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lydamorehouseLast night I finished the last of the SECRET INVASION titles, and, looking around for a bit of light bathroom reading, I picked up one of the CIVIL WAR titles (I think it was Chronicles #1)... and suddenly, I missed the whole civil war storyline something fierce.
My reading of CIVIL WAR has been necessarly spotty. I came back into comics when CIVIL WAR was mostly wrapping up, so I couldn't read it episodically and the collections are actually somewhat difficult to navigate as an outsider, especially given how many titles the storyline straddles.
So, really, I'd never read many of the sort of major events or first moments, and only knew about them from context and what I'd gleaned from later issues. The issues I read last night collected some iconic scenes -- the whole Stampford School Incident and the moment Captain America goes rogue. The most powerful image, however, was the end piece with Spider-Man juxaposed with a story about family forced into the Japanese rellocation camps of WWII. The very last panel shows the family heading into the concentration camp on one side, the Statue of Liberty in the middle, and Spider-Man gazing at the statue saying, "With great power..."
Oh. My. God.
Where's the awesome now?
I think a lot of my disappointment of SECRET INVASION is that there's nothing, for me at least, in the new storyline that can compare to moments like that. For one, the Skrull's aren't an enemy I can understand. The powerful thing about the CIVIL WAR was that the "enemy" became us. "Who's side are you on?" was the tagline, and it pretty much summed up what was exciting for me about the CIVIL WAR. As a reader, I was engaged in the story in a much more personal way. Was Captain America's illegal resistance justified? Should a soldier follow the law, when the law is unjust? Is freedom more important than security? Or are there times when security should trump individual freedoms? What I loved about CIVIL WAR is that the answers were NEVER portrayed as simple. I think that it was pretty clear that many of the authors shared my personal politics, but that didn't stop them from making very logical and sensible arguments for "the other side."
Spider-Man never finishes his sentence. We know that his tagline is, "With great power comes great responsiblity," but we're left with our own minds blown open to what he seems to be suggesting which may (or may not) be:
...and what IS your responsiblity in the face of facism?? Facism from your own country in the name of security?? Do you do nothing and face the consequences that you may be allowing evil, or do you stand up for what's right even when popular sentiment is against you?
The Skrull invasion, for me at least, doesn't ask anything quite so difficult for me. Yeah, maybe the non-Skrull/real Captain America stepped off the "captured" Skrull ship, but... who cares? The person who won my heart -- the REAL Captain America (Skrull or not) -- stood up against facism and for civil liberties during the superhero civil war. The rest just doesn't matter.
My reading of CIVIL WAR has been necessarly spotty. I came back into comics when CIVIL WAR was mostly wrapping up, so I couldn't read it episodically and the collections are actually somewhat difficult to navigate as an outsider, especially given how many titles the storyline straddles.
So, really, I'd never read many of the sort of major events or first moments, and only knew about them from context and what I'd gleaned from later issues. The issues I read last night collected some iconic scenes -- the whole Stampford School Incident and the moment Captain America goes rogue. The most powerful image, however, was the end piece with Spider-Man juxaposed with a story about family forced into the Japanese rellocation camps of WWII. The very last panel shows the family heading into the concentration camp on one side, the Statue of Liberty in the middle, and Spider-Man gazing at the statue saying, "With great power..."
Oh. My. God.
Where's the awesome now?
I think a lot of my disappointment of SECRET INVASION is that there's nothing, for me at least, in the new storyline that can compare to moments like that. For one, the Skrull's aren't an enemy I can understand. The powerful thing about the CIVIL WAR was that the "enemy" became us. "Who's side are you on?" was the tagline, and it pretty much summed up what was exciting for me about the CIVIL WAR. As a reader, I was engaged in the story in a much more personal way. Was Captain America's illegal resistance justified? Should a soldier follow the law, when the law is unjust? Is freedom more important than security? Or are there times when security should trump individual freedoms? What I loved about CIVIL WAR is that the answers were NEVER portrayed as simple. I think that it was pretty clear that many of the authors shared my personal politics, but that didn't stop them from making very logical and sensible arguments for "the other side."
Spider-Man never finishes his sentence. We know that his tagline is, "With great power comes great responsiblity," but we're left with our own minds blown open to what he seems to be suggesting which may (or may not) be:
...and what IS your responsiblity in the face of facism?? Facism from your own country in the name of security?? Do you do nothing and face the consequences that you may be allowing evil, or do you stand up for what's right even when popular sentiment is against you?
The Skrull invasion, for me at least, doesn't ask anything quite so difficult for me. Yeah, maybe the non-Skrull/real Captain America stepped off the "captured" Skrull ship, but... who cares? The person who won my heart -- the REAL Captain America (Skrull or not) -- stood up against facism and for civil liberties during the superhero civil war. The rest just doesn't matter.