Book Club, Graphic Novel Collection: Marvel Civil War, Mark Millar & Steve McNiven

Marvel Civil War Event (collecting Marvel Civil War, issues #1-7)
writer, Mark Millar
pencils, Steve McNiven
colors, Morry Hollowell
letters, VC's Chris Eliopoulos
ISBN: 9780785121794
Read May 1, 2016

Graphic Novel Book Club read for May.

I really hope that I like the movie more than I like the comic event.  This collection of seven issues has the core of the Civil War storyline, but as much of the character development and specific moments were parceled out into the individual characters' comic runs, the characters here are flat and dispirited and prone to making decisions that appear to be out of thin air, or changing their minds for what seems to be no reason.  The artwork has lovely framing and is well-laid-out, but the combo of McNiven and Hollowell makes for characters who look like they are plastic dolls or an early cheap attempt at computer-generated artwork.  Not my favorite look.

If you've been under a rock for a while, Marvel decided they needed a giant universe-roiling "event" and wouldn't it be cool if two of the major players in the universe were on opposite sides and got to fight each other!  Yeah!  Or something.  So in the story world, some punk kid supers did something stupid, and then Tony Stark and Steve Rogers both reacted stupidly, and a whole bunch of forced decisions and rampant stupidity later, there was a big smackdown superhero fight  (and some smaller ones) until things were sufficiently shaken up to make the Marvel head honchos happy.

Punisher gets some good moments (I especially liked Spiderman's poignant suggestion that Rogers and Castle are essentially the same soldier, but from very different wars and very different social responses).  Spiderman gets shafted (when is that ever a surprise) and Doctor Strange gets the boot.  Unsurprisingly, he, along with all the mutants, and Wakanda (at least at first), basically says "not my circus" when asked to choose sides.  Steve doesn't really have a character, Tony's a giant bag of snarky comments and bad decisions, and SHIELD and the general public exist as a metaphoric stick to justify and consolidate shaky plotting.

Not the best, but if the cinematic universe continues as well as it's begun, I don't begrudge the source material.

 

New Arrival: Nonfiction: Marvel, The Avengers Vault, by Peter A. David et al

Marvel, The Avengers Vault
Peter A. David, designed by Katie Benezra
ISBN: 9781626862999
Hardcover pop-art history book with lots of lose-leaf inserts and reference materials.

This was a fun browse through Marvel history.  I loved the design of the cover and of the book, but the fun of finding the little pages inserted randomly into the book was sadly ruined because we're a library, so we have to keep them all accounted for and noted.  

The book itself has a fun flow, but it's organized in a way that makes it a little difficult to reference if you were looking up specific information.  (There is no index, for example, and it could really use one.)  First we get a brief tour through the history of the Avengers, then a chapter each on the current big four: Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, and the Hulk, and then a final chapter about Avengers on TV or in movies.  There's even a roster of who was on the team when, and a breakdown of all the different major Avengers teams.

All of this of course in the current gaudy primary-color comics splash art style, with little sidenotes and bits of trivia sprinkled in.