Civil War #1

Title: Civil War #1
Writer: Mark Millar
Artist: Steve McNiven

A bombing at an elementary school. Reality teevee gone amuck. A beating outside of a night-club. Draconian political maneuevers designed to protect the populous and safeguard individual liberties which end up stripping away said freedoms and polarizing a country toward war. And this is just issue #1. Sounds like a selection of your everyday, garden variety newspaper headlines, and that is exactly the point. Millar's Civil War series begins uncomfortably close to home; it is socially and politically aware of the world we live in. The catch, of course, is that our world doesn't have any super-humans, or at least none that I'm aware of (my sincerest apologies to Tony Hawk and LaDanian Tomlinson). Millar's vision is simple: Take our world, its strife and tensions and add a dash of super-human might and then play things as straight as possible. What would Congress do to protect its people against individuals with tremendous power, whether they be self-proclaimed heroes or infamous villains?

The Registration Act is a gimmick, I get that. But it is an incredibly useful one. And don't tell me the idea of dividing up Marvel's mightiest heroes and having them face off against one another doesn't sound like a wee bit of fun. Sure these guys (and gals) have fought amongst one another before but never like this. Even a few hints of the massive war to come are enough to make Civil War #1 a necessary read. In fact the only thing that could dilute the potency of such a prospective story-line would be the forced perspective that we should favor one side over another. That we should be rooting for, say, Captain America, instead of someone like Iron Man. To this end Millar almost tips his hand too early. In a gorgeous full page McNiven rendering we see Cap surfing on a hijacked fighter jet. On the level of sheer coolness alone, how does one not root for this guy?

Yet any kind of resolution is a long way off, and purposefully so. The slate is clean, everyone's still a hero--for now. Civil War #1 does an excellent job of setting the table. The blueprint allows for unexpected defections, cameos, and plenty of startling revelations. The prospect of universe wide change where 'nothing will be the same' seems immediately realizable. Yet it's also a tired old cliche that rarely finds fruition in the comicbook world. With the seventh and final issue of Millar's opus to be released exactly one month from now, here's hoping Civil War comes through on the tremendous promise of it's opening chapter.

Rating: I give it a Snake-eyes <<<< wondering what this means?

p.s. check back durning the upcoming weeks for the reviews of subsequent Civil War issues while we at Cerberus countdown to the seventh and final chapter on February 21.