Front Line, Dateline, Blast Line
Hey there, doctor-patient confidentiality. Welp, it's time to move onto something new! Something terrible, I think. It's been not quite a year since we did Countdown. Ten months, maybe? It's been even longer since we did something from Marvel! And hoo boy, Marvel sure has some stinkers worth talking about, too. Despite being the era I actually first got into comics, the mid 2000s were not kind to the medium. Or the medium was not kind to them? The stories kind of sucked, is what I'm saying. So while DC was gearing up for Countdown, what was Marvel up to?
Well, about a year before, they went and had themselves a little war~
Civil War is absolutely terrible, and probably deserves its own review someday. I'll put it on the "Break Glass In Case of Space Filler" list, it's only seven issues. And boy did it have a lot of tie-in comics. It's also to blame for One More Day! Boy, did Civil War lead to a lot of dumb things. But there's one in particular I really detest, and that's the one I wanna talk about for the next little while! Before we get into it, though, I guess a little recap is in order, just in case you've not had the displeasure of reading it or repressed the memories or something.
So a team of teenage superheroes doing a reality show poked a wasp's next, and the resulting supervillain fight ended up blowing up Stamford, Connecticut, killing 600 people. This fast-tracked a law through Congress, the first time the US government's ever been on the ball about anything, requiring superheroes to register their identities with SHIELD. Some folks, including Captain America, think this is a bad idea, and come to blows over the ideology of it. In the end, Cap surrenders to Iron Man and the law goes into effect. And a lot of terrible things resulted from that! This is one of them~
Man. The Civil War covers might've been nicely painted and stuff, but my god, do they suck. I'm gonna use this one to complain about this feature across the whole series, since it's just a team shot. Yeah, let's use half our cover space for blank empty gray. Just a big empty space, with a basic-ass serifed font as our logo. Maybe it's mean to be "dramatic" or something to show how serious they're taking the event. But you know what it isn't? Visually interesting in any way! The exact opposite of what a comic book cover should be. Especially for a big flashy, important-to-the-universe-for-the-next-several-years event.
All right, Front Line has two separate storylines per issue, and the second one is the one I really wanna talk about. But in the interest of fairness, I'll also cover this first thing. Maybe it'll give you broader context. Maybe it'll include its own brand of stupid I can draw new jokes from. Maybe it just means I can put off the thing I'm actually complaining about for a few minutes more, and I'm in favour of that. Anyways, I hope you like mid-2000s US political allegories and commentaries, because that's mostly what this part is gonna be about!
So we open in a cemetary in Queens, where a funeral's being held. Given the context, these must be Daily Bugle employees. Robbie Robertson's giving a eulogy about this fellow, John Fernandez. He was the cameraman for the New Warriors reality show (a connecting tissue to the later part of our story), or at least its second season. They actually did a miniseries for the first season, and I don't think this guy was in it. But anyways, it's the usual stuff. He was their colleague, and they respect him for being a fellow newsman regarless.
Later at the bar, our main characters Ben Urich and Sally Floyd are having a drink together. Ben works for the Bugle, and Sally is from The Alternative, which was what it sounds like: another paper offering an alternative opinion to the Bugle's more right-leaning opinions. Ben is of the opinion that this Superhero Registration Act is going to pass, also mentioning that J. Jonah Jameson is over the moon about it. And for once, he thinks Jonah might be right. The SHRA is going to change everything, and poor Ben has no idea how right he is.
As Sally goes home that night, she thinks to herself that while she dislikes the Bugle (and Jonah in particular), she does respect Ben. And maybe kind of envies him, because if this Registration Act does go through, he's gonna get a lot of work. Nothing sells papers like sensationalism and a good ol' disaster. Journalism takes a backseat to jingoism, and boy I am already tired of the political stuff in this heavily political work. We're five pages in! I know I'm doing this to myself, but also the whole point is that I want to complain about this.
Anyways, next day at work, Ben gets his assignments, which include looking into Nitro's whole deal (he's the guy who did the actual blowing up of Stamford) and also attending an Iron Man press conference. He complains about these to Robbie, saying everyone's talking about the explosion but not why there was an explosion. Like, it was a supervillain fight, what do you mean "why"? He also complains that his line editor says things like "Let's do it to it", accusing her of being a drill sergeant. Personally, I associate that phrase more with Sonic the Hedgehog, but maybe that's just me. Anyway, Robbie tells him his job is to sell newspapers, and how hard is that right now?
That night, however, Sally is at home feeling sorry for her dead daughter (a mutant who could manipulate her own age and accidentally de-aged herself out of existence). Spider-Man suddenly is in her apartment (he's wearing the Iron Spider suit at this point, for reference), and he wants to talk to her. She's one of, like, three reporters he can trust in this business. However, it doesn't help that he came in all dramatic and she freaks out about it for several minutes. Eventually, she gives in and agrees to interview him.
Sally pours herself a glass of Jack Daniel's, ruining that "sobriety" thing she was working on. So the whole point of this meeting is that it's building up to Spidey's public unmasking, which is the event that ultimately leads to One More Day. In his own series, which I have read, he explored a lot of options and viewpoints to help him in this debate, and this is just another stop on his tour of "is this a good idea?". Sorry, Pete, but no. Both in and out of universe, your unmasking is nothing more than a publicity stunt.
In their interview/debate, Spidey also gives Sally a tip that she ought to drop by that Iron Man press conference (the same one Ben is attending). So that's where we find her the next morning! Iron Man's just finished his meeting with the president, and he's had a few thoughts. What it boils down to is, is supporting the Registration Act while still maintaining his own secret identity some kind of hypocrisy? He's decided that this is so. And I guess Spidey's own unmasking is actually going to be a lot less spectacular, amazing, sensational, and web of, because Iron Man removes his helmet and announces to the world that he's Tony Stark.
And now onto our B story! We open in the middle of both the night and the woods, in upstate New York. A sheriff and an overalls-clad yokel are following some sort of weird trail. Local Yokel Guy heard a crash and saw something come down. The sheriff is skeptical, until they find some of the trees on fire. And I wanna point out that the sheriff berating the guy for thinking it's aliens seems silly in the Marvel universe, where there are so many aliens. Anyway, it's not a downed aircraft or aliens. They find the crater and it's Speedball of the New Warriors. Yes, those New Warriors.
So if you're not familiar (and I won't blame ya if you weren't), Speedball's powerset is that he produces a kinetic field that lets him bounce off stuff. Kinda like Cannonball on the X-Men, but more rubbery than crashy. His cat also has the same powers! Anyway, Speedball might be completely unconscious, but his powers are still active--for the moment. The two men try to approach him, notice that he's actually floating somehow, and then are suddenly blasted by an invisible force. An explosion ruptures from around Speedball, and all goes quiet.
We then cut to a lab or doctor's office. A couple scientists are examining what's presumed to be Speedball's body. Despite having his signature blond locks intact in the last scene, now he's been shaved bald. His kinetic field is burned out, which is very puzzling to them. Their speculation is that the kinetic field protected him from the blast that destroyed Stamford and propelled him all the way to Stockton, which burned out in the process. The distance, if you're curious, is about 422 miles. That's a long way to travel involuntarily!
Suddenly, in spite of everything, Speedball begins to wake up. (Or, I guess with his powerset burnt out, he's just Robbie Baldwin now.) As he comes to, he's met by a man in a labcoat. He lays out the facts for our Mr. Baldwin: 1) the other New Warriors are dead. 2) So are 612 residents of Stamford, including about 60 schoolchildren. The guy seems really adamant on laying this out within seconds of Robbie regaining consciousness. 3) He survived thanks to his powers bouncing him half a state away, which don't work anymore. And 4) he's under arrest, the last being punctuated with the guy flashing his SHIELD ID card. I'm sure they'll explain the charges next issue~
The actual story portions of the comic are over now, but since they really want to hit you over the head with their political messaging, the last three pages end with an anonymous poem from the Poston War Relocation Camps, a real-life internment camp in World War II. The poem is printed in full, you can read it on that Wikipedia page I linked, and juxtaposes some imagery of the camps and other related images (such as Ellis Island) with Spider-Man musing over his decision while gazing at the Statue of Liberty. Hoo boy, I am not the person to critique this kind of thing, but I do think it's kind of heavy-handed~
Well, oh boy, here we go. All right, this issue isn't too bad. Like, it's a good start to an event (or event tie-in, I suppose). We haven't hit the stupid yet! By the end of this, we're going to get to two of the dumbest and most mocked parts of the entire event, don't you worry! But we gotta get there first!
The first storyline, Ben and Sally's story, is called "Embedded", and it's mostly a lot of political-talking. That's by design! They just wanted it to spill out and mirror the current political climate ("current" as of 20 years ago, I mean) as much as possible. This part I honestly don't remember that well, other than where it ends up. So we'll see if there's actually anything interesting to discuss as it goes!
The second part, though, "The Accused"? This is the one I want to complain about. If you know, you know! It's one of my most hated developments in comics ever. This first part is just setup, and it's as good as this storyline's ever going to be. It's absolutely all downhill from here, and the hill is steep and covered in broken glass.
Just do yourself a favour and watch Captain America: Civil War instead, which is a vastly superior and actually competent take on the same concept~
