What was Marvel's Civil War over?

The subtitle of Captain America 3 will be Civil War. If this means adapting the 2006 Civil War miniseries, I’m out. I didn’t like the comics at all and I’m not sitting through the story a second time on film.

In Civil War, heroes took sides for and against the idea of registering those with super powers. The inciting incident was the New Warriors attempting to stop a group of criminals during the taping of a reality show. During the botched mission, supervillain Nitro exploded near an elementary school and killed a bunch of kids. This caused more calls for the registration of superhumans, who would reveal their secret identities to the government, receive training and avoid any more massacres. Opposing this were those who felt that the federal government controlling superheroes would turn heroes into political tools and the proposal would violate civil liberties.

On the pro-registration side were Iron Man, Mister Fantastic, Spider-Man (initially), Hank Pym, the Wasp, Ms. Marvel and others. On the anti-registration side were Captain America, Luke Cage, Hercules, the Invisible Woman and others. The two groups fought and it was an ugly scene. SHIELD attacked Captain America after he refused to go after those who resisted registration. Iron Man used a clone of Thor that killed Goliath. The Avengers splintered into two groups. Mister Fantastic established a prison in the Negative Zone to hold superheroes who did not want to register. Norman Osborn, the former Green Goblin, got the keys to the federal government. It was just unpleasant to read.

The stupidest thing of all was when a reporter berated Captain America for being out of touch with America because he didn’t watch NASCAR or go on MySpace. Excuse me: the cover of Cap’s very first appearance showed him punching out Hitler. I think that establishes his patriotism better than whether or not he goes on a now-defunct social networking site. Also stupid was that Mister Fantastic had already debunked the idea of a Superhuman Registration Act in the late ‘80s. This took about three issues, not a seven-issue miniseries and 27 tie-ins.

I was anti-registration. Making superheroes accountable to the government meant that politicians could determine who the enemy was. I liked self-policing in the superhuman community much better. I liked a little autonomy and mystery. Teams like the Fantastic Four and the Avengers had always been independent, working with the government and not for it, and that was important. Some good stories came out of the Avengers butting heads with the government over things like the rights to operate Quinjets in Manhattan and the clashes with infamous government liaison Henry Peter Gyrich. The idea that the Avengers work for SHIELD is very new and is mostly for the movies. I much better liked the idea that the team formed on its own when five heroes answered a distress call, rather than Nick Fury putting them all together.

There were some dark undertones to registering superheroes, such as the implication that the government would break into your house and seize you if you didn’t register. The registration act also had shades of the often invoked but never enacted Mutant Registration Act. The idea of rounding up all the mutants haunted the X-Men for years and influenced the Days of Future Past story.

It was also just ugly seeing Captain America and Iron Man fight. This was one more tiresome and depressing example of heroes fighting amongst themselves. I for one would much rather return to the days when heroes fought evil and saved lives.

Right after writing this, I did notice that Marvel is doing movies on the Black Panther, Captain Marvel (Carol Danvers), Dr. Strange and the Inhumans so that is actually something to get excited about.