What If? Civil War #1 - Marvel Comics

WHAT IF? CIVIL WAR No. 1, February 2008

Utilising a brief tale by Ed Brubaker entitled "The Stranger" as “a framing device around which the other two stories revolve”, Issue One of “What If? Civil War” probably helped the vast amount of its 58,909 readers in December 2007 appreciate just how wrong Tony Stark was to persecute his fellow heroes for not voluntarily submitting to the Superhuman Registration Act, as well as just how highly (and wrongly) Steve Rogers thought of his long-time friend before their differences arose. Indeed, Christos Gage’s plot for “What If Iron Man Lost The Civil War” lays the entire blame of the “Marvel Comics Event In Seven Parts” squarely upon Iron Man’s armoured shoulders for blatantly lying to the Sentinel of Liberty regarding his “plans for my twenty-first century overhaul.”

Admittedly, this particular eighteen-page epic undoubtedly lacks a lot of the emotional response Mark Millar’s mini-series generated, courtesy of a sugary-sweet plot which sees Cap team-up with an “honest” Shellhead so as to overcome a homicidal Thor cybernetic clone. But what it does provide is perhaps the only sensible solution to the super-powered pairs’ dilemma of just one government or person ultimately being responsible for both the training and secret identities of every costumed crime-fighter in the United States; “It’s not enough to be against something. You have to be for something better.”

Slightly more action-packed is “What If Captain America Led All The Heroes Against Registration?” by Kevin Grevioux, which manages to recreate much of the anger and resentment generated by the original 2006 crossover storyline. With Stark already dead following an Extremis injection, this marvellous reimagining unashamedly pits Steve Rogers and most of the Marvel Universe directly against the Senate and S.H.I.E.L.D. in a battle which somewhat resembles that seen in the “X-Men” comic book narrative "Days of Future Past".

Crammed full of pulse-pounding punch-ups against the impassive Sentinels, and the death of the spectacular Spider-Man, this dynamically pencilled fight-fest sets up Henry Gyrich and Maria Hill as two of the most despicably treacherous characters to inhabit a publication, with the deputy director’s cold-blooded murder of Jim Rhodes and subsequent framing of a dead Captain America proving particularly unforgivable. Indeed, such is the utter loathing engendered by Gyrich in his journey to become President and the despicable Hill’s ambition to be carried along on his coat-tails, that in many ways it is a shame this well-penned conspiracy from an alternative universe wasn’t awarded a limited series or ongoing title of its own.

Written by: Ed Brubaker, Kevin Grevioux & Christos Gage, and Art by: Marko Djurdjevic, Gustavo and Harvey Tolibao