Marvel has become synonymous with its event cycle in the 21st century. The publisher is all about setting up multiple event comics across its line, but it wasn’t always this way. Back in the early ’00s, the publisher was testing the water again with event comics, which had petered out in the ’90s. It all began again with 2004’s Secret War (a five-issue miniseries that took almost a year to come out), then House of M made the event cycle into a big deal again. In 2005, Marvel started planting the seeds for the next big Marvel event, and it’s one that has become one of the most controversial events in the history of the company — Civil War, from Mark Millar and Steve McNiven.
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Civil War has become a pretty well-worn piece of Marvel mythology, with it eventually being adapted for the blockbuster movie Captain America: Civil War. It’s hard to picture the Marvel Universe without the book, but there was a time when Civil War was a huge chance that the publisher was taking. They staked everything on a comic that would break the Marvel Universe, and despite the book having its share of problems, it’s become one of Marvel’s most beloved event comics. Civil War broke Marvel in numerous ways, and it’s still kind of insane that they were able to pull it off.
Civil War Destroyed the Cornerstone of the Marvel Universe
Civil War has something of a tainted legacy for numerous reasons. There’s the characterization problem, especially for Captain America and Iron Man, but it worked across the line. While Marvel’s heroes could often be contentious, this was the publisher that made the shared universe; a big part of what made their comics popular was the way that everyone knew each other and worked together. Civil War broke that, and instead of fixing it all the end, Marvel let its universe stayed broken.
Back in 2005, there was a lot of talk about how the story would end. None of us really believed that the grudge match between Cap’s anti-Registration forces and Iron Man’s pro-Registration forces would lead to the status quo that we got when the story ended. A lot of us expected that a big bad would be revealed that was pulling everyone’s strings and the heroes would have to team up to defeat them (I personally thought it would be Mephisto, so I beat the MCU fans’ obsession with Mephisto by over a decade). We’re so used to the idea of Civil War, it’s easy to forget that this story was taking a huge chance.
Civil War‘s ending was a massive shock; no one expected it to end with the arrest of Captain America and Iron Man becoming the de factor leader of the superhero community. We didn’t expect for the heroes to hate each so much. The community stayed broken after Civil War, and the story led Marvel in directions that it had never been before. Would World War Hulk have had the same impact without Civil War? Would Secret Invasion have worked so well? Would we have gotten the blockbuster “Dark Reign” status quo without it? Civil War was more than an event; it was a canon moment.
There are a lot of bad things that can be said about the story and all of them are true. There’s a lot of plot contrivances to make the story work. Characters that we thought knew acted in completely different ways and I don’t care what Millar says — anyone who actually thought Iron Man was right has zero media literacy. However, there’s something about the story and its impact that makes it the most important event in Marvel history.
Civil War‘s Tangled Legacy Makes It Marvel’s Best Event
A lot of what Civil War did is indefensible, but if you look at its legacy and impact divorced from the story itself, it’s plain to see that it’s the best Marvel event book ever. Secret Wars and A.X.E. Judgment Day are much better stories, but neither of them changed the course of the Marvel Universe completely for years to come. No other event wrought long term change like it did. It’s fine to not like the book; there are plenty of important things that aren’t the most beloved. That doesn’t change how great they are.
There are definitely “better” stories out there, but none of them did what Civil War did. It broke the Marvel that all of us had grown up and sent it in a direction that we never expected. There was something exciting about being there on the ground floor of Civil War; we all had predictions, and nearly all of us were wrong. It was surprising, and sometimes, surprising can be better than well-written. It’s fine to hate the story — as a Cap fan, I really dislike a lot about it — but denying how amazing it was for Marvel is disingenuous in the extreme.
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