Herp Derp I Can Type

Been reading Invincible Iron Man and I’m torn.  I really, really like the pairing between Iron Man and Pepper.  But, I also really, really, like the pairing between Iron Man and Captain America.  Both just work so well and Tony really cares about both of them.  I can’t decide which one I like more lol~!

patheticfangirl:

Settle in, tumblings. This is going to be a long one.

Civil War was the Marvel Comics crossover event of 2006-2007. If you aren’t aware of what a crossover event is, it’s a way for Marvel to make boatloads of cash when a large number of comics follow the same storyline for a period of time.

So say I would normally pick up the following books:

• Captain America
• Iron Man
• The Avengers

In a normal month, Captain America’s book might be about he and Bucky crying about WWII, Iron Man’s book might be about Tony drinking himself to death, and The Avengers might be facing off against Ultron. When there’s a company-wide crossover event, though, all of those books will cover different angles of the same story.

In 2006-2007, that story was Civil War, and it was a huge one. I don’t think a single Marvel title escaped from being tied-in with the story. Everything from the X-Men to Ms. Marvel to Moon Knight featured a tie-in. As you can imagine, this made Marvel a lot of money as some people felt compelled to buy all of the tie-ins they could get their hands on.

(As an aside, I didn’t. Just the Avengers ones.)

So Civil War. It starts like this:

The New Warriors are a young group of superheroes who have a reality TV show. It’s like The Real World, but with more fighting. They’re broadcasting live and they decide to go after the supervillain Nitro. As it turns out, Nitro’s power level has increased and he blows up an entire neighborhood, including a school.

This causes the American public to lose their shit. They’ve already had just about enough of superheroes because they’re always saving the day and causing millions of dollars worth of property damage in the process. Basically, they think superheroes are reckless, arrogant dicks who need to be reined in. This causes Congress to push through a bill called the Superhuman Registration Act (SHRA) that would force all of them to register with the government, have their secret identities on file, and undergo training.

Here comes the Tony/Steve part. They’re on opposite sides of this issue. A summary of their viewpoints, written in first person because I feel like it.

• Captain America - I was in World War II. I don’t even need to tell you what happens when governments get too much power. Sure, this administration might be fine, but what happens when someone gets into office who abuses his knowledge of our identities? What happens when the government starts telling us who our enemies are? We need to train these young superheroes, but we need to do it ourselves. We can’t have the government doing this for us.
• Iron Man - I’m an alcoholic douchebag, Steve. Do you know how many times I’ve done something stupid? I’ve flown around in my armor drunk, almost gotten people killed, stormed foreign countries… Not everyone is perfect like you. The rest of us make mistakes. So, yeah, I think it would be good for us to be accountable to the government. And to make sure things don’t get out of control, I’m going to lead this program and arrest any of our friends who don’t comply with this new law.

(Take a guess which character readers sympathized with more.)

The law passes, and Tony takes charge of the fifty state initiative to get trained superheroes in every state. The idea is that every state will have its own government-run superhero team with accountability. It also means arresting people who don’t comply.

Steve decides not to compromise his principles. He quotes Mark Twain:

He also jumps out of the helicarrier and rides a jet away when Maria Hill threatens to have him arrested. It’s kind of awesome:

So he spends the majority of the event working underground, helping people and avoiding getting arrested by Tony Stark and his merry band of fascists. Is that harsh? Maybe. Then again, maybe not…

Some of Tony Stark’s Actions During Civil War:

• Created a clone of Thor (along with Mr. Fantastic and Hank Pym) to work for him. The clone went nuts and killed Goliath.
• Created the Negative Zone prison (along with Mr. Fantastic and Hank Pym) to imprison his friends in another dimension where they can’t escape. 
• Sent supervillains like Venom and Bullseye after his friends.
• Convinced Spider-Man that they were pals and that he should reveal his secret identity. Then Aunt May got shot. Then Tony turned on Peter the second he started to have doubts.
• Paid Titanium Man to fake an attack on Washington.

It sounds like I hate Tony. I don’t. It’s part of his character to go all-out on something like this. He makes mistakes, but he thinks he’s doing what he is for the greater good. He also redeems himself pretty hardcore in a later storyline when he deletes his brain to protect every superhero on the planet.

Back to Civil War. “What the hell?” you ask. “Why would superhusbands shippers want anything to do with this story? It sounds like they just fight.”

Yeah, they do. And it’s absolutely heartbreaking:

They confront each other a few times. Once, it ends up like the picture above. Iron Man beats the hell out of Cap, but he’s carried away by Falcon in the aftermath of the whole Clone-Thor-killing-Goliath debacle.

Another time, though, it ends up with the two “releasing aggression” on each other and having flashbacks to when they were in love best friends.

That’s the secret, really. Civil War reads like a tragic breakup between its two main characters: Tony and Steve. Whether you’re a total perv like me or not you read their relationship as a friendship or more, that’s what it is.

And it ends like this:

After Captain America orchestrates a breakout of all of the people Iron Man put in that negative zone prison, they fight one last time. This time, Steve fights dirty. He uses the Vision to compromise Tony’s armor, and he’s winning. He goes all crazy eyes and is about to finish it, when suddenly:

He’s taken down by everyday citizens who side with Iron Man. Of course, if he were a dick and he wanted to, he could fling those firefighters and teachers right off of him and go decapitate his ex-lover former best friend. He’s Captain America, though, so he just gets really sad. He realizes that they’ve already lost this argument in the eyes of the American people, so he surrenders:

And that’s where Civil War ends. Tony Stark is the new director of S.H.I.E.L.D and Steve Rogers is sitting in a jail cell. Technically that’s where it ends.

In reality, it doesn’t end there. It ends like this in the next issue of Captain America:

On his way to court, Steve sees a sniper’s sight about to hit an officer. So he jumps in front of him, taking a bullet to the chest. After that, his brainwashed beard girlfriend Sharon Carter shoots him several more times, and Captain America dies.

“Holy shit,” you say. “You guys actually like a storyline where Tony basically gets Steve arrested and killed?” Well, I can’t speak for everyone, but I do. And the reason I do can be summed up with a single image from Civil War: the Confession.

(“It wasn’t worth it.”)

Following this event, Tony Stark is a total disaster. He cries a lot, almost starts drinking again, and he’s haunted by Steve in his dreams. It’s depressing. Tony Stark has actually said about Steve, “I’m not half as good at anything as I am when I’m doing it next to you.” It’s true, and Tony pretty much makes a mess of his time as Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Then, when Steve comes back (because these are comic books and it turns out he was only trapped in the space-time continuum), he forgives him. Sure, they bicker because they’re so different and they always do. But Steve doesn’t hold a grudge and they go back to this:

Now that’s love friendship love friendship something. Civil War is, in short, the event that proves these two can overcome anything.

Before I’ve only read some of the Civil War stuff, but after watching the Avengers, I’ve become more interested in the Avengers (comics) as a whole (before I just mainly read Young Avengers).  Going back and reading some of the stuff… well I mean, read the post; it’s quite true lol.

Oh god…. I just read Iron Man/Captain America: Casualties of War and just… crying my eyes out.

This is literally me right now minus the ice cream.  Instead I have crappy, cold ramen noodles…

I can’t believe I only read this just now… It’s so good!