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.
Before we delve into “Civil War II”, I want to make a few quick notes. First of all, sorry this is coming out late. I sort of graduated from college this week, so I had to put off calling comics marketed primarily towards adolescents stupid for a few days. Also, I’m going into this knowing a couple of the big spoilers that went around the web a while ago. I won’t say them here, but I will after the next image. Maybe I should try to be a spoiler-free recap for these kind of events but A) the spoilers have been everywhere and B) Marvel is doing everything in its power to over-foreshadow the crap out of these spoilers anyway. Let’s get started.
“Civil War II” #0 doesn’t have a whole lot happening, as it’s trying to set the stage for “Civil War II” #1, rather than actually start the story of “Civil War II.” To that end, we meet up with She-Hulk at NEW YORK CITY COURT, which is like regular court but more cramped and twice as expensive.
At some point She-Hulk stopped being a lawyer and started turning into Charlie Kelly whenever he tries to be a lawyer on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. That might be less on her and more on the fact that I try to read any Bendis monologue that goes into double digit speech balloons in Charlie Day’s cadence. Anyway, She-Hulk continues to try to talk about freedom of speech and whatever on behalf of a former supervillain who was “talking shop” about villainy to an undercover cop. The villain gets arrested anyway and She-Hulk gets all sad that someone was thrown into jail when they were being entrapped by the police. I don’t really know what was going on there either, but it doesn’t matter too much because She-Hulk later finds out that her client was murdered in prison. I guess Ben Affleck Batman and his prison murder brands exists in this universe and he hates the vagueness of “Talkin’ Shop” almost as much as I do.
This whole vignette seems pretty unconnected to the rest of the issue and it’s pretty apparent why when you’ve read the big honking spoilers that She-Hulk and War Machine are going to bite the dust. They’re getting that Nightcrawler Martyr treatment, named after the time everyone talked about how Nightcrawler always did the right thing in “Second Coming” only for him to get super murdered. The shock of someone who held such firm beliefs getting murdered causes everyone else to lose their cool and go into crazy jerk mode. I guess that’s better than the usual event cycle of everyone just being a crazy jerk because that’s what you’re supposed to do when you’re in a crossover comic.
Anyway, War Machine has a similar thing going on where Shadowy Barack Obama is trying to get him to pursue a career in politics. He’s also trying to raise Rhodes’s spirits about being cannon fodder for a sequel to “Civil War”.
You fooled me on the birth certificate, Barry, but you won’t fool me on that.
Over at Ohio State University, handsome loner Ulysses is trying to learn a song other than “Wonderwall” and talk to his crush when this happens.
“This is fine.” – Everyone at Ohio State for some fucking reason.
I made a decision to love myself in 2016 which is why I haven’t read any “Inhumans” comics lately. So it completely slipped my mind that the Terrigen cloud of mist that Black Bolt set off in 2013 is still rolling around America. And everyone is cool with it. Ulysses didn’t even give a crap about the mutation Inhumantion cloud coming at his campus, he was too busy asking his crush to go to second base at the campus Chipotle or whatever college kids do on dates in Ohio. It’s also implied that Ohio State knew an alien cloud was coming for the campus since no one besides Ulysses is kind of surprised. And Ohio State still held an outdoor event for the college knowing full well that a cloud that turns people into cocoon monsters was on its way. They didn’t even need to do a full evacuation, they could have held it in a gym or whatever, but everyone was steadfast on making sure this inconvenient event happened. New York University sent me campus alerts when traffic was bad and this was for a school where no one drove a car. Get it together, Marvel version of Ohio State University.
Meanwhile, Captain Marvel meets up with Doc Samson and she talks about how The Ultimates are trying to prevent disasters before they happen. Unfortunately, Carol doesn’t feel like that’ll be enough, like she needs something that will let her see bad things before they happen. Doc Samson tries to comfort her.
“So far. So good.” said the superhero to the other superhero while a college campus was being wrecked by a gigantic cloud of mist they have known about for close to three years but let wander loose around the country for some unexplained reason. “I wish we could just have a way to prevent disasters before they happen” replied the other superhero, while a cloud that Al Goddamn Roker could track irreparably changed the lives of dozens, if not hundreds.
“So far. So good.” Jesus, Doc Samson. My girlfriends have lower standards than you.
Back at Ohio, Ulysses wakes up from his chrysalis a changed person. His love interest on the other hand, came out of this intense period of change as something else entirely.
That was a metaphor for my relationship from college.
Ulysses wakes up with everyone from his campus either gone or slaughtered by his crush (not too sure) and then has that vision from Bioshock Infinite of New York in flames.
I think this is meant to set up how Ulysses can see into the future, but honestly this could be a regular Tuesday in Marvel Manhattan. I hope we go four issues of Captain Marvel putting all her faith into Ulysses’s precog abilities but it turns out he’s just forseeing “AXIS”. Anything that’ll give me a hint of Country Carnage again.
And that’s it for “Civil War II” #0, everyone. She-Hulk and War Machine are representing the real issues just enough to add some impact to their deaths, Captain Marvel is lamenting how hard it is to save people, and some people who could really use said saving don’t get it because they live in Ohio. See you in June when whatever the actual plot of “Civil War II” is shows up with a vengeance.
