In Doom’s Battleworld, one of the lands which stemmed from the ‘Secret Wars’ is a world where the ‘Civil War’ started by Iron Man and Captain America never came to a close. An ongoing campaign has split the country in two where General Steve Rogers controls the Blue while President Tony Stark runs the Iron. In a nation that is literally divided there can be little hope for peace but at the outset these two men, once friends, are trying one last time to reach for it.

Charles Soule really captures the heard and soul of how different the ideologies of Tony Stark and Steve Rogers can be when magnified. He takes a single change in the events of the actual Civil War story line and puts these two heroes into a situation where there is no longer a chance to back down and make peace with one another. Instead, things have gone from bad to worse. While I don’t see how this is really a tie-in to the ‘Secret Wars’ so far as the book feels more like a ‘What If?’ comic than a parallel universe that actually matters in the struggle against Doom.

That being said, Soule has created something special here as I feel this was a much more interesting way to wreck the Marvel Universe we knew from the ‘Civil War’ story arc.

On art I have to say that Leinil Francis Yu is fully on point! Yu takes the classic scenes from the climax of the original fight and is able to fully illustrate everything changing. Not only that but when we flash forward to what is modern times you can tell from the look alone that things are different.

When the plot moves to modern times we see our two heroes trying to meet one last time to negotiate a peace. Neither side believes that the other is willing to meet in the middle. However, we learn going into it that one of the two sides has quite the surprise for their former partners. We don’t find out what exactly it is but they appear to have a way to win the war once and for all and are willing to use it.

The peace talks do fall a part but it isn’t due to the egos from these two men. An outside force intervenes and quickly makes it so that there is no turning back. I’m going to be honest that the only reason I didn’t give this a perfect score is that as a ‘Secret Wars’ title it didn’t mention anything about the larger ongoing story.

Going into ‘Civil War’ I wasn’t expecting much and even if I had been Soule and Yu would have surprised me and put a smile on my face. These two have taken a concept I didn’t think would fit well here and created a story and world which might just be the main ‘Secret Wars’ story I want to be following until the 616 Universe returns to something a little more familiar to us. I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that there seemed to be no true tie-in to the larger ‘Secret Wars’ plot. A great comic and one that I’ll be quickly picking up the next issue for.

atoms_4.5

CIVIL WAR #1
Writer: Charles Soule
Artist: Leinil Francis Yu