I liked Infinite Crisis as a sequel to COIE, but That first issue of Civil War is still pretty fuckin’ awe-inspiring.
but what was the deciding factor for me was the fact that I don’t like how you had to buy a lot of ‘satellite’ books to get some of the major events of Civil War, so, I can say, without bias, or reservation, that DC’s shitty crossover was better than Marvel’s shitty crossover this year.
Yes, I am a DC Fan, but I put bias aside for this one, I really fuckin’ loved Civil War #1, and if it was “Which had the better first issue” Marvel had that on lock, but the overall story for IC was just better than CW.
IC was…kinda stupid. superboy punch and the senseless killing of people who were not well known made me go wtf? at least in cw the one death that happened caused a lot of emotional problems for both sides. not like in IC 4 when superboy kills all those no name heroes. that shit was not needed
civil war was crap, almost as bad as House of M. It wasn’t even a story. It was another super decompressed “prequel” where nothing actually happened.
More happened in one page of IC than in an entire issue of Civil War.
IC was sprawling, epic, very emotional, tons of cool scenes, and it had a purpose within the universe and succeeded in tying up storylines and character threads from the previous two years.
Civil War was one big “clone saga” where none of the heroes act like the way they’ve been acting for the last 40 years of continuity and all this crap has to be retconned into old stories to make it make any sense, of which it still makes little.
My sperm can have a much more eventful civil war than the actual comic book did. Infinite Crisis was full of hype. Civil War’s hype was crap until the very first issue, and then it all fell apart from there on out. IC definitely had better buildup all the way through the first 3 issues of IC. THEN it started to fall apart by issue 5 or 6. Batman taking a ragtag team of heroes up to O.M.A.C. was just too dope. Also, the setup to IC was beautiful. The clues were being dropped left and right for a whole year. Civil War was just something that was dropped on us with little to no hesitation. We didn’t get the cause behind Civil War until issue #1.
I agree with PA about IC killing off a lot of pointless characters. It was something that wasn’t necessary and the overall changes made hurt DC in the long run. Yeah, 52 has been fire, but there was a lot of stuff there that shouldn’t have gone down.
In my opinion, Infinite Crisis was epic, but it had it’s fair share of filler; while Civil War was too anti-climactic in it’s final showdown. The only cool thing about IC’s ending was that we got to keep Superboy Prime in our regular DC universe. And that can be a tool for something greater. Sinestro Corps. anyone?
Didio wanting to kill Nightwing off was stupid (he wanted to kill him because he didn’t understand the character and he admitted this in one of his monthly DC comic book blurbs which is the dumbest reason to want to kill anybody, though I swear this is what DC just did in 52…) the attempt to fix it in the comic without recalling the pages was stupid. And how Dick Grayson survived still hasn’t been explained. The bootleg fix in the TPB doesn’t work because there is still no explanation making it all just really stupid. Everything else was great, Superboy Prime murdering people was hot and so was Joker towards the end.
Civil War was great until the ending. Though I think if the book shipped on time it would of been accepted a lot better, the build up for it was too big to live up to. It really needed a major death or something big to pull it off. Would Cap’s death in the book of helped? Maybe, maybe not. It would of been done w/o Brubaker and I wouldn’t want that either.
Though I will say that the potential for great comics to come after Civil War is really great, it’s happening already starting with Cap # 25. But since it just wrapped it’s too early to judge.
IC fall out, 52 is great some weeks but not others, have to see how it wraps. OYL books that I read were all horrible except for Teen Titans. So the fall out / aftermath has not been handled as well as the Civil war fallout. But again, it’s still early for Civil War when we will be able to see the grand scope of 52 in a couple of weeks.
In closing and I can’t stress this enough, read Annihilation instead. Well perhaps not instead since it won’t have the major ramifications of the other books, but just read it, it’s still the better crossover. Every single issue delivered. They found a way to kill a major character and still give him a happy ending, perhaps not a brilliant idea but they did it and pulled it off so in the end that’s what counts. If you don’t love Nova and Ronan after reading this book something is wrong with you. I haven’t read a single Annihilation crossover book and I was still satisfied. The way this book ended was just amazing.
Oh and it was way more bloody than both CW and IC so you know where my mind is at.
Infinite Crisis shits all over Civil War. IC had the greatest build up: little hints being seeded around the DCU for a couple of years prior to their fruition. Countdown to Infinite Crisis was an epic book, bringing us a heroic look at Ted Kord and giving us the awesome Day of Vengeance and Villains United minis (as well as the alright OMAC Project and the ehhh Rann-Thanagan War) and the Power Girl arc from JSA Classified.
I felt IC dropped the ball on Team Alexander Luthor: I can buy the heroes being pissed at the DCU for the past two decades, but after Alex’s plan fucks up, he decides “lol I’ll take over the world.” Earth-2 Supes let everyone get the better of him, and Superboy Prime was just irritating.
However, IC did also begat 52, which is just brilliant.
Civil War on the other hand brought about nothing interesting. In fact, it failed to redeem itself. Paul Jenkins was a bonehead throughout Frontline who felt it necessary to trivialize real wars by comparing them to this summer crossover, and then gave us the infamous Myspace speech. Meanwhile, Mark Millar felt it necessary to mischaracterize the whole Pro-Reg team. The only book that connected to Civil War that I even liked was Eternals. Finally, Civil War gives us the annoying new status quo that all Marvel characters’ll either be government agents or mercilously hunted vigilantes.
Maybe the whole plan was to make Civil War suck so that when the Hulk fucks everyone up, it would be that much better.
Also I think people (like taichi) shouldnt forget that when all this started up the big bruhaha was “Which is better, IC or HoM?” which marvel has forgotten about, so essentially Marvel has had two shots to IC’s one.
I got back into comics with “Countdown”, HOM was just finishing up.
they jumped directly into Civil War, and that’s where I dipped back into the Marvel Pool.
But you guys are right, IC had some HUGE lead-ups, and plenty of prep-time…There were threads going back right to the BEGINNING of the newest run of Titans (Death of
anybody who hasn’t read Graduation Day
Spoiler
Donna Troy
), and I agree, Countdown was a helluva story (I buy all 80-pagers that cost only a buck!, even shitty ones like Brave New World).
I second you, that was the best thing Marvel got out in a while.
Do we really need to ask this? Civil War reminded me of the Salem witch trials with superpowers, I mean, wtf were the villains doing this whole time? (Besides the one’s rounded up for Zemo’s super powered zoo).
I voted for IC, for lack of better options. Plus SB had the most unecessary death ever, least my Superman #500 is worth something now.
I liked CW, but it helps to read it at once.
The delays and shitty editorial is what made it drag on so much.
Had they planned better and rained in their writers on the tie-ins there’d be no discussion of which was better.
Those first 3 issues were some of the best I’ve read in a long time.
I’m actually reading the Avengers now, and never before did I give a second glance at Iron Man or Captain America.
I just can’t get into DC.
No matter how hard I try.
I did like what I read of Morrison/Kubert’s Batman, though.
