ROBERT GREENBERGER talks Civil War
It must come as quite a shock to you. We’re talking about a profound cultural shift for the betterment of mankind, People want this, Richard. They need the superhumans of the world to be responsible, properly trained, qualified…and ultimately held accountable. That’s what the initiative is all about. We’re trying to move out of the dark ages of masked vigilantes into a brighter future where tragedies like Stamford can’t ever happen again.
World War Hulk began last week and we saw the jade-jawed giant arrive on Earth with a pretty big mad on. With less than twenty-four hours to evacuate Manhattan, Doctor Strange and his, er, estranged Avengers offer to help Iron Man clear the populace. Shellhead magnanimously offers amnesty for their help.
Welcome to the new status quo in the Marvel Universe. The dust continues to settle from the brawl that was Civil War and with all of Earth confronted by a new menace, now’s not a bad time to assess the new political landscape.
After the Mutant Registration Act, unveiled in Uncanny X-Men #181 and passed into law, required all mutants in America to be registered. Those not complying faced criminal charges. Once that was passed, a parallel super-hero or super-power act was an obvious follow up and came up during the Acts of Vengeance crossover. Fantastic Four #335 began the first serious examination of such an act. Reed Richards addressed a congressional subcommittee saying such an act was unnecessary. His odd argument that such a law wouldn’t be followed by the villains anyway struck an odd chord.
While American legislators dithered over it, the Superpowers Registration Act became Canadian law in Alpha Flight #120.
Years went by without much activity on either front with the Mutant law not being vigorously enforced and the super-human law a mere idea.
Then came the House of M.
In a bygone age of self-defeating fair-play isolationism, comparatively few outposts of the U.S. entertainment industry saw fit to take issue with the congealing Axis powers. Timely Comics’ Captain America books tackled a larger agenda of wish-fulfillment Nazi-busting in 1941 at a time when popular sentiment and much of the mass communications media, stateside, were still holding out for an anti-inflammatory approach. Just two years earlier, the lower-berth Hollywood producers Ben Judell and Sigmund Neufeld had run afoul of their industry’s attempts to repress a film called Hitler – Beast of Berlin, starting with a Production Code Administration complaint that the very title might pose an affront. It is always an awkward choice, even in the realm of heroic fiction, between pre-emptive action and a wait-and-watch attitude.
Last week’s article on privilege and other ranting produced quite a few responses – so many, in fact, I feel it’s my duty to respond and elaborate on my views. So with that in mind, welcome to the first installment of Ask Michael! Because I know. 
I like continuity. Always have, always will. It enriches serialized fiction as found in pulp magazines, comic books, movies and television. In an ideal world, things would be consistent from the beginning of any new creation, but it rarely is.
In a gimmick reminiscent of Time Magazine naming the second person singular "You" as Person of the Year for 2006 using a reflective cover, thus skirting any responsibility for actually choosing a Person of the Year, Marvel has decided to give its usual cover artists a break by putting out a blank cover for its first edition of Fallen Son: The Death of Captain America.
The rule of thumb used to be that the only characters that stayed dead are Uncle Ben, Bucky and Barry Allen.
