The Lesson Plan

I used to be a purely DC collector, but I’d have to say that the fallout of Marvel’s Civil War (see Marvel’s visual guide) has been very, very interesting. For the first time since I’ve started collecting comics, I would say that I’m genuinely intrigued by what Marvel is publishing.

After the war, superheroes now have to be registered. An accident involving some metahumans killed 600 (mostly children) compelled the government to enact the Superhuman Registration Act. All those who registered are immediately government employees (and this includes ’supervillains’) and those who fail to register are outlawed.

Iron Man (Tony Stark) was the main proponent of the act while Captain America was against it. Spider-man at first sided with Iron Man, but moved to Cap’s side. The X-Men remained neutral throughout the conflict.

In the end, Iron Man’s side won. And this is where we have three Avengers titles come in.We now have the New Avengers (first pic at the left) who are the outlaws inspired by Captain America, and the Mighty Avengers (second pic on the right) formed by Tony Stark. And then we have Avengers: The Initiative (large pic) which tells us about the training of the government’s new recruits.

Marvel has an energy right now that just draws me in. After DC cooled down after Infinite Crisis, this new charge is very much welcome. I’ll tell you how these titles go after the first few months.

AND NEWSFLASH!

An image from this week’s issue of Captain America (#25) made its way on the internet.’

But will he remain dead for long? Or is he dead? We’ll see. His creator, the 93-year old Joe Simon remarked that it is a sad time for him to go. “We really need him now.”

And I find this quick bite from current writer Ed Brubaker interesting,

What I found is that all the really hard-core left-wing fans want Cap to be standing out on and giving speeches on the streetcorner against the Bush administration, and all the really right-wing [fans] all want him to be over in the streets of Baghdad, punching out Saddam.

I guess there’s only one way to see how these stories develop. It’s great that I’m hitting the comic shop tomorrow.