Broken Frontier

The war is over. Or is it? Front Line #11 provides an epilogue to Civil War that serves up one final, stunning twist shedding new light on events.

Warning: This review contains major spoilers so read no further if you want to avoid important story details.

Picking up from the events of Civil War #7, this issue starts with the scenes of devastation from the final battle between the pro and anti-registration forces. Expanding on what we knew before we learn that 53 people died in this battle (apparently including five unnamed superheroes plus Typeface).

With Captain America’s surrender and imprisonment, and with Iron Man victorious, Sally Floyd and Ben Urich’s investigation into the events surrounding the conflict uncover a truth that shows a ruthless side to Tony Stark that is astonishing even by his own recent Machiavellian standards. They confront him with the revelation that he has secretly engineered a war with Atlantis in order to manipulate opinion towards registration. By creating a threat on this magnitude he has sought to pull the superheroes on both sides together to face a common enemy and bolster the pro-registration cause.

I’ve enjoyed this complementary series to Civil War immensely over the past ten issues, especially the use of some obscure pieces of continuity. Unfortunately, in regards to characterization, #11 is disappointing on some levels. Steve Rogers, to begin with, is reduced to a contrite, beaten shell of the Captain America we all know, portrayed as out of touch and largely irrelevant. In short, he’s unrecognizable. While it would probably be argued that that’s the point after all he’s been through, there’s something about this dejected and broken Cap that just feels wrong. Once more the charge of story-led characters over character-led stories has to be leveled at Marvel.

As for Stark, in the final scenes we’re presumably meant to feel pity for him for the burden of responsibility he now shoulders. Jenkins fails to do this but, to be fair, it was a pretty tall order. One scene of him throwing his Iron Man helmet across his office in frustration really isn’t going to engender the necessary level of empathy for the reader to feel sympathy for a man who has started a war with Atlantis, conspired with mass-murderers, controlled people like puppets with nanites, played his part in causing countless deaths and built a dirty great concentration camp where the conditions were so brutal that at least one hero killed himself. And we’re meant to think this is a man who bravely made difficult decisions for the greater good? A man who seeks to impose his own personal view of what’s right and wrong on an entire country isn’t a hero. He’s a dictator.

Worse still, Urich and Floyd suppress the story. Sally Floyd is Paul Jenkins’s creation so I can’t criticize that. In the case of Ben Urich though, would he really have done this in the circumstances or do we have another example of a character behaving to serve the story’s need rather than the dictates of established characterization?

The art is impressive throughout though. The sheer scale of the consequences of the big battle in Civil War #7 and the devastation it has wrought on innocent lives is dramatically realized by Bachs and Lucas. In direct contrast to those opening scenes, much of the issue is concerned with "talking heads" but they never fail to convey the human drama involved to its utmost, from a slumped and beaten Captain America to the body language of an initially arrogant and smug Tony Stark which degenerates into that of a petulant child in the aftermath of his confrontation with the reporters.

What the Big Reveal does is basically give us a reworking of Watchmen with Tony Stark revealed as an Ozymandias figure. The only real difference is that Steve Rogers compromises his beliefs and Rorschach didn’t. It’s an unsatisfying ending for those who wanted to see Stark get his comeuppance but, given the remit of this series to create an edgier, less certain Marvel Universe, a largely unsurprising one.

Despite these many concerns I will say that Marvel do deserve to be applauded for trying to shake up the status quo of their universe. That doesn’t mean, however, that this finale, and Civil War in general, has been a flawless exercise. It certainly hasn’t. Time will tell if, creatively (rather than financially!), it’s been a worthwhile one.