.
Thunderbolts had a run from issue 110 to 121, I think it was. And this was by Warren Ellis and Mike Diodata Jr. And this was one of my favorite Thunderbolt runs because it focused on registered villains hunting unregistered heroes. This led into Dark Avengers, ultimately, which we talked about recently. There was one... I'd mentioned that Thunderbolt storyline once before. We were talking about Captain America, the Steve Rogers Captain America, because one of the issues had the Thunderbolts hunting Jack Flag. And I was like, Jack Flag's kind of a badass. And then he got like...
He got his shit kicked in by, I think he ended up getting like a spinal cord, like, like impaled through the back by bullseye, if I'm not mistaken. But anyway, I was like, I got it. And then Jack flag then gets tossed out of the jet by hydro cap and ultimately, you know, unalived after that. Right. But that Thunderbolt series was dope. I will tell you like one of my.
favorite characters that kind of came out of this was Penance. Oh, the Speedball. Yeah. Yeah. Because Speedball survives. Yeah. He basically doesn't get launched like just miles away. Because of his, yeah, he's basically, if I'm recalling correctly, his ability that his telekinetic or his whatever it's called. He's like a human bouncy ball. Yes. So that protects him. His ability protects him from the blast. And like you said, launches him, you know, miles away. Yeah. I think it was kind of a.
I mean, he kind of becomes more of an edgy character. Yeah, he's very emo. Yeah, but I like the fact that he doesn't let himself forget about what happened in Stanford, so it's really kind of a neat... I kind of like to see good, squeaky, clean heroes kind of break bad, for lack of a better term. He did. I mean, yeah, he was basically punishing himself. He put himself in that suit of...
It was like a suit of thorns, basically, where you had one thorn for each victim. And then when he used his powers, it would hurt or whatever. Yeah, Penance was an interesting direction for a character like Speedball. It's actually a better name because Speedball is such an unfortunate superhero name as well. It was interesting to me how the event transformed the lives of so many characters. Not just Penance, but...
Captain America, Iron Man, Spider-Man, all of these major characters, even like Fantastic Four because you ultimately had Sue and Reed landing on different sides of it. Yeah. And it was so interesting how each character dealt with it in some way or how it impacted them long term. And it led to some really, really cool, like I said, some of my favorite reading moments in the history of reading Marvel comics. I will say that Back in Black is probably one of my favorite Spider-Man-centric storylines. Well, when you compare it to One More Day, it's a masterpiece. But yeah, just the fact that he just goes absolutely apeshit on Wilson Fisk is amazing to me. Yeah, Back in Black was good stuff. I mean, all of that Spider-Man was solid up until... And I started reading or picking up Spider-Man comics again with Civil War and stayed with it up until issue...
700 so i stayed with it for a few years after after that uh anyway uh, as an aside, this is also when Marvel ramped up like their cosmic world too. Cause then you had like, I think, I think it was maybe just before this, but you had annihilation. And then right after this event, you had annihilation conquest. And, uh, all of this was like peak Marvel. In my opinion, it was probably the best Marvel had ever been for me personally. Uh, especially when I compare it to where Marvel's at now, like peak Marvel 20 years ago. So let anything else you want to add to it or otherwise let's go ahead. Um, I, I'm going to kick myself for asking you this question. I'm going to kick myself if I don't have an answer. Um, so.
because we could probably do a two-hour podcast on just this. Whose side are you on? So that's a good question. I can certainly see both sides of it. In fact, here's what's funny. There is a few years after, or maybe not even a few years after, I have it. It's a one-shot. It's a what-if one-shot. And in this what-if, it is like, what if, I'm trying to think how the stories went. One of the stories was like, what if the Civil War just kind of gone differently, essentially, right? And the way that it went, it was,
Captain America, let me rephrase this. Tony Stark comes to Captain America and he's like, hey, the Superhuman Registration thing, it's going to happen. We want you to be the guy that oversees it, not the government. You as Captain America oversee this. So it goes a completely different direction where they don't end up fighting. They don't end up killing each other. People don't end up dying off. And it actually goes a lot more smoothly. And so I'm not opposed to the idea of accountability. But who is the one that's in charge of that accountability?
And I agree with Cap's side that, you know, do you have a government that decides who's the bad guys? We have that right now. And I don't agree with it most of the time, right? And so I can see that side of it. I agree there should be accountability, but I also agree that it should be, basically, I think it should be for them to be responsible for themselves. And if you have somebody responsible who's sort of overseeing that, I think that that's a much different situation. And so I like that one shot because of how that story went. Also check that out because that's kind of... I actually just read it recently. I will tell you exactly what it's called. Let's see here. This is interesting podcasting right now where you take a break for me to go to my Facebook page, the number one comics podcast page, because I shared it out there.
and let's see it was called where you at uh okay It was called What If, Civil War, Whose Side Are You On? And it's got a cool kind of Iron Man, Captain America thing. Yes, very much like that. That's kind of part of the first story where it's like, what if Captain America dies during the Civil War and then Iron Man basically picks up his mantle. I think it's how that one went, if I'm not mistaken. So that was, yeah, one of the stories was like, what if Captain America died during the Civil War? The other one was like, what if Iron Man lost the Civil War, essentially? But that's kind of how I went with it.
Yeah, now what about you? Whose side would you be on? I don't think it's as black and white, but it's tough for me because I can see merits to both sides. The thing that I agreed with the most from Tony's side of it was that maybe Cap's ideals were a little bit antiquated. So I'd probably lean more towards that. But I'd probably be more like, I'm on Team Spider-Man with this, so I probably would have seen Tony's...
side of it more but then probably would have defected halfway through yeah i could see that well it's funny because a lot a lot of people who like if you go back and read it even though the creators are like you know no there's no good guys there's no bad guys we're not but The pro registration side does some shitty things. They do. Like throughout the course of the event. They really do. But the, the anti-registration side also had Frank Castle on it. Right. And he ended up killing Jack-O-Lantern. Yeah. I didn't even mention that scene though. Cause one of my favorite scenes is when Cap goes to join the registration or goes to join the resistance. And basically like Captain America doesn't want anything to do with them. And like, they get in like a fight.
And Frank Castle refuses to lift a hand to Captain America and just lets Captain America beat the shit out of him. I love that scene. However realistic it may be that Punisher would allow himself to get his ass whooped on like that, but he did in that context, and I liked it. Let's go ahead and rate it. Would you have bought the next, at least read it, skipped it, or would you rather have been a PA on the New Warriors reality show in Stanford?
As fun as I would have been, I would have bought the next one. Yeah. It's a big buy for me. As I said before, this event as a whole is the bar that I put every other event. I stand every other event up against it. Now, I will say I've read the main Civil War 7-issue series. What I would be intrigued in doing, what I would like to go and do is go and find all the tie-ins and stuff like that. Yeah, I can loan you the ones I've got for sure. I think there are some I do not have.
as far as like trades go. Most of them I have in trade, but then there's some that I haven't picked up in trade just because there's so many out there. And there's some that I wasn't, again, I wasn't into the characters at the time. Like I wasn't reading Fantastic Four at the time. I wasn't reading, I don't think I was even reading Black Panther at the time. So there are some that I've read, but I don't necessarily have them.
in my collection at this point in time. But I'll loan you what I've got. So they're worth it. Well, that's going to do it for us. Thank you for joining us. This has been another episode of the Number One Comics Podcast. You can like, subscribe to this video. Find us wherever you get your podcasts. We're part of the Field of Geeks Network, so just look up Field of Geeks. You can also, as I mentioned, find me on Facebook at the Number One Comics Podcast. And special thanks to everyone at the Field of Geeks Network for helping make this happen. Special thanks to Raven X for the music. Thanks to Bill for being here. We'll see you guys next time. Later. Peace.