Stephanie Kay
Oct 13, 2007, 11:20 pm
<a href="http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/4images/details.php?image_id=10398" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/previews/marvel/1206/IMCAPA001_colt.jpg" hspace=10 align=left alt="Iron Man/Captain America : Casualties of War"></a>Reviewer: Robin Lewis, lucillerobin@aol.com
Story Title: Rubicon
Captain America and Iron Man have a meeting of minds. And a punch-up.
Writer: Christos N. Gage
Penciler: Jeremy Haun
Inker: Mark Morales
Colorist: Morry Hollowell
Letterer: VC's Cory Petit
Assistant Editor: Daniel Ketchum
Editor: Andy Schmidt
Cover Art Jim Cheung, John Dell and Justin Ponsor
Editor In Chief: Joe Quesada
Publisher: Dan Buckley
Published by: Marvel Comics (www.marvel.com)
It may be the biggest thing to hit Marvel comics for years, but Civil War has turned into a nightmare for scheduling. New launches and surprise-ruining tie-ins have been delayed for months, and large holes have started to appear in Marvel's release list. It almost goes without saying that Marvel knew about this before they let us in on it, but, after deciding that they were going to let McNiven take all the time he needed to finish the series, they came up with one or two new comics to fill in the publishing gap and make up for the lost revenue. Given that Civil War has proven to be less even-handed in its treatment of the two sides than most have wanted, the creation of this special one-shot is good news for anyone hoping Marvel were going to redress the balance. There's little room for such thoughtful discussion in the main series, so in a way we're lucky Civil War was delayed enough to give rise to this comic. Of course, in another way this is just more evidence of Marvel completely screwing up the scheduling of their most high-profile event in over a decade, and further enhancing their reputation of being unable to keep some of their most high-profile creators to a monthly deadline.
With a clandestine meeting between Iron Man and Cap also taking place over in Iron Man's own book this month, it's clear these two crazy kids just want some time alone together. The wreckage of the Avengers Mansion isn't the most pleasant of settings, but it gives both Cap and Tony the chance to reminisce about the good old days. It's a little disheartening to be reminded that the good old days appear to have consisted of Tony and Cap beating hell out of each other, but at least in those days everything was forgotten about by bedtime. Tony's drunkeness, the Armour Wars, Operation: Galactic Storm, Cap quitting, Justin Hammer framing Tony for murder: all the truly rosy memories of their tenure in the Avengers are rehashed here. Alongside the nostalgia Tony and Cap go through the various arguments for and against the Registration Act one more time, managing to come up with a couple of new ones on the way. The most interesting of these is one raised by Tony: Cap might very well be chafing under the lack of freedom the Act would impose on him, but he's Cap. He doesn't ned training or someone in authority to tell him what's right and what's wrong. He's Cap: if everybody was like him there wouldn't be any need for the Act in the first place. He's the figurehead for the Anti-Registration side, and he's holding it up by force of personality and by dint of his own example alone.
Seeing Tony make rational arguments like this in favour of the Act brings home just how poorly his side have been served by the Civil War so far. After this decent attempt at psychological depth it's a shame that the issue ends with a completely unneccesary fight between the two characters. There's a cute parallel between this fight and a flashback to Cap training Tony in the old Avengers gym, but it still comes across as a forced attempt to inject some action in what is essentially an issue about the argument between Cap and Tony's opposing positions.
Jeremy Haun appears to be taking his artistic cues from Steve McNiven, and it's nice to see the continuity in style between this and the main series. He's not as good as McNiven, but very few are. He's fine for the material here, however, although at times it feels like you can see the deadlines he was up against in getting all thirty-eight pages out in what must have been record time showing in the sparse nature of some of the backgrounds and the slightly awkward composition of some of the panels. The art isn't what you'll be buying this for, though. As well as filling the scheduling gap left by Civil War, Casualties of War is there to add a little much-needed depth to the conflict between its two main players. This is an indictment of the main series lack of characterisation, but it's nice that Marvel have apparently recognised the need for such material. Even so, Casualties of War doesn't do enough with its subject matter to make itself an essential part of the main story. It fills in a couple of gaps and gives the players the chance to skip down memory lane, but it was always going to be constrained by the fact that nothing major can be allowed to happen in it. Nothing here can alter or contradict whatever the final two issues of Civil War have planned out for these two characters, so on the last page we know they'll both just go their seperate ways and almost certainly never mention this meeting again. The whole book is hamstrung by its own enforced inconsequentiality. There's nothing in it that's actively bad, and Gage manages some nice character work for both protagonists, but it's hard to recommend for your pull list if you're not a Civil War completist.
OVERALL:
http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/mfull.jpg http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/mfull.jpg http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/mhalf.jpg http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/mnone.jpg http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/mnone.jpg
‘Buy this issue online now from X-WORLD and save!’ (http://x-worldcomics.com/yourvirtualstore/shopexd.asp?id=21567)
Story Title: Rubicon
Captain America and Iron Man have a meeting of minds. And a punch-up.
Writer: Christos N. Gage
Penciler: Jeremy Haun
Inker: Mark Morales
Colorist: Morry Hollowell
Letterer: VC's Cory Petit
Assistant Editor: Daniel Ketchum
Editor: Andy Schmidt
Cover Art Jim Cheung, John Dell and Justin Ponsor
Editor In Chief: Joe Quesada
Publisher: Dan Buckley
Published by: Marvel Comics (www.marvel.com)
It may be the biggest thing to hit Marvel comics for years, but Civil War has turned into a nightmare for scheduling. New launches and surprise-ruining tie-ins have been delayed for months, and large holes have started to appear in Marvel's release list. It almost goes without saying that Marvel knew about this before they let us in on it, but, after deciding that they were going to let McNiven take all the time he needed to finish the series, they came up with one or two new comics to fill in the publishing gap and make up for the lost revenue. Given that Civil War has proven to be less even-handed in its treatment of the two sides than most have wanted, the creation of this special one-shot is good news for anyone hoping Marvel were going to redress the balance. There's little room for such thoughtful discussion in the main series, so in a way we're lucky Civil War was delayed enough to give rise to this comic. Of course, in another way this is just more evidence of Marvel completely screwing up the scheduling of their most high-profile event in over a decade, and further enhancing their reputation of being unable to keep some of their most high-profile creators to a monthly deadline.
With a clandestine meeting between Iron Man and Cap also taking place over in Iron Man's own book this month, it's clear these two crazy kids just want some time alone together. The wreckage of the Avengers Mansion isn't the most pleasant of settings, but it gives both Cap and Tony the chance to reminisce about the good old days. It's a little disheartening to be reminded that the good old days appear to have consisted of Tony and Cap beating hell out of each other, but at least in those days everything was forgotten about by bedtime. Tony's drunkeness, the Armour Wars, Operation: Galactic Storm, Cap quitting, Justin Hammer framing Tony for murder: all the truly rosy memories of their tenure in the Avengers are rehashed here. Alongside the nostalgia Tony and Cap go through the various arguments for and against the Registration Act one more time, managing to come up with a couple of new ones on the way. The most interesting of these is one raised by Tony: Cap might very well be chafing under the lack of freedom the Act would impose on him, but he's Cap. He doesn't ned training or someone in authority to tell him what's right and what's wrong. He's Cap: if everybody was like him there wouldn't be any need for the Act in the first place. He's the figurehead for the Anti-Registration side, and he's holding it up by force of personality and by dint of his own example alone.
Seeing Tony make rational arguments like this in favour of the Act brings home just how poorly his side have been served by the Civil War so far. After this decent attempt at psychological depth it's a shame that the issue ends with a completely unneccesary fight between the two characters. There's a cute parallel between this fight and a flashback to Cap training Tony in the old Avengers gym, but it still comes across as a forced attempt to inject some action in what is essentially an issue about the argument between Cap and Tony's opposing positions.
Jeremy Haun appears to be taking his artistic cues from Steve McNiven, and it's nice to see the continuity in style between this and the main series. He's not as good as McNiven, but very few are. He's fine for the material here, however, although at times it feels like you can see the deadlines he was up against in getting all thirty-eight pages out in what must have been record time showing in the sparse nature of some of the backgrounds and the slightly awkward composition of some of the panels. The art isn't what you'll be buying this for, though. As well as filling the scheduling gap left by Civil War, Casualties of War is there to add a little much-needed depth to the conflict between its two main players. This is an indictment of the main series lack of characterisation, but it's nice that Marvel have apparently recognised the need for such material. Even so, Casualties of War doesn't do enough with its subject matter to make itself an essential part of the main story. It fills in a couple of gaps and gives the players the chance to skip down memory lane, but it was always going to be constrained by the fact that nothing major can be allowed to happen in it. Nothing here can alter or contradict whatever the final two issues of Civil War have planned out for these two characters, so on the last page we know they'll both just go their seperate ways and almost certainly never mention this meeting again. The whole book is hamstrung by its own enforced inconsequentiality. There's nothing in it that's actively bad, and Gage manages some nice character work for both protagonists, but it's hard to recommend for your pull list if you're not a Civil War completist.
OVERALL:
http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/mfull.jpg http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/mfull.jpg http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/mhalf.jpg http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/mnone.jpg http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/mnone.jpg
‘Buy this issue online now from X-WORLD and save!’ (http://x-worldcomics.com/yourvirtualstore/shopexd.asp?id=21567)