The Long and Short Of It – Civil War: The Return

Civil War: The Return

Writer: Paul Jenkins
Pencils: Tom Raney
Inks: Scott Hanna
Colours: Gina Going / SotoColor’s A.Crossley
Letters: Dave Sharpe

The Long of It

The kind of story you absolutely have to get right. Oh bollocks. We all know how this is going to end, don’t we?

Captain Marvel. Mar-Vell. A legendary figure in Marvel Comics folklore and, as Marvel themselves have mentioned, someone who most readers these days know more as a symbol than as an actual character. The tale of his death, in the cunningly titled “The Death of Captain Marvel”, is one of the most famous Marvel comic-books ever published. So this, the story of his re-introduction into the Marvel Universe, is a big story. A very big story. The kind of story you absolutely have to get right. Oh bollocks. We all know how this is going to end, don’t we?

Straight away I will make this disclaimer: I think Paul Jenkins is one of the best writers at Marvel today. While JMS was causing Spider-fans to take arms against a sea of Goblin-babies, and Mark Millar was making them put their heads in their hands in despair with the Sinister 12 and Venom auctions, Paul Jenkins was consistently producing excellent stories with superb dialogue and first-rate characterisation. The Sentry is one of the most original creations of the decade, and has rapidly become established as one of the big-hitters of The Avengers, Mr Bendis’ exclusive little club of favourites. Everything Paul Jenkins touches at Marvel was turning to gold. So when the rebirth of Mar-Vell came along, a story that comes with the gold already inlaid, nothing could go wrong. Tut, tut, tut. Oh ye of too much faith. Somehow, Jenkins has touched this gold and turned it into a steaming pile of poop. I think I just died a little inside.

The plot is thinner than Nicole Richie after a month-long bout of gastro-enteritis.

Be not mistaken. This is still Paul Jenkins. The dialogue and characterisation are, as usual, right on the button. There always seems to be tangible emotion attached to the words Jenkins’ characters speak. You can feel they are somehow more real when he writes them. And this book is also aesthetically pleasing. Tom Raney can couple a sense of superheroic fun in his artistic style with an emotional attachment that very much echoes that imbued by Jenkins’ words. Indeed, from a purely superficial point of view, this is a very attractive comic. But therein lies the problem. It’s all superficial. The plot is thinner than Nicole Richie after a month-long bout of gastro-enteritis.

And what is this plot, that I can lambaste it so? Well, if you haven’t read it, you won’t believe me. In essence, the attempts of Tony Stark, Reed Richards and their merry band of neo-fascists to open a portal to the Negative Zone in order to build their prison has broken down the boundaries of time and brought Mar-Vell forward in time from some point prior to his death. Yup. That’s it. Suddenly I have a new respect for the comparatively genius idea of Superboy Prime punching time.

His death warranted a graphic novel. His death? Barely a pamphlet.

How many times have they been to the Negative Zone before? Has it ever caused time travel before? I mean bloody hell, the whole fricking Negative Zone is currently involved in an invasion of the 616 universe in Annhilation, and I don’t see any bizarre time-travelling adventures ensuing! This is utter nonsense. And it shows very clearly how thin a plot it is, if you can’t fill a complete issue with the return of one of Marvel’s most influential characters after 30-odd years. His death warranted a graphic novel. His death? Barely a pamphlet. Because the rest of the issue is filled with a completely unnecessary Sentry back-up story. Where Sentry beats up Absorbing Man and then registers himself with the law. Which could, if it even needed to be told, have been told in the pages of, oh… I dunno, Civil War: Front Line? You know, the comic that specialises in the outlying legal and moral implications of the Superhuman Registration Act, in a series of short stories? The comic that’s also written by Paul Jenkins. Don’t put it here. Don’t waste the opportunity to make Mar-Vell’s return into an event.

I just think they’ve tried to be too clever. By telling the story this way, they can show some sort of symmetry with Mar-Vell’s previous life. In his life, he switched back and forth between the main Marvel Universe and the Negative Zone whenever he or Rick Jones banged together the Nega-Bands round their wrists. So for his life to restart in the Negative Zone makes a cosy little circle. The super-villain Nitro started the events that led to his death, and so for Nitro to have started the events that led to his rebirth is another cosy little circle. But it’s too, too contrived. And it makes no sense. Because he says that he now knows exactly when he’ll die. And yet he also says that the death-sentence is already burning inside his very cells. Which means he already has the cancer that kills him, and the time that the cancer takes to do just that is now being used up in the present time. Which would surely affect the time of his death, wouldn’t it?

This just seems such a pointless waste of ink. If they’d bothered to put some thought into this, they could have made it the event it was supposed to be. Such a shame they didn’t.

The Short of It

This book, however nicely it is written and drawn, is the mother of all anti-climaxes. It is like Neil Armstrong returning from taking the first steps on the lunar surface, only to find that he is not greeted by a ticker-tape parade. There’s just one person, an accountant called Neville, who’s standing there blowing a kazoo.

Grade: D It only got that high a grade through the quality of the writing style and the artistic merit. Because from a plot point of view, this is about as weak as you can possibly get without saying “And I woke up and it was all a dream.”