I’ve enjoyed comics for a long time, with a pretty big Marvel bias. I was never really interested in DC comics when I was younger, although I like quite a few of their characters now and would read their books. I know a lot of people rally against Marvel and DC as being “mainstream,” but I grew up with the characters I liked, and still like them.
Recently, I’ve been reading the Civil War story arc from Marvel which concluded about a year ago (and started maybe two years ago). I read the first couple issues when they first came out, but then got pulled away, and now I’m playing catch-up — which is fine with me, because I actually like reading entire story arcs in one swoop without having to wait for the future issues. I read a lot of the trade paperbacks for that reason — they are a complete storyline in one convenient book, and I don’t collect them just to collect them, so I don’t miss having the physical comics.
Anyway, I’m enjoying Civil War so far. It’s pretty neat to see the disparity in talent between some of the comics — all the men look pretty much identical in a title like Thunderbolts, whereas the painted scenes in the Captain America issues are pretty breathtaking. Once I’m done reading the issues I have, I’ll likely go through them and add the artists and writers I enjoyed the most to my Comic Scout account so I can keep an eye out for additional stuff. The saga as a whole is less brutal than I thought it would be — as I’m in the final stretch, only one “major” hero has been killed, and he’s kind of a C-list guy at best in my eyes (Goliath). Given it’s supposed to be a brutal civil war between the heroes, nothing has really torn at my heartstrings so far (even though I know Cap is gonna bite the dust soon).
The title I’ve most enjoyed are the Frontline titles, which I wasn’t really looking forward to. They basically cover the Registration Act from the perspective of two newspaper journalists, which allows the books to cover a lot of information and tie some things together. Additionally, each comic has a second story about Robbie “Speedball” Baldwin, who is “the most hated man in America,” and, again, offers a unique perspective on the entire war. The final portion covers an Atlantean “sleeper cell” thing which I don’t care for much, but you can’t have your cake and eat it, too (although what’s the point of having cake if you can’t eat it? Maybe I got the saying wrong…). Anyway, the unique perspective of these titles combined with the reporters trying to actually get to the root of the Registration Act gives these titles something more substantiate than the other titles, which frequently just follow the pattern:
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“Reports of unregistered super-hero!”
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“Send in the Cape-Killers!”
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“Wow! He wiped out 3 squads of Cape-Killers and got away!”
The art and writing for the sub-arcs in each title both vary pretty widely, but some titles (like the Captain America ones, surprisingly enough to me — although I’m quite the sucker for painted comics) really deliver on both fronts. I might read the House of M arc next, or possibly some Batman or Iron Man titles.
