were talking about the 2006-2007 crossover, what they were going to do," Millar said. "I wrote, like, a 10-page synopsis for Marvel for it, and then I was out at a Marvel summit. The Marvel consortium (its trusted writers and editors) then batted it around and tweaked it to incorporate bigger swaths of the Marvel universe. This is when he brought up his idea for Civil War. Millar says it was a good one, but it didn't quite fit the entire scope of the universe. X-Men storylines).Īt the 2005 Marvel summit - a retreat for writers and editors to plan out the year ahead - someone had an idea for the company's major crossover. Millar didn't get to tell that story (though a lot of this mostly happened in the 2011 X-Men: Schism and the 2012 Avengers vs. Cyclops and Wolverine would have competing philosophies, and Cyclops would end up being the villain. He wanted to kill off Professor X, the leader of the X-Men, and then see what would happen to the X-Men when they had to choose whom to follow. "I just thought, 'Wouldn't it be interesting to shift it forward a generation?'" Millar told me. And this compelling contrast of philosophies, of politics, and of civil rights was the driving force that tied each issue to the next, no matter if the X-Men were time traveling or dealing with conflicts in the present day.Ī civil war among the X-Men would make sense. Professor X believed in peace and self-defense. Magneto was a mutant supremacist, his views forged by the horrors he witnessed during the Holocaust. Charles Xavier - with hugely different views of how mutants should be treated. And Mark Millar, who eventually wrote the main Civil War crossover series for Marvel, told me that his initial idea was to make Civil War about the X-Men.Īt the center of the X-Men story was a story about civil rights, and at the center of that were two men - Magneto, a.k.a. ![]() This paved the way for the X-Men, who fit the anti-hero template that would come to dominate comics in the '90s. Miller, Moore, their peers, and the many comic creators they inspired started to develop antiheroes like Wolverine, Daredevil, and the Punisher, writing the gritty, dark, and violent stories we see today in stuff like Netflix's Daredevil. Then in 1962, Spider-Man arrived on the scene and became the definitive Marvel character (a status he would maintain throughout the '80s).īut there was an important shift in the '80s with writers like Frank Miller and Alan Moore creating darker stories - a reaction to the Comics Code (the set of self-imposed morality clauses established in the '50s that spelled out what comics could and couldn't do) and the decades of earnest superhero storytelling that followed. The company launched its extended comic universe in 1961 with the Fantastic Four, and the characters were an instant hit with audiences - particularly the Thing and the Human Torch.Ĭaptain America and the Hulk existed and were popular (but not as popular as the F4), but the former wasn't part of the initial Avengers lineup. If you were to compress Marvel's entire comic book history into one hour, the current popularity of the Avengers would, at best, represent five minutes. In its earliest iteration, Civil War was supposed to be an X-Men story Here's an overview of how the original Civil War comic book arc, which initially didn't have anything to do with the Avengers, began to shape the characters we see onscreen today. But other elements - especially those relating to politics - remain strong and relevant to the world as we know it in 2016. There are a few elements of that original story that certainly fail the test of time, like how big of a role reality television plays in the plot. ![]() Bush, the Patriot Act, and the early days of America's ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The tension between Cap and Iron Man has been brewing throughout the past few Marvel movies, but the source material for Captain America: Civil War - a 2006 comic book crossover featuring the Avengers and other players in the Marvel universe - actually dates back 10 years or so, to a time of George W. And both are willing to use violence to make their point.īut ultimately, the fans will decide who the real hero and villain are. Both think they know what's best for their country and for the world. Each has very different ideas of what constitutes goodness and justice. These exceptional men represent two opposite views of how America should be run. This fight means something - something political. Nor is it a fight for no reason at all (as in Batman v Superman). And their battle is not about which man is stronger (Rogers) or which man is smarter (Stark). Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), are both "good" guys. Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), and Captain America, a.k.a. It's a strange conflict - Iron Man, a.k.a. When Captain America: Civil War hits theaters at the end of this week, Marvel's two most American superheroes, Iron Man and Captain America, will fight.
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