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To begin with, there is no factually correct choice. At the end of the day whether you lined up on Iron-Man’s side or Captain America’s side it had to do with your perception of right and wrong. Your choice was decided by what you felt was acceptable and unacceptable. It is fundamentally the age old question of Individual rights and liberties VS Society’s.
It doesn’t matter who came out the victor. You can win and be wrong; you can lose and be right when it comes to morality. Each of us has to answer if only to ourselves how much of our civil liberties do we trade away for safety? How dirty do we think we would be willing to get our hands to do what we think is right and where do we ultimately draw the line?
Civil War begins after a major catastrophe in a town called Stamford. In an attempt to apprehend a group of villains a unit of inexperienced reality star heroes inadvertently cause a hefty amount of casualties, many of which were children.
Unsurprisingly it sparks national outrage, everyone is questioning what can be done, why are superhumans allowed to run amok without training, without credentials, without accountability? These questions have always been brewing under the surface but now they’ve exploded to the forefront of American discussion.
In the aftermath of Stamford the superhuman community is already debating amongst themselves about what they think will be the next step of public outrage. Many of them can already see the writing in the air, there will be a push to make Super Heroes into Super Cops. Many of them are at first not too bothered by the idea, others are deeply disturbed.
Most character’s whose identities have never been secret or out for some time are unbothered by the idea of a great unmasking and why should they be? Hiding themselves has never been a concern for them; therefore no one else should be worried. Or so they think for its often very difficult to understand what you’ve never experienced.
Let me fully admit my bias; I backed Captain America. The reasons to me were simple on the surface. People have a right to anonymity; the government cannot be trusted to adequately keep that anonymity—especially when so many lives are on the line and we’re not just talking about the lives of the super humans here; we’re talking about them and the lives of every person who has ever been remotely connected to them or ever will be connected to them. Let’s say that there is a hack by some villain, it’d be like a great big doxxing of epic proportions. All that personal info spilled into nefarious hands.
Or imagine the government goes full on dictatorial and begins to do wide spread targeting of individuals within the registry for whatever reasons—they’re no longer satisfied with a registry, now they want to contain everyone, or even kill them. We’ve seen things like this happen in the real world and we’ve seen it in the source material; the Mutant community knows this all too well. These are all possibilities that the characters have to weigh, not knowing if their fears will come true or not but anticipating that they will. When you expect the worst you can only be pleasantly surprised.
Their wildest fears are not unfounded as we later see, it’s no longer JUST about registering names and faces; the superhumans will be FORCED to work for the government, live under the radar if they have the capability, or be imprisoned, and last but not least they can resist and perhaps die. When people with powers who don’t even use them are suddenly demanded to sign their name on the dotted line or ELSE, resistance in the end becomes self-defense. They have no choice but to fight or in their minds lose their way of life.
At the end of the day the SRA (Super-Human Registration Act) is not only about knowing the identities and whereabouts of its applicants, it’s a draft. The government will be deciding what action the hero takes, where they go, when they go.
There will be times when they MUST act but are told to with-hold, there will be times when they don’t want to act, but are demanded to do so. Their personal judgments will no longer matter, they become unwilling soldiers. Luke Cage referred to it as “A form of slavery.” And he isn’t wrong. You either capitulate or you are crippled. You either join or you are labeled a criminal and will be brought to heel.
In this light they’ve no other choice but to resist. The SRA is a threat to their world, their freedom. It is an existential crisis to their autonomy, their anonymity. They might be super, but at the end of the day they’re also just people who want to do the right thing on their own terms. They want the freedom to make their choices without the threat of a figurative and literal gun to the head.
With that said, just because I believe in the cause of the resistance does not mean I don’t understand where Tony and co. are coming from. That is in itself is an example of how Marvel did things right. I can disagree with him but understand his view. I can be against him and not hate him. I can dislike the things that he does disagree with the decisions he’s made but still want the best possible outcome for him.
I have many, many gripes with the Pro-SRA movement. I will save such long, detailed complaints for another time and simply focus on the major premise. The one thing that I DO agree with is that there must be accountability when things go wrong. Â
I understand that if it’s not the SRA, it will be some other program—a worse program as theorized by Tony and Reed. The government will skip the step of registration and go directly for attempts at utter elimination. Perhaps, as in Reed’s opinion the world will be consumed into chaos in such an event. But that is only if I allow myself to believe that Reed and Tony are beyond reproach, that they are infallible, and I don’t believe they are. We know they aren’t.
I can even sympathize with the Pro-SRA side, I can look to Tony and see he’s not a monster, and he’s NOT wrong about everything, nor is he right about it all. He wants to regain the trust of the public; he wants to put their fears at ease. He wants to promise there will never be another Stamford again; he thinks that the registration is a step towards that. Tony wants to make a better, safer world; working within the system he’s been provided.
I don’t believe that such a thing is possible—I don’t believe the SRA could have prevented Stamford—or that if the SRA is followed to the letter that there will never be another Stamford.  But I understand where he is coming from and cannot fault him for his conclusion, for his belief that his way is the right way. Â
To Tony the SRA represents redemption for his own failings and the failures of others. It is a gesture of good will to the public, and while he does believe in the movement it hurts him to have to turn on his compatriots . To have to turn on what he considers his own community, to be viewed as Judas is no doubt a heavy burden.
He doesn’t want it to come to violence but if it does, he’d rather it be at the command of someone who cares. Not some faceless bureaucrat who will shrug off the guilt of having harmed someone they don’t even know. Not some person who will look at the law as it is and not what it could be.  Nothing he does if from a place of cruelty but perceived necessity.
I’m not excusing the atrocities committed in the process, I mean, using known criminals to bolster their ranks? Cloning a monster Thor-bot? Knowing that the implementation of the SRA is utterly disgraceful but committing to the task none the less? I may abhor that that they do it, I might be screaming at them inside my head, but I never reach the moment where I think to myself “They are forever beyond redemption.” Â
We, the readers just the same as the two factions are meant to feel torn, anguished that things have come to this. We see the bad choices each side has made, we see the damage they’ve wrought on one another emotionally and physically. We know that it’s unfair to ask people to put themselves into the hands of the government and that it’s also unfair to society not to have a system in which these people can be held accountable.
What Marvel did right is that neither group was “The Good Guy” or “The Bad Guy.” They were two opposing factions who believed what they were doing was the best thing to do. The Marvel writers of this period played it straight; they gave both sides their due and left it to the reader to make their choice.
They didn’t demonize Steve or Tony, you knew their head and you knew their hearts. They were not cardboard people. They were REAL, conflicted, messy and pained by the choices before them. Both sides made mistakes, both sides were consumed with high emotion, inflaming tension between them. Both groups have done questionable things in the name of their cause.
Tony is compromising his own principals for a better tomorrow; Steve is sticking to his principals for a better tomorrow. Neither stance is a bad one, they are simply ideologically opposed and the further the tension mounts the less each side thinks logically. As the war progresses neither are truly fighting for their ideals anymore, they’re just FIGHTING for ego.
The ends don’t justify their means anymore. To himself and no one else, Tony admits “It wasn’t worth it.” And yet they’ve gone too far to turn back. You’ll be hard pressed to find someone without some glimmer of regret by the end of things. Everyone is mangled by the end. No one is untainted.
Civil War is artfully brutal in how raw it leaves you by the end. We can all look at parts of the arc and think of all the ways the horror could have been avoided, we can see the things the characters themselves cannot see preparing to bite them later down the road and we’re helpless.
We don't need the writers to hammer us over the head with what THEY believe is right, we don't need to have our differing world views not only perverted but out right demonized. We don't need nor want the same jab taken over and over again to the point that we can accurately predict it will be coming.
In short, it is humanity that current marvel lacks. Everything is one sided, everything is a hammer without subtlety. There are no layers. There is but one side, the “Right” side. The opposing force cannot be viewed as having any legitimacy whatsoever. RiRi Williams takes over a sovereign nation? Everyone around her congratulates her. Every comment is on how smart, how perfect she is. Despite the fact that we ourselves do not see those qualities in her, we’re simply told that she has them.
To compound the issue there is not a soul within her inner circle to add a counterpoint.  She’s better then all who have come before her, she is without compelling conflict.
This one toned outlook doesn’t just apply in the comics; it applies in the actual thinking of the creators. You voted for Trump? You are a bigot. You don’t like the direction they’re taking a character in? You have no clue what you are talking about. You want the old characters back? You’re old and stuck in your ways. You’re a rube, you’re the minority of readers, they DON”T want you to buy their books and you will be blocked. There is no respect, there is no dissension.
Can you think of ONE or even more than one Marvel comic in the last two years where two ideological opposites were presented with the opportunity to explain their side without one of them being portrayed as villain? Where you were actually left to draw your own conclusion?
amandla
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germansingergirl