NEW LONGBOX: "I DON'T NEED YOUR CIVIL WAR!"

[Mockery]

Here's one of Proto's largest Tales From The Longbox installments to date, and it's no surprise since it covers Marvel's big "Civil War" event which just ended.

http://www.i-mockery.com/comics/boxes/longbox11-box.gif (http://www.i-mockery.com/comics/longbox11)
NEW LONGBOX: "I DON'T NEED YOUR CIVIL WAR!" -by Protoclown
http://www.i-mockery.com/comics/longbox11

Enjoy!

[mburbank]

Proto, that was excellent work. Great recap, and the picture captions were hillarious.

One of the most bizarre moments in the whole thing for me was Herc pounding the robo Thors head in. The visual was awesome, just a really great splash panel up there (I think) with some of the best moments in marvel history, but the lead in was surreal.

Herc paraphrases the immortal zinger from... a vice presidential debate from ovr twelve years ago. You know, the whole "I knew JFK, JFK was a frien of mine, you are no JFK.' That puts Thor in the Dan Quayle role, which is kind of funny, but it puts Herc in the Loyd Benson role. It's an irresistable line, but Herc quoting Loyd Benson? DELIGHTFULLY SURREAL, I SAY!!!


The other conceit I thought was absurd was the whole idea that registering meant automatically being drafted, and that no single hero said, well I won't register and I'll just stop doing vigalanty justice, and no hero said I'll obey the law and register, but I refuse to fight and you have to take me to court.

Also, I thought all the attempts to draw paralells between the Marvel Civil war and other historical conflicts were pretty stupid.

I liked Iron Man turning out to be a huge Dick, because a major part of his origin is that he's a military inudustrialist war profiteer. Which way back then nobody in the comic buying public thought was problematic, but to me it kind of means you suck.

[Protoclown]

Thanks, Max! Yeah, I thought that the "black and white" reaction across the entire board of all the Marvel Universe was a bit strange too. There were plenty of grey approaches that certain characters could have taken, but that never seemed to occur to any of them.

And I gotta agree that the poem segments in the back of those "Frontline" books were ABYSMALLY bad. Perhaps the idea had some merit in the conceptual stage, but Paul Jenkins REALLY dropped the ball on making them seem at all relevant in the execution. The whole thing just seemed ridiculously forced.

[Zomboid]

Yeah, the back of the frontline comics were pretty shitty. I remember one of them trying to draw parallels between the Atlanteans getting ready to go to war and WW2, or something.

Edit: Also, infinite crisis was a lot better for this kinda thing, I thought.

[Protoclown]

Yeah, they were just painful to read...I kept looking at the poem text and looking at the pictures and puzzling over what in the FUCK the connection between the two was.

As for Infinite Crisis, I thought it was much more epic in scope than Civil War, but you've gotta admit that the DCU isn't really all that different as a result of it.

[Zomboid]

No, it's not all that different, but it seemed like the build-up actually amounted to SOMETHING. There was one hell of a last fight and it didn't just suddenly end with superboy prime realizing he's really just a big asshole. The whole time you got the sense that everything was at stake while civil war was pretty tame by comparison.

One of the things that I think infinite crisis had better was that it had some true villains. Civil war kind of just makes you realize what a douchebag iron man is. Also, superboy prime killing all of those teen titans and green lanterns is a lot cooler than robo-thor killing BLACK GOLIATH.

Some of the tie-in comics were cool though. Thunderbolts and cable and deadpool were pretty entertaining.

Did you ever do anything with those Batman Vs Alien comics I sent you over aim? :O

[Protoclown]

Yeah, the lack of real villains in Civil War was kind of dumb. I mean, okay, you had the Thunderbolts (which was a STUPID idea for them to be recruited like that anyway), but where was Dr. Doom? Or Red Skull? Or Magneto (or is he dead again...I can never remember)? Or any number of other major Marvel villains who would have had a FIELD DAY taking advantage of all the chaos caused by the villains fighting one another.

But no. Not so much as a fucking peep. I mean, we saw a couple street thugs and D-list Spider-Man villains "taking advantage" of the situation in the lamest way possible, but it's like the Marvel editors just completely and willfully overlooked most of their villains during the whole event.

As for the Batman/Alien comics, no, I haven't done anything yet, but you better believe that I will...I was thinking of doing a Longbox column on them someday, but they might just make for a good next Protocomic instead.

[Zomboid]

Well, I just read the last part of spider-man's part in the story and it looks as if kingpin is planning something, but that's at the very end of the war and will probably only affect spider-man. It really is kind of dumb how they don't even mention the big villains in this at all. It's as if they just decided to pretend they don't exist because they would obviously be enjoying the hell out of the situation and trying to make it worse.

Oh, Dr.Doom had a small part in one of black panther's tie-in comics but then you don't see him again...so, good work marvel.

[Protoclown]

That's right, I do remember hearing about Dr. Doom being in Black Panther's book. Unfortunately, the writer for that book sucks so I don't read it, and from what I hear, he's turned it into a real Mary Sue book.

[JohhnyDamage]

You ready for World War Hulk this summer? After that should be some Vietnam tie-in. Copyright pending.