Broken Frontier

The Superhuman Registration Act becomes law and Captain America leads a group of renegade heroes into the underground.

This new Act has the public seeing superheroes in a favorable way again, but Cap’s opposition to it leaves many uneasy—including those in favor of it—about whether or not the situation is being approached the way it should be. Even J. Jonah Jameson isn’t all that wild about having his cake and eating it, too. But the real story, the one that everyone will be talking about (both in the comic story and the fans), comes in the final pages when a well-known superhero makes a shocking decision.

As so many of his projects have shown, Mark Millar is well equipped to bring this kind of massive event to the comic world. With various tie-ins from other titles and the far reaching promise this book will have to all corners of the Marvel Universe, he does a great job of not just "touching base" with so many of the affected parties, but also manages to bring relevance to those respective scenes. If you read Marvel comics, you are at least aware of the plot, which moves along at a breakneck pace. But Millar makes some time to add a little mystery as well—what is keeping Reed Richards so excited and preoccupied that he can’t make time for his family? I do wish the ending would have been told in another book that already seemed to be covering it, but it is such a huge revelation that it probably had to be done here in order for it to make sense to readers who don’t want to buy more than just this core Civil War seven-part title.

If Millar was the perfect writer for such a series, Steve McNiven is even more perfect a choice as artist. His tendency for hyperrealism and attention to detail is sickening in the best possible way. He sometimes goes overboard with facial expressions, but with one of the industry’s most accomplished inkers in Dexter Vines putting on the finishes it all comes out fantastically. If nothing else, this issue got me excited for one dream: as long as McNiven could maintain a regular schedule, I would love to see him on a lengthy run of Amazing Spider-Man.

The line has been drawn and sides have been chosen. As the final pages of this issue illustrated, there will be a massive fall out from the events unwinding here as promised. We’re just two episodes in, but I’m satisfied with the fact that Civil War has so far lived up the massive hype it has generated.