Joseph Riggs wrote:
> Yup.  I read about this yesterday on MSNBC.  I'm
> surprised, but sadly I can't say that I'm schocked. 
> Marvel seems to be drifting lately in its storylines,
> and while I don't follow comicbooks, I still hear
> things.  The House of M storyline apparently didn't go
> over too well.  And what I've heard about the current
> "Civil War" storyline only confirmed my initial
> suspicions that there wouldn't be any serious
> discussion of the pros and cons of requiring
> registration of people who can kill you by pointing at
> you.  Instead, Marvel created a one-sided story that's
> a rather ham-handed attempt to criticize the War on
> Terror.

In the last several years, Marvel generally seems to have trouble 
executing even the good concepts they come up with (and they seem to 
spend plenty of time coming up with lousy concepts as well). One aspect 
of this is the way they continually blow deadlines - some issues are now 
literally years late, for example - and others are the way that some 
creators are horribly misused. This storyline is a perfect example: they 
used Mark Millar as the head writer. Now, Millar's cynical approach to 
characters and plots can actually be an interesting new take on them 
(see the Ultimates books for an example of where he's gone with this). 
But evenhandedness, or even subtlety? For whatever reason, he just 
doesn't seem to do things like that.

> I didn't think Marvel would go as far as they
> apparently are, but it isn't really as surprising to
> me as it ought to be.  The overall plot writer all but
> bragged about something like this waaaaay back when
> Marvel was first publicizing the Civil War story-line.

My little conspiracy theory: Captain America is a hard character to 
write for in an ongoing series that ties into other titles' continuity 
(he's different as a standalone character), mostly because he isn't 
prone to being morally compromised or hated (unlike so many Marvel 
characters since Spider Man). What Marvel's done here is to take Captain 
America out of circulation while there isn't a movie deal for him (the 
real moneymaker as far as Marvel's concerned*), which keeps bad 
storylines from devaluing him. He'll be trotted back out when Marvel 
thinks there's a movie deal (or TV deal, or something else where they 
can profit on the character), and at that time they'll flood the market 
with as much Cap stuff as possible in order to maximize profits.

* My understanding is that these days, Marvel's monthly comics are 
basically break-even, slightly unprofitable, or very slightly 
profitable. They basically continue to exist as IP laboratories, 
generating either new character IP for Marvel to license, or new 
storylines to increase the value of existing characters. It's kind of 
sad, but these days Marvel is basically all about licensing its 
intellectual property rather than about telling stories.

Alan Zabaro