Spoiler Week continues.

You didn't think they would wrap this up and return to status quo, did you? (Barring the usual quotient of HEROES FOREVER CHANGED, re: S&M Speedball.) That's just not how the modern comics event works.

Look at Infinity Gauntlet. We had six issues and a zillion tie-in books over those six months. It was a big deal. Early on, half of the population of Earth was killed... which was just a clever way of eliminating the less popular heroes so the writer wouldn't have to worry about managing such a large cast. But by the end of #6, the Marvel U is more or less back to normal. Dead people were blinked back to life. The only major swing being that the Infinity Gems are once again back in play, tended by a horrible new spinoff series that nobody read.

But me.

That's not how it works today. The editorial trend is to craft stories that will get the reader hooked into the next big event. I'm not saying that's bad - I'm certainly falling for DC's Identity Crisis into Infinite Crisis into 52 into Countdown play. Business-wise, it's obviously a very good idea. And as long as the stories are good, nobody loses.

Civil War was really crappy, though. Sure, Infinite Crisis had its share of detractors, but at the least it could skate through on sheer density. Fans love density. Even if you didn't understand what was going on, at least you knew something was happening. In Civil War, nothing happens, and you still don't understand the characters' motivations.

That's a touch facetious, because obviously something happens in Civil War. In fact, the same things happen over and over again. Everybody fights in the street. Team A loses members to Team B.

Can you believe that they trotted out the Thor clone again?

Why Captain America suddenly has his epiphany now, after six previous issues of showdowns with Iron Man, is unclear. Of course he gets tackled by a bunch of non-superpowered paramedics, the only normal humans left in the five boroughs... Marvel's fascination with making the city of New York a "character" has always escaped me. The supposition is that this last battle is far more destructive, and Cap surrenders to stop the madness. But to the world of comics, that's like declaring one blueberry muffin far more blueberrier than the prior muffins. Nobody of any sound mind is going to buy it. These guys trash Manhattan all the damn time.

We could have reached this point in the story arc around, say, issue three. Dragging it out for seven issues and nearly a year of real time was just ridiculous. Although the setup coming out of #7 are great - Captain America the prisoner, Spider-Man the fugitive, Iron Man the secret traitor. I would have felt better served by getting those stories inside of the Civil War series... whereas now we won't get resolution on that until the next big event.

And I'd be okay with that - launching me into additional series - if I felt that I got "enough" story inside the main series. I didn't. Civil War was a three-issue story stretched across seven books.

They never even returned to the X-Men question! I don't care if Marvel handled that in depth over in the X-Books; they're a big enough part of Marvel that Civil War itself should have provided coverage of their supposed neutrality. Here's a book that largely lacks star power, and Marvel's biggest family of celebs is totally absent. I've said this before, but the classic Avengers are bush league. Nobody cares about Hank Pym, or the Black Knight, or Tigra, or Wonder Man, or Warmaster, Warhawk, Nighthawk, what's his name? Once you get past the Avengers trinity of Cap, Iron Man and Thor, you've lost your Q-rating. That's why the latest Avengers team includes Spider-Man and Wolverine.

Hulk is off-world, so he's out. Thor is dead or something. Thing moves to France (but returns for the very end.) Doc Strange couldn't care less. Ghost Rider (and all the other supernatural characters) aren't even given a token mention. (Howard the Duck was seen in a one-shot back when it all started, which was nice. The government decided he didn't have to register because he's not a person. Howard, being open-minded, decided this means he no longer has to pay taxes.) And the X-Men are on sabbatical. So you're left with Captain America, Spider-Man, Daredevil-Who-Isn't-Daredevil, Iron Man, 3/4s of the Fantastic Four, and a cast of thousands of nobodies. If it had been done well, I wouldn't have minded it, but some absences are so glaring, and the questions raised by those absences are so critical, that the small cast just looks like a writer's cheap way out.

If I were to represent Civil War using only the pieces from the Spider-Man and Friends Mix-and-Match-Up game, it would look like this:

True to form, the most interesting bit about the end of Civil War didn't even happen inside Civil War. At the end of the Embedded storyline in Civil War: Frontline, the reporters confront Iron Man with the idea that he orchestrated events and purposefully engineered the "war" just so that he could end up being the guy in charge. IE, he saw that government control of super-heroes was inevitable, so he set it up so that the White House would trust him so much that they would make him Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. Which, if you read the inferences, means that he takes on the role to protect other heroes from the government. Another intriguing twist that the core series glosses over, with only one scene at the end of #7 offering any clue that Tony may in fact be on Captain America's side after all.

Not to mention controlling the whole Norman Osborn vs. Atlantis bit from Frontline that seems like it should have been mentioned in Civil War at least once.

But his 50 State Initiative thing is really goofy, more like a DC kind of idea. Imagine the fun Giffen would have with the New Jersey team. I can't wait to see how Armadillo Man does in his new gig as protector of Texas.

So, to sum up Civil War: fun idea, lots of awesome individual moments, but a lousy, overextended presentation. And if you didn't read Frontline, Civil War was ten times worse.