May 7th, 2006 by Jemaleddin Cole

Marvel has a new mini-​series out called Civil War. No, not one of the depress­ing kind:

The Marvel Uni­verse is chang­ing. In the wake of a tragedy, Capi­tol Hill pro­poses the Super Hero Reg­is­tra­tion Act, requir­ing all cos­tumed heroes to unmask them­selves before before the gov­ern­ment. Divided, the nation’s great­est cham­pi­ons must each decide how to react – a deci­sion that will alter the course of their lives forever.

The under­ly­ing themes are about the trade-​off between secu­rity and lib­erty, in a post-9/11 sort of world. It seemed inter­est­ing, and I was curi­ous as to how Marvel would handle it.

I don’t buy a lot of comic books. I love them, but they’ve gotten pricey since I was a kid, and there are just too many story-​lines going on at any one time to follow every­thing with­out buying every­thing. I have a kind of obses­sion with com­plet­ing sets of things, so find­ing myself in the middle of a series can get expen­sive quick. To avoid that, I tend to stick to short runs, mini-series(es?), and graphic novels/trade paper­backs. And Civil War seemed like a safe bet – 7 parts at $3.99 each isn’t cheap, but it’s a lot easier than fol­low­ing the many X-men story-​lines. Here’s what’s out right now:

And that’s not to men­tion the crossovers. (In the inter­est of fair­ness, some of the titles listed above are reprints or trade paper­backs col­lect­ing old mate­r­ial. And I’m already fol­low­ing two them: Aston­ish­ing, because it’s by Joss Whedon and the Apocalypse/Dracula mini-​series, because who doesn’t love that concept?)

So seeing this cover:

…I thought, “nice art, char­ac­ters I like, and only 7 parts.” Safe, right?

Ha.

At the back of the comic, once you’re hooked, they have a handy check-​list for the series:

By my count, that’s 81 comics. Let’s com­pare that to the big Marvel series from my youth, Secret Wars:

That’s 32 books for an epic comic event fea­tur­ing dozens of heroes and vil­lains in awe­some match-​ups. The Thing human again? Colos­sus cheat­ing on Shad­ow­cat? Doctor Doom with the power of the Beyon­der? And let’s not forget Spidey’s new cos­tume, shall we? And the toys! Awesome.

What’s sad is that even if I were to buy all 81 issues, that wouldn’t seal the deal: they’ve been lead­ing up to this issue since 2003’s Secret War (no rela­tion), so I’d have to look for all the issues I’ve missed, not to men­tion the Secret War issues, and its related crossovers, includ­ing The Pulse and the whole New Avengers series.

So let’s hope that I can either be sat­is­fied with the 7 main issues in the series, or make some room on my credit card. And that Neil Gaiman’s new run of the Eter­nals due out next month doesn’t have any crossovers.

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