Civil War II 8 review

Well, we’ve reached the long delayed ending to Marvel’s second Civil War event.

Written by Brian Michael Bendis, Civil War II 8 kicks off where the last issue ended, with Captain Marvel and Iron Man fighting above Capitol Hill. The fight itself is pretty intense, mostly told through the art, and the Inhumans’ Ulysses (who’s been seeing the future throughout the event) predicts that the fight will end in disaster. It adds a bit of tension to the fight. At the same time, the rest of the superheroes are just trying to stop the fight before it gets worse. That means there was only one full-on Superhero brawl in this entire Civil War event. Hard to say it lives up to the name at that point.

The material after the fight fares better. Although a lot of people are appreciative of Carol Danvers’ actions, she feels a lot of guilt over what happened to Tony Stark. I won’t spoil it, but let’s just say there’s a huge question mark on him right now. The actual dialogue in this issue is very well written, even if this issue feels a bit light on the writing. But for a $5 comic, there’s just not enough material to make it worth buying no matter how good it is. It also doesn’t help that the final reveals with Ulysses are underwhelming at best.

David Marquez’s art is fantastic though. The opening spread of Carol firing energy at Iron Man, who’s shooting rockets at her, almost looks like it’s taken out of a movie with all the details going on. Both characters are throwing everything they’ve got at each other. There are plenty of glimpses at other superheroes, all drawn with an impressive amount of detail. In the middle of the comic, Ulysses starts sharing his visions with everyone at the scene of the attack, of possible futures both near and far. Two of them clearly point to Marvel’s next two events, while others show dreadful futures where supervillains take over. The facial expressions perfectly capture each character’s reactions to the visions, and then what happens next to Ulysses. The different futures are actually drawn by a bunch of different artists that I won’t list here, but each of them do a great job at capturing these potential disasters with impressive detail. Justin Ponsor handles the colouring, and it’s brilliant. Everything is bright and colourful, with good use of shadows and lighting effects.

Like every other issue in this event, the art is the obvious highlight. The story itself moves to slow for its own good. I wouldn’t say it feels anti-climactic – it doesn’t, but there also isn’t much of an actual Civil War in this event. It also doesn’t feel like it’ll change the Marvel Universe that much, besides who’s in the Iron Man suit. I wouldn’t call this a bad event, but it’s too expensive for its own good. That makes it hard to recommend unless you pick the trade up when it’s on sale.

6/10