Words of Questionable Wisdom: What If Civil War Happened In the Real World? Part 2
The Comics Nexus Event of the Summer Continues!
(Special thanks to fellow Nexus Staffer Manolis Vamvounis for our new Logo.)
Previously…
After the city of Stamford, Connecticut is destroyed by Nitro during a televised fight between the New Warriors, Tony Stark proposes a radical new governmental policy: a global war on Super-villains! Tony in the guise of Iron Man unveils the first step of his plan, a superhero invasion of Latveria to Captain America, who is appalled by the potential abuse of power and disastrous consequences. He however is unable to prevent Stark from presenting the grounds for war to the President of the United States and congress.
Now as the prospect of war looms the Super-hero community is forced to pick sides as a gathering of America’s mightiest heroes forms outside of Avengers Tower…
CAPTAIN AMERICA: So it’s finally come to this Tony…
IRON MAN: Yes, thanks to you’re outdated Roosevelt-Liberal worldview the superhero community is now going to be dived like it has never been before! Now flip the coin!
CAPTAIN AMERICA: Heads… you pick first.
IRON MAN: Great… my first round draft pick is Spider-Man.
DARKHAWK: Ooooh… oooh pick me guys!
CAPTAIN AMERICA: Ok… Wolverine I choose you.
IRON MAN: Reed Richards.
MR. FANTASTIC: To make this process go faster, may I make the novel suggestion that entire teams can be picked as this may prevent undue family strife?
IRON MAN: Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.
CAPTAIN AMERICA: Fine Tony you can have the Fantastic Four.
IRON MAN: WHO-HOO!
DARKHAWK: Pick Excelsior! Pick Excelsior!
CAPTAIN AMERICA: I’ll take all the X-Men…
IRON MAN: DOH!
CAPTAIN AMERICA: Ok… that’s not totally fair, you can have Bishop.
IRON MAN: That’s better… Hey a wait minute…
ONE HOUR PASSES…
IRON MAN: Justice, from the New Warriors that didn’t get blown up.
CAPTAIN AMERICA: Justice from The Crew…
IRON MAN: Araña
CAPTAIN AMERICA: Juston Seyfert… and his Sentinel!
IRON MAN: Machine Teen!
CAPTAIN AMERICA: Rom the Space Knight!
IRON MAN: The Xorn who turned out to be the twin brother of the Xorn who we thought was Magneto, but was really the evil Xorn pretending to be Magneto, pretending to be Xorn.
DARKHAWK: C’mon…
TWO HOURS LATER…
CAPTAIN AMERICA: Firestar!
IRON MAN: Firebird!
CAPTAIN AMERICA: Starfox!
IRON MAN: Starbrand!
CAPTAIN AMERICA: Dark Angel
DARKHAWK: Dark Hawk! Dark Hawk!
IRON MAN: Dark Star
DARKHAWK: Aaaaaaw… man.
Five Hours Later…
CAPTAIN AMERICA: Ok… we’re down to the final five. I’ll guess I’ll take Devil Dinosaur.
IRON MAN: Terror Inc.
CAPTAIN AMERICA: 3-D Man
IRON MAN: The Human Fly…
CAPTAIN AMERICA: Wait a minute… I can’t believe we’ve overlooked a solid team player who should have been named hours ago.
DARKHAWK: Finally some vindication.
CAPTAIN AMERICA: I would like to say that there’s always a welcome spot on my team for Howard the Duck.
IRON MAN: So that leaves…
DARKHAWK Me… *sighs*
Soon the core members of Iron Man’s team gather to discuss the pending invasion of Latveria.
SPIDER-MAN: I’m still confused by all this… I mean Doom’s a bad guy, but how exactly does taking him down make America safer.
MR. FANTASTIC: As the team’s foremost expert on Doom, I know he is most assuredly up to some manner of foul plot.
SHE-HULK: Yeah… I was wondering about this too.
IRON MAN: Well for the past twenty years, a very select group of people within the Washington and defense industry have been slowly forming the definitive defense strategy and international policy that will protect the American public from villainy. It’s called “Neoconservatism.”
SPIDER-MAN: Ok that sounds fine… how does it work?
IRON MAN: Well it’s a simple 3 part process….
STEP 1: Wage a preemptive war against a well known despotic villain who can be taken down swiftly resulting in a power vacuum and potential chaos in the surrounding regions.
STEP 2:???
STEP 3: Democracy flourishes worldwide ensuring peace.
SHE-HULK: Huh?!
SPIDER-MAN: I don’t get it.
MR. FANTASTIC: Hmmm…
IRON MAN: Perhaps the Neoconservative model of economics would be easier to understand.
STEP 1: Drastically cut taxes for the corporations and the nation’s wealthiest citizens, while rapidly increasing government spending on all fronts, particularly on defense.
STEP 2:???
STEP 3: Balanced budget
SPIDER-MAN: Now that really doesn’t make any sense.
SHE-HULK: There’s isn’t any step 2!
MR. FANTASTIC: Fascinating… Perhaps this “Neoconservatism” involves Gödel’s incompleteness theorems of axiomatic method.
IRON MAN: Fine, if you’re still not convinced what I’m about to show you is something that hasn’t been released to the American public, and only a select handful of people know about. If you turn your heads to the monitor on your left you can see images taken by the latest satellite technology which prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Doom is in possession of The Cosmic Cube!
SPIDER-MAN: Dear God…
MR. FANTASTIC: I’ve always dreaded this day would come…
SHE-HULK: Wow… viewed in black and white from that angle it almost looks like a box of Twinkies….
IRON MAN: Oh course if we’re really going to sell the American Public on the importance of this we had better as a showing of trust have one of us reveal their secret identity to the public. But alas I’ve already done that on several occasions.
MR. FANTASTIC: Well my public identity has been known since the beginning.
SHE-HULK: Mine’s been public for years.
SPIDER-MAN: Oh dear”¦
Later that week Captain America embarks on a media campaign to prevent the pending conflict.
BILL O’REILLY: A recent survey has shown that approximately 56% of Fox News viewers believe that Dr. Doom was somehow responsible for the disaster in Stamford, with another 68% supporting a pre-emptive superhero based strike on Latveria. Furthermore the same survey also revealed that 75% of Fox News viewers still believe in Santa Claus. How can you possibly justify not supporting anything less than an immediate full forced super powered attack on Latveria.
CAPTAIN AMERICA: First of all every respectable source of information says that Doom had nothing to do with the tragedy in Stamford. Secondly attacking Latveria right now does nothing to alleviate the danger posed by villains like Nitro, nor does it prevent inexperienced people with powers from making tragic mistakes. Now we must keep in mind that the New Warriors were a group of impressionable youth, who were being pressured by television producers into going after progressively more dangerous criminals solely for the sake of ratings. We as American citizens have to ask oursel-
BILL O’REILLY: WAIT A MINTUE! WAIT A MINUTE! What about the recently released satellite photographs which prove beyond any doubt that Dr. Doom has access to the Cosmic Cube?
CAPTAIN AMERICA: The real Cosmic Cube doesn’t have the word “Hostess” written on the side of it.
BILL O’REILLY: You’re entitled to your opinion pal, but if we had liberal pacifists like you representing our nation during World War II we’d be speaking German right now.
CAPTAIN AMERICA: I fought in World War II…
BILL O’REILLY: How typical liberal… obscuring the facts of the situation. Well you’re in the no-spin zone pall. Cut off his mic!
TO BE CONTINUED!
