Civil War II #8 Review: Deus Ex Meh-china

Civil War II ends today on a complete stumble, falling apart as a story and as a “summer” event. I wish we’d seen that coming in time to avoid this book.

Civil War II #8 (of 8)
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by David Marquez with Adam Kubert, Leinil Francis Yu, Daniel Acuna, Alan Davis & Mark Farmer, Marco Rudy, Mark Bagley & John Dell, and Esad Ribic
Colors by Justin Ponsor
Published by Marvel Comics

We have all been tricked, and I can’t make that easier for you.

We thought we were going to read summer crossover about the implications of prediction in the Marvel Universe. Iron Man would be against using an Inhuman prophet to shape decisions; Captain Marvel would accept this for the potential good. And they’d fight.

And that part? That part happened. The broader tie-ins didn’t have a ton to say, but some books were able to make powerful statements about racial profiling. Oh, and we did lose prominent Avengers War Machine and The Hulk, so the stakes were high enough. And the main book had well-timed story beats for the first five or six issues.

But a few months ago, the book started slipping. Delays were a little longer, and for the last two months, Marvel’s books have all been set after the end of this book, with everyone making handwaving movements about Tony Stark being gone and Carol Danvers being disgraced. And it’s impossible to read this book out of the context that the world has moved on in largely the same form it was before.

So what did happen this time? The punch Carol threw through Tony’s chest maybe didn’t really do him in because the pair then fight savagely through DC for half an issue. Both of them look criminally negligent. Tony’s rockets that he shoots at Carol in the streets of the nation’s capital like a freaking terrorist almost kill Captain America, and he blames Carol for dodging. The fight eventually gets to the same punch as last issue from a different camera angle just in time for the horrible reveal.

Ending on a sales pitch

I’ll go into more detail in this week’s Civil War Journal. The upshot: Ulysses shows seven alternate futures before an absurd cosmic end to his own story. And even though this invalidates his entire point in this crossover, proving the point everyone has made to Carol in almost every tie-in book, even though his predictions are now one-hundred percent inadmissible as guaranteed future, no one is willing to revisit that argument. The supporting cast just keeps telling Carol that she and Tony are both terrible, which by now they are. And Carol hints at several new series (which have already started months ago) to spin out of these events.

So at the end, the central premise, “Should we trust the Inhuman enough to endanger life for the service of greater good?” is answered by “Umm, nope, but who cares?” And instead, the capstone to hundreds of dollars of books comes down to half an issue of a fight we already saw and half an issue of previews for books and events we can buy next. I have felt less manipulated watching actual commercials.

It could have been fine as a contained Avengers story, but it fell apart when reaching too far, and the ending seemed to forget what the beginning was. This book had promise. This book has failed.