Be Excellent To Each Other

The Civil War story is good. Now there's going to be a film. Of it.

That looks ace. Chris Evans is excellent as Capt America. I never really liked the character before he portrayed him, and now he's my favourite.

Just had a crowd of IT bods around my desk to watch that

Civil War was indeed good and is by far the best comics 'event' I've ever read by no small margin. To my mind though part of what made it a success is that the format (i.e. an entire year's worth of the core comics plus all the shitload of tie-ins) gave the writers a lot of time to set it up and play it out properly. It was a very credible story because everything from the Stamford incident and it's escalating impact through to the individual heroes having different personal reasons for their stance could be properly demonstrated and built up. I just worry that if you try and condense that entire thing into two hours it'll fuck it up. In an ideal world it would be done as a TV series, that I would get very excited about.

I have never read the comics or have any real idea about it other than the recent films and the premise looks poor from that perspective.

And the last Marvel film that tried to cram too much stuff in (Age of Ultron) definitely suffered for it, whereas the two recent ones where people had few expectations and the film could do whatever it liked (Guardians, Ant-Man) were all the better for that. At least Civil War won't have to set up three other movies, whereas Ultron devoted -- what -- twenty or thirty minutes to laying groundwork for Civil War, Ragnarok, Black Panther, and Infinity War?

(Caveats: I haven't seen Ant-Man yet, I'm going off what I heard. And Guardians did suffer a touch for having two bad guys, because they had to shoehorn Thanos in. Basically no Marvel villains have been any good, though, except for Loki and the magnificent Wilson Fisk (and maybe Kilgrove but I haven't seen Jessica Jones yet), with a minor award for Ultron because of Spader's performance even though little of what Ultron does makes much sense.)

I have to admit, I'm pretty bored of the basic plot of each Avengers film being "The Avengers are annoyed with each other! They argue! They got over it and are now friends. Now they win!"

We're the avengers?

Having now actually watched the trailer (I can't access YouTube at work which is a pain in the ass) I see they're now deviating from the comics setup and using the Winter Soldier as the basis for it all. Which will certainly save them having to shoehorn in the Stamford incident but the downside it that it's a shite reason for it all. Yes, Bucky's crimes were carried out under some kind of mental conditioning but Cap chucking away a lot of what he stands for just because one of his mates is in trouble doesn't seem all that credible. I'll still watch it and really enjoy it no doubt but it's definitely not the Civil War story from the comics.

See, I think the film might be better, because of the conflict between Cap and Iron Man. In the comic Iron Man was basically a dick, and hired a load of super-villains to fight for him, but in the MCU him and Cap are mates, and Iron Man is a full-on good guy.

However, I do worry that they're going to swap the Stamford Incident with Bucky somehow. It was fucking harrowing, and it was meant to be, but I can't see them putting that into a family film.

[edit] o/

I'm pretty certain this is going to be two films, not one. So, hopefully more time = less cramming of story.

Wait, what? Some dodgy alliances were made on both sides during the actual Civil War itself but beforehand Cap and Iron Man were both straight up 'goodies' and had a good relationship. That was one of the really good things about the whole story; you could sympathise with both sides because (a) their arguments individually made sense and (b) each was represented by a known good guy.



\o



What's your source for that out of curiosity?

Will Film 1 have a decent resolution, or will it stop and Film 2 begins where it left off? By that (pre empting Bamba), I mean; are there 2 meaty sub plots in there?

Hmm, I want to say the Empire podcast. Now I've looked online I can't find any mention of it being a two parter. I'll do some more digging...

Possibly you are thinking of the next Avengers film being a two parter?

I dunno, when I read it (a long time ago, admittedly), I remember Stark hiring folk like Bullseye and Venom to kill and even though he was clearly on the right side, he was being a dick. Although there was some villains on Cap's side too. Hmm. Clearly I have to read it again. To Amazon!

Also, I think technically it was Hulk fucking up Vegas that caused the Registration Act to be pushed through - the Stamford Incident was when the public opinion of superheroes turned, though.

He's not, though. Cap (throughout Marvel) has always stood for American exceptionalism, and that has tinges of individualism and libertarianism. It's the American Dream, baby! The side he lands on in Civil War is consistent with his character. Whereas Stark, for all his bad boy rebellion, is a billionaire who owns an arms company; he's part of the institution. He is The Man. I always felt this central division was very cleverly drawn.

It's not. Were you thinking of Avengers: Infinity War? That's a two parter.

Debating about subscribing to Marvel Unlimited for a month and reading the Civil War storyline. I've only read small bits here and there, having not really followed comics since my misspent youth.

£7.14? Hyper-bargain.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Civil-War-Mark- ... 608&sr=8-1

That's only a fraction of it, though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_War_(comics)#Comic_tie-ins

Purchased. Ta.

Fucking YOINK!

I've read the main Civil War storyline and it was very good. I'd be interested in reading the lead up to it.

Ooh, don't agree with this so much - Cap's starts out the "SIRYESSIR" soldier who obeys orders without thinking but his long-term arc is that he should trust himself rather than the government, and Iron Man starts out thinking only about himself and learns that he should be responsible for his actions. That's part of the reason that neither of them could understand why the other didn't agree with them.

N

You are, as ever, annoyingly correct, having just listened back to the section of the podcast.

I'm still gobsmacked by this, btw.

It's the main story though - although I'd be all over a "definitive" edition.

Marvel Unlimited (Netflix for Marvel, basically) is $10/mo. I have no idea what coverage of Civil War is like, and its website doesn't want to tell me, but it has a lot of stuff in general. I guess you could speed through it pretty quickly and then unsubscribe again.

I shall read it again and report back. But I remember thinking that it probably wasn't right that some folk could wander around self-policing because they happened to be strong enough to destroy cities.

It's highly likely I wouldn't unsubscribe though.

Or get Mylar.

Well, OK, granted. But both of those arcs were (rebooted characters notwithstanding) completed sometime in the 60s, so for a very long time, they've been in the final stage IYSWIM.

Compared to the legal choice of $55 for the year, it's not worth my time to even set up any piracy solution. Plus I'd feel awfully cheap.

Oh dear I seem to have slipped and signed up for a year

Good. Tell me what the Civil War coverage is like.

Sadly my iPad mini isn't great for comics. Nexus 9 it is, then!

You could still pay them the money if it makes you feel better. Using your own reader is far nicer than trying to use the Unlimited one, and you don't have to worry it randomly trying to re-download stuff while you're on a train.

Disclaimer: I've not used Mylar (but all it does is fetch cbr/z files), and I last used MU when it was literally brand new, so hopefully it's much better.

Will do! My Air 2 is pretty good for comics, although I'm still waiting for an all-colour A4-sized eInk reader.

Keep watching I guess.

Iron Man never intended to kill anyone, that would be insane. He did send some allegedly ex villains to capture after he tried to do a runner and said villains took things to far though hence the rescue by The Punisher. And yeah, Stark was being a massive, massive dick which is what led to defection when he found out about the shit Iron Man was getting up to.

Also, apparently, the Hulk thing happened before the Stamford incident. The whole thing's described in some amount of detail here:

http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/Civil_War_%28Event%29



I agree to a certain degree with your analysis of Cap's character but he's ultimately a soldier and tends to believe in The System so it's usually treated pretty seriously on the occasions he 'rebels'. The setup of the comics Civil War makes a credible argument for this because the impact of the Registration Act is potentially massive, but in the film it seems to be purely because a single friend of his is in trouble. I realise this is coming off the back of the revelations around SHIELD shaking his faith somewhat but it still seems more likely he'd fight for Buckie to get a fair trial rather than somewhat selfishly using this as a reason to not only go underground himself but to drag people like The Falcon along with him.

The main Civil War comics are very good but I massively enjoyed all the tie-ins and side stories because the idea of a Registration Act universally affected all heroes. If you're looking to catch up on it I'd recommend reading them all and not just the core books.

That's what I meant. It kicked off the Registration, but no-one thought it was a good idea until the Stamford Incident.

I'm not going to that website when I'm intending to read the whole lot again

I vaguely recall people on Twitter saying the client had improved. Let's see how myp gets on.

Edit -- also, comics are huge and my tablets relatively small. There's something to be said for a Netflix-style streaming storage model, rather than having to shuffle files between NAS and tablet like it's the bloody dark ages.

If you haven't already bought a Nexus 9 then really don't, they're fucking awful. I'm just waiting for the reviews of the Pixel C to confirm it's decent (and for it to be released of course) and I'm grabbing one as my N9 annoys the shit out of me.

Doc doesn't tend to pay for Android devices

Also, the chat here seems to imply that Marvel Unlimited has all the Civil War stuff:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Marvel/comment ... civil_war/

Like I buy Nexuses.

They should pay him!

Wait that's literally what they do.

Seems comprehensive.

Does it still forget to tell you not to read Civil War #5?

Go on

The recommended Marvel Reading order used to omit Civil War #5. Which was presumably a mistake, not that they didn't like that issue.