New Avengers #21, $2.99 US, published by Marvel Comics
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis; Pencils & Inks: Howard Chaykin
Rating 2.5 out of 5 stars
The premise of the Civil War crossover running through numerous Marvel titles is thus: the teenage superhero team the New Warriors, while filming their realty television show, attempt to apprehend a quartet of supervillains in Stamford CT. One of the criminals is Nitro, who has the ability to blow himself up creating tremendous explosions, and then reform unharmed. When confronted by the New Warriors, Nitro detonates himself. Unfortunately, the battle is near an elementary school, and the explosion results in the deaths of dozens of innocent children, among numerous other civilian casualties.
In the aftermath of this tragedy, a tremendous public backlash against superheroes develops. In response, Congress passes the Super-Human Registration Act. This law requires that all superpowered individuals who wish to fight crime must register with the federal government. Proponents of the Act argue that it will make superheroes behave more responsibly by putting them under the supervision of law enforcement, ensuring they receive proper training, and prevent them from recklessly charging into situations where innocent bystanders could be harmed or even killed. On the other hand, those opposing the Act believe it is a violation of superheroes' civil liberties, as it requires them to reveal their identities to the government, potentially making them pawns of politicians, and placing their family & friends at risk.
I was interested in seeing how Civil War would play out. In their promotional announcements, Marvel promised to objectively examine both sides of the issue, to not just portray those who oppose the Act as in the right and those who support it as in the wrong. Unfortunately, so far Civil War is turning out to be about as fair & balanced as Fox News, except in this case it is leaning horribly to the Left, not the Right.
I am pretty middle-of-the-road in my politics. Admittedly, I do have a tendency to lean to the Left now and again. That said, I think that going too far to either side of the ideological spectrum is very dangerous. I do my best to maintain an open mind concerning both Liberal and Conservative outlooks.
As a result, I've been disappointed with Civil War so far. I cannot believe just how extreme the anti-Registration side appears, framing its arguments with shaky civil rights analogies and anti-government paranoia. Yet the writers apparently intend for the readers to agree with those characters who oppose the Super-Human Registration Act.
The current issue of New Avengers, #21, continues this unfortunate trend, focusing upon Captain America's reactions to the Act's passage: "[The people] want super heroes to be controlled by the government. They want us to be puppets to a corporate shill structure, like their politicians and everything else on the planet. They don't see that we're all that's left keeping them truly protected and free." When I first read this passage, I was incredulous. This didn't sound like Captain America. Instead, it came across as the rantings of a paranoid conspiracy theorist.
Admittedly, a couple of mitigating factors should be considered. The first is that the covert government agency SHIELD, which had recently been acting in a highly suspicious manner, ordered Cap at gunpoint to aid them in apprehending anyone who violated the Act. When Cap refused, SHIELD's agents attacked him. Admittedly SHIELD acted in an incredibly foolish manner, attempting to coerce Cap's assistance. He is not an official agent of SHIELD, and so they don't have the authority to give him any such orders, much less arrest him for refusing to comply. So that has obviously colored Cap's view of the government's intentions.
The second mitigating factor is the Winter Soldier. In recent months, Cap learned that Bucky Barnes, his partner from World War II, did not die in 1945 fighting the Nazis. In fact, a severely wounded Bucky was captured by Soviet agents, revived as a cyborg, and brainwashed into serving the Soviet Union as the assassin known as the Winter Soldier. In New Avengers #21, while Cap has the above speech about what "they want" running through his head, in his mind's eye he is flashing back to his recent battle against the Winter Soldier. It is obvious that the Act's intention of putting superheroes under government supervision reminds him of how another government twisted Bucky into a cold-blooded killing machine. This is a nice use of recent continuity by Bendis, referencing events in Cap's own solo book to help explain what is on his mind and how this helped to shape his perception of the Act's possible consequences.
(As Cap is working this all out in his head, he's sitting with pencil & paper in hand, drawing. It's a good acknowledgment of Cap's background as an artist. I like the idea that Cap tries to clear his head by sketching.)
Cap's analysis of these events lead him to go underground. Joining up with longtime friend & ally the Falcon, Cap plans to organize a resistance movement to fight back against the government's efforts to enforce the Super-Human Registration Act.
Unfortunately, there are serious problems with Cap's rationalizations that armed resistance is necessary. Yes, SHIELD is corrupt. But SHIELD is not the entirety of the United States government, merely one aspect. Yes, what happened to Bucky was horrific. But it is not a fair comparison, since it wasn't the United States that turned Bucky into the Winter Soldier, rather the Soviet Union, a brutal totalitarian dictatorship. I would hope that Cap, despite his close emotional involvement with this event, is able to discern the differences between the two.
So while there is some foundation to Cap's concerns, this is not a good enough reason to immediately engage in a rebellion against the government. The Super-Human Registration Act was not put in place by an overbearing monarch or iron-fisted dictator. It was voted on and passed by the elected representatives of a democratic system of government. If Cap is opposed to the Act, there are numerous ways in which he could legally protest it, methods of redress through which he could air his grievances & concerns about the government's intentions, processes which are guaranteed & protected by the Constitution. He could speak before Congress, or file a challenge to the Act in the courts, or write an editorial, or call a press conference. Doesn't he still believe in the democratic process?
As Priest observed in his Captain America/Falcon series, Cap does have a tendency to ignore or disobey those laws & orders he deems immoral, but at the same time voice his disapproval when others do the same thing. In other words, do as I say, not as I do. Cap's actions in New Avengers #21 follow in that vein, albeit more blatantly than ever before.
And, to be honest, I find myself disagreeing with Cap's arguments against the Super-Human Registration Act. This is not an issue of personal freedom or civil liberties. It is a question of ensuring that individuals are held responsible for their actions. The whole point of the Act is that if a person possesses superpowers and wishes go out and fight supervillains, then he must first register with the government. What the Act is not doing is outlawing superpowers or putting people who have superpowers in concentration camps or any such oppressive measures.
The best real-world equivalent to the Super-Human Registration Act that I can think of is guns. If you wish to possess a firearm for use in hunting or target shooting or home defense, then that is certainly reasonable. However, you cannot purchase a gun with the intention of using it to go out fighting crime. If you want to protect this country, you have to join the police, or the military, or the FBI, or any other official law enforcement agency. You cannot just take the law into your own hands, acting with no accountability or responsibility.
In real life most people who have a vigilante mindset are not going to be moderating their actions by "with great power comes great responsibility" or some such mantra. In real life, vigilantism usually turns out less like a Spider-Man story and more like the events of The Ox-Bow Incident, with enraged lynch mobs executing people based upon misconceptions and the flimsiest of evidence.
The Punisher is a great fictional character. But would any of us really want someone like that to exist in real life, a mentally unstable soldier running loose on the city streets packing an arsenal of lethal weaponry gunning down criminals left & right, answerable to absolutely no one?
At least the Falcon comes across in a better light than Captain America does in New Avengers #21. The Falcon is ready to join up with Cap to fight against the Act. But, at the same time, he tells Cap point-blank "I'm not worried about today. I'm worried about tomorrow." The Falcon is more concerned with what comes after. If the world's heroes are busy warring over ideological differences, taking each other out, then who will be left the next time some would-be world-conquering supervillain tries to make a grab for power? By going to war with their friends, are they ignoring their primary mission to protect the public from genuine menaces such as Doctor Doom? It's a good point, and I was glad to see the Falcon raise it.
As far as the artwork goes, New Avengers is a great issue, though. Howard Chaykin does some wonderful work here. His edgy, gritty style suits the material perfectly. There are some dynamic layouts in this issue. Cap's fight with SHIELD agents at the beginning of the story is very well paced.
In a couple of places, Chaykin's Cap is a bit too skinny. But most of the time, he renders the character as a two-fisted, tough-as-nails action hero, gritted teeth and all. As seen in his work on American Flagg and Blackhawk, that is the kind of character Chaykin excels at drawing. Cap is often depicted as too clean-cut for my tastes, so I definitely enjoyed Chaykin's rendition. I'd really enjoy seeing Chaykin draw Cap again. His best renditions of the character are at the beginning of the issue, during the aforementioned fight, when we see Cap out of uniform, wearing a simple black tee-shirt and jeans. Not that Chaykin does a bad job drawing the red, white & blue chain mail suit. It looks especially good on the last page.
In the past, I've jokingly observed that Chaykin has this penchant for always drawing these perfectly coifed garter belt-clad cigarette-smoking icy blonde. I'm a fan of film noir, and that's the archetypal femme fatale of those movies. So, yeah, I think Chaykin draws wonderfully sexy, erotic women. If he ever gets to illustrate another Captain America story, I hope Sharon Carter is in it. She's a beautiful blonde, and although I wouldn't want to see her smoking, I'm sure she'd look good in a slit skirt & garters.
Ahem! So, anyway, even though I was unimpressed by much of the writing in New Avengers #21, I very much enjoyed the artwork. If you are a fan of Howard Chaykin's work, it is definitely worth picking up. If you are not, well, you probably will want to give it a pass... unless of course you happen to agree with the politics.