Civil War, straight from the collaborative minds of Mark Millar and Steve McNiven, is a Marvel Comics Event in Seven Parts, as its byline suggests. Upon the insinuation of a super-human registration act and a national disaster that splits the views and opinions of most superhero teams including the New Avengers, the X-men, the Fantastic Four, a schism is drawn between the lines of the superhero league where even long-time friends are forced to deviate from the ties that bind and take a stand. In the tradition of House of M, the events from this story will affect just about every corner of the Marvel Universe. From the highly-acclaimed Runaways to Allan Heinberg’s celebrated Young Avengers, no one is safe and absolutely everyone is dragged into the fold – each side fighting recklessly and breaking alliances to further his or her beliefs.
The Marvel event will spawn three mini-series within the course of Civil War’s timeline, apart from the main comic itself and the regular comic books tying in with the major story-arc. Civil War: Frontline, X-Men: Civil War and a Runaways/Young Avengers crossover are in the offing to complement and provide foundational and more intimate stories to this Marvel-wide crisis.
According to Joe Quesada, Marvel editor-in-chief, Frontline is said to be a peephole into how the events of Civil War are spread across the superhero continuity and how "everyone is affected in a global scale." Each issue of the talked about mini-series will unfold in 32 pages without ads and with comic book panels on every page. If you ask me, this is a most-refreshing change seeing as that most comic books nowadays are so heavy on ads that you barely get a sufficient hold of all the action to last for another week’s wait.
As Frontline will focus more on the super-human community where She-Hulk, the Punisher, Daredevil, and countless other superheroes naturally belong, X-men: Civil War looks into how the worldwide conflict will affect the seismically reduced mutant population. As if the Xavier Institute doesn’t have its share of problems with the Office of National Emergency’s pesky intervention in its affairs, the surprise return of Apocalypse, and the crusade of William Stryker targeting its student population. The X-men will also be forced to take sides regarding this matter seeing that their very own Wolverine belongs to the newly-resurfaced Avengers of whom the main storyline revolves around. Quesada even suggested that Headmistress Emma Frost be a major player in the main story-arc of Civil War.
Finally, the Runaways/Young Avengers crossover will look into the chance encounter of the two popular teenage superhero teams and how both groups will be caught up in the events of Civil War. While Young Avengers is scheduled to go on hiatus after Allan Heinberg, a writer for the popular TV drama The O.C., ends his contract with Marvel Inc., the four-issue mini will feature the New York-based Young Avengers and the L.A.-based Runaways battling it out with their older counterparts and proving that the young ones are also a force to be reckoned with.
Like House of M, there will also be a newspaper one-shot of The Daily Bugle, the popularized media instrument in the Spider-man comic books headed by Jonah Jameson that will be reporting snippets of the events spurred by the ongoing conflict. Other comic books tying in with the Marvel Summer Event are The New Avengers which will feature five stories on Captain America, Luke Cage, Spider-woman, Sentry, and Iron-Man; The Fantastic Four where the celebrated First Family of Marvel will be shockingly torn; and She-Hulk in which the green wonder will face a radically changed status quo in her future story-arcs. Even The Punisher will feel the ramifications of Civil War in his long-time detachment to the Marvel Universe.
Things seem to be really looking up for our friends at Marvel. With X-Men 3: The Last Stand scheduled for release this May, the Ultimate Avengers DVD that is currently on the market, and The Civil War comic-book event set up for this summer, these can only mean more cha-ching for the literary enterprise that was reported to be dying in the earlier part of the 1990s. Well, they deserve it. After all, it’s no joke to constantly change the status quo of these renowned superheroes and cause friends and allies to break those ties. I mean come on, Captain America and Iron-Man, enemies? But that’s comic books for you.