Welcome to The Multiversity Address, Multiversity Comics’s recap series for Marvel’s “Civil War II.” After, Jess, Alice, and I died in the process of covering every single “Secret Wars” tie-in, we opted to just let me recap Marvel’s latest revival of a classic crossover. Obviously, we’ve got “Civil War II” spoilers from here on out.
Last time on “Civil War II”, a new Inhuman Ulysses, with the power to see the future, helped Captain Marvel and The Ultimates/Avengers stop some disasters before they got too crazy. Unfortunately, this resulted in Thanos killing War Machine and thoroughly wrecking She-Hulk which caused Iron Man to go off the deep end, believing that Carol’s increasing dependence on Ulysses’s powers is going to get to her head. Tony gets even more suspicious of Carol after her interrogation of Bruce Banner (who Ulysses foresaw killing everyone) ends with the Hulk dying at the hands of Hwkeye, who looked like Michael Bluth using his prayer hands.
This issue opens up with the conclusion of Hawkeye’s trial where he’s declared not guilty. If this whole trial sounded really rushed, there’s actually a pretty good reason. Daredevil, the only lawyer in the Marvel Universe nowt hat She-Hulk’s in a coma, brought up whether or not it was moral for Hawkeye to kill The Hulk even if it was for the greater good. Then Beast brought out a video tape where Bruce Banner basically said “It;s totally cool if Hawkeye kills me, I’m kind of down for whatever at this point.” I’m surprised the trial didn’t end with the judge just slamming the gavel and giving Hawkeye a thumbs up before driving over to Panera to get some lunch.
Of course there’s still the whole “is it wrong for Hawkeye to kill his friend” thing and honestly not really? Like I said the last time we did this column, when Iron Man tried to find a way to keep the world safe from the Hulk without killing Banner it resulted in The Hulk coming back a few months later with an army. The Hulk’s supposed to be the good guy since we’re following his whole “hated and feared by a world that doesn’t understand him” thing but that only works when you’re an X-Man. At least when Wolverine goes on a rampage at least 90% of the dead are ninjas.
Naturally, none of that is going to matter when the Hulk’s your cousin, which is unfortunately the case for She-Hulk. Captain Marvel makes sure she’s the first person to see Jennifer after she wakes up so she can be the first to break the news about Bruce. Carol tells Jennifer about Bruce’s death, how Hawkeye did it, and trails off when she mentions that Clint’s verdict just came in.
It kind of just goes on like that for six pages.
Moving away from the women who’ve been directly involved with the events of the past few months (either by losing loved ones or by being there at the fight with Thanos that set this off), Iron Man still has some complaining to do. After last issue, Tony looked into Ulysses’s powers by analyzing his brain scan. Don’t worry, he got that from Ulysses while he was sleeping so it’s not weird or anything. He concludes that Ulysses’s powers aren’t actually predicting the future, they’re presenting visions of a future with a high probability of happening. Thus, they may or may not come true. “Duh” says everyone living on an Earth that’s not destroyed by the Celestial that Ulysses predicted. “Super duh” say the X-Men who have dealt with like four possible futures that have been prevented by their actions. “Just a regular duh” says Karnak, who’s apparently training Ulysses now.
As anti-Iron Man as I’ve been in this column, it is pretty concerning when the overpowered teenager is being mentored by a Warren Ellis character. He brings this information to the Avengers who verify Tony’s research. Tony asks Carol whether or not it’s worth following through on Ulysses’s vision if there’s only a 10% chance of them coming true. Considering that of the three major visions Ulysses has had, all of them have been true to some degree and all have had to do with global-level threats to the Earth.
Continued belowCarol goes to interrogate a business women she captured earlier on suspicions of involvement with HYDRA. It’s our actual first impression of Captain Marvel getting fascist with the insight Ulysses offers her as Carol gives the woman some bad cop treatment. Before we can figure out whether or not the businesswoman, Alison, hails the old skull octopus, Nightcrawler teleports her out. Carol and her teammates meet Tony’s outside and we get our first Civil War™ moment with the two teams facing off. Tony looks like he has her outnumbered until Carol calls in her friends.
You can’t see Peter Quill’s face here, but it’s the look of slight embarrassment over being dragged back into Earth stuff again. Join us a few weeks from now when Groot and Roket Raccoon just quietly step out of the whole fight.
