Civil War II #8 Cover - Featured Image Columns 

The Multiversity Address: “Civil War II” #8

By | January 2nd, 2017
Posted in Columns | 3 Comments

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.

This is it. 2016 is over and with its demise we’ve arrived at the end of “Civil War II”. Lives were lost, blood was shed, and other stuff happened. I could write a soliloquy about the end of this column and how fleeting all these periods of times in which we live moment from moment between issues of “AXIS” or “Secret Wars” are but I think it’s best we make like a band-aid and just rip this sucker off.

Last time on “Civil War II:”

The Inhumans, who Marvel are still really putting all their chips behind, welcomed a new member called Ulysses who had the power to see the future. His visions helped stop a number of catastrophes including a Celestial destroying New York City. Captain Marvel, who’s been working with the new team of Ultimates to prevent future threats from occurring, thinks that Ulysses is a wonderful asset to the superhero community. However, Iron Man had just finished watching Minority Report and screamed for two hours about due process. Ulysses eventually receives a vision of The Hulk killing everybody and Iron Man stands up for Hulk despite Hulk having a history of actually attacking cities and killing everyone. It once got so bad that Tony actually fired Hulk into space over it. Still, that doesn’t stop Tony from getting indignant when Hawkeye preemptively kills Bruce Banner with a Nerf arrow that Bruce gave to Clint in case he should lose control.

Carol and Tony both rile up people to their respective causes so they can have an obligatory fight scene where the Inhumans, Guardians, the Avengers, and the once and future Champions can get into a brawl. Halfway through said brawl, Ulysses has another vision, this time of Miles Morales standing over Captain America’s dead body in front of a destroyed Capitol Building. Miles is like “wait I’m the nicest Marvel character why would I do that? And how would I destroy the Capitol Building?” and Cap is like “HAIL HYDR- I mean, whoa this ain’t great.” Miles then swings over to the Capitol Building and asks Cap to join him there, because the word “hubris” didn’t exist in the Ultimate Universe. They meet and it’s pretty chill despite Steve secretly being a white supremacist, until Tony and Carol ride in to mess each other up. Tony traps Miles in a red bubble so he won’t get hurt, then he and Carol go to town on each other. Like violently go to town. Like violently go to town in a fight way. Also, Ulysses has another vision that this fight is going to get everyone killed because Ulysses can’t keep his nose out of other peoples’ business.

At SHIELD Headquarters, Maria Hill gets a warning from the Inhumans about Ulysses’s latest vision.

Tag yourself I’m Medusa.

Before Medusa can get an explanation out of Ulysses about why Iron Man and Captain Marvel should stop fighting, Ulysses grows some tentacles and achieves a higher plane of existence. I don’t know either.

Carol and Tony fight some more, exploding Captain America in the process. Don’t worry about it. Carol insists that she forgives Tony for being a jerk this whole time and Stark demands she let the kid who’s currently in a force bubble he made go free?(??) The other heroes show up to stop the battle and Ulysses levels up so hard that he causes everyone to see advertisement for all of Marvel’s upcoming stories.

Again, the climax to Marvel’s biggest event of 2016 was their living plot device flying in to show everyone the coming attractions for 2017. My copy had two ads for the “Daredevil” and “Elektra” series and I genuinely thought those were parts of Ulysses’s vision too, taglines and everything. After showing the Avengers how fun “Monsters Unleashed” is going to be, fucking Eternity shows up to take Ulysses home.

Continued below

Y’all. Ulysses has to go now. His home planet actually needs him. Krusty at the end of that video is Brian Michael Bendis.

With Ulysses’s visionquest over, the heroes get transported back to DC where they find Iron Man laying comatose from how much Captain Marvel kicked his ass. Apparently, Tony’s only alive because of experiments he’s done on his body that, when asked, Beast explains that he will not explain it. Nice. Even though Tony Stark is now literally unable to mansplain his way all over this storyline, Beast picks up the baton by explaining that Tony wasn’t fighting with Carol, he was fighting for whatever oppressive force might use Ulysses to their own ends. Before Carol can say “We literally saved New York from a giant Celestial are we really not going to come back around to that after eight issu-” Hawkeye swings by to ask everyone to read “Occupy Avengers”. You should, it’s good!

Carol finally has her debriefing with a shadowed out Barack Obama who asks about Ulysses.

“Could’ve used him for that ELECTION, am I right?” He chuckled. Carol remained deathly silent.

Obama asks Carol how everyone else is holding up and, like in Ulysses vision, we see some images showing what books Marvel will have for sale in 2017. Or in late 2016 since this issue was supposed to come out in November. Obama, satisfied to know that he’ll be able to read about his favorite teen heroes teaming up in “Champions” tells Carol she has his full financial backing to do whatever she wants. Carol says she has some ideas about the future and I guess that’s it? She doesn’t exactly have much to do with the future now that Ulysses is off huffing mushrooms with someone whose name is finally as dumb as his. It’d be kind of neat if there were some stakes of Ulysses still being around as a government asset, especially with the incoming administration. Not to say Marvel should ever do a storyline about Trump, they’d be better off pulling off a South Park and denying him screentime. Have Norman Osborn get elected again somehow. But with Ulysses off to live in Elysium with Hope Summers and Thane, we’re kind of just left with nothing. Miles got a little shook up, Carol’s meaner, and She-Hulk is meaner now too. So Happy New Year?


//TAGS | The Multiversity Address

James Johnston

James Johnston is a grizzled post-millenial. Follow him on Twitter to challenge him to a fight.

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