(spoilers ahead for Marvel’s Civil War series, specifically #4)
Peter Parker, issue 2, that was fine, I can dig it, or give it a chance.
But, issue 4 is basically falling back on sad schitcks and tropes. I’m going to focus on the most glaring storytelling issues: characterization.
Reed Richards: Alright, so we’re back to egghead inhuman Reed. Fine. But having him clone and unleash an untested mindless God on people that are, for the most party, his friends? C’mon, this akin to carpet-bombing a city to catch a crook. Does anyone actually believe that THOR would do anything but massively reign house on standard heroe? Aside from the Hulk and Sentry there’s really no hero that can compete. I just don’t get it, it was such a bad plan.
Sue Richards: Her identity is known anyway, so she’s leaving her CHILDREN with her eggheaded wisdomless husband to go off and fight crime secretly? Bwaaaaaaaahhaahahaha. C’mon, do you know any mother that would do this? Give me a break.
Iron Man: So, Iron Man’s big plan, after releasing mindless baby-Thor (who just matter of factly wastes Goliath in a throw-away moment) is recruting the PSYCHOPATHIC villians to do his dirty work? Tony’s logic just smacks of cheesey villian reasoning. All the claims of a balanced look at the issue are very hollow, as Reed and Tony fall into every single common villian trope you can think of. Let’s see, cloned Thor killed some people, and leashed Carnage and Bullseye won’t?!
Peter Parker: His debt to Tony, and his idenity being revealed actually made sense, but his dim-witted and ponderous realization process are laughable. Peter may not be a level 12 intellect (who is?), but he’s extremely bright and pretty street smart at this point in his career (he invented his webshooters for christ’s sake, that pattent could have made him a millionaire…). However, its painfully obvious he’s going to defect, and not in a good way. It just seems like Peter is about 3 months/issues behind every other reader.
At the beginning they were trying to make this look like there was no clear ‘wrong side’, which was a noble approach. Now, they’ve chosen a side for us. Boo.
Sue is indeed in an odd situation there. I hope they have a nanny or something – certainly she only had one other option, which would be to leave with the children and go someplace quiet. But then where do her beliefs as a hero fit? Maybe she’ll go ease her pain at Namor’s place – take THAT, Reed!
If you want a really strong example of editorial having picked a side to be wrong, check out Amazing Spiderman 535. In it, Iron Man THREATENS SPIDERMAN’S FAMILY.
The whole thing smacked of Kingdom Come, but oh so much worse.