Choosing sides
Marvel’s mightiest heroes are at each other’s throats again in Civil War II
With Captain America: Civil War arriving in cinemas this month, it seems like an obvious move for Marvel to release a sequel to Mark Millar and Steve McNiven’s 2006 original series. However, according to Civil War II scribe Brian Michael Bendis – who’s teaming up with artist David Marquez – the seven- part series is more of a natural progression than a cynical cash- in.
“It wasn’t a case of, ‘ Oh, there’s a movie coming out so we should do Civil War II!’” Bendis tells Red Alert. “It was more like, ‘ We’ve got this story, that clearly sounds like it’s Civil War II, so we might as well call it that.’”
Beginning with the emergence of a new Inhuman who can foresee the future, the comic’s central premise has been compared to Minority Report. “It’s not about predicting crimes so much as predicting future events, and what level of accuracy does this power have,” argues Bendis. “It’s like, ‘ If you’re 80% sure that this guy is going to kill that guy, do you arrest him beforehand or even kill him?’ What about 70% or 20%? Where do you draw the line?”
While Iron Man and Captain Marvel head up the rival factions, Captain America again plays a prominent role, and intriguingly there are now two Sentinels of Liberty in Sam Wilson and Steve Rogers, who recently clashed over their principles. “Steve and Tony already went to the mat that one time, so they might not be so horny to do it all over again,” reasons Bendis. “There isn’t an assembled team in the Marvel Universe that completely agrees about this, so the one thing that is similar to the original Civil War is that there isn’t a family or team that isn’t in danger of breaking up over this.”
Civil War # 0 and a Free Comic Book Day issue are out in May. Civil War # 1 follows in June.