Civil War and the Infinity Gauntlet

With the Yellow Scene Comic Book Issue out now, we felt encouraged to dip into the graphic novel archives and pull out some classics. We were further encouraged by the recent announcement about the forthcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase 3 lineup.W

For the casual comic fans out there, Marvel Comics sold off some of it’s big names to other studios years before it had a studio of it’s own. For example, Spider-Man went to Sony, and Sam Raimi (Evil Dead) made some decent films and one bad one before other people took over and the whole thing went sour. The X-Men went to Fox, with better results. Then Marvel set up it’s own studio, put out Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Iron Man 2, Captain America: The First Avenger, and The Avengers, also known as Phase 1, and realized that they could make movies about their own characters better than anyone else.

Phase 2 featured Iron Man 3, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Thor: The Dark World, Guardians of the Galaxy, and the forthcoming The Avengers: Age of Ultron, and Ant-Man. By now, people love these movies, even if they don’t read comic books. Phase 3 is going to take the whole thing into a bunch of crazy directions. Two of the greatest stories in Marvel history will be included with the third Captain America movie based on the Civil War book and the next Avengers movies (it will be in two parts) based on the Infinity Gauntlet.

Civil War was written by Mark Millar and published in 2006-2007. The story sees a new law implemented stating that all superheroes must be registered as government employees, with their identities made public. No more hiding behind masks, no more undercover day jobs. About half of the Marvel heroes agree with the idea, led by Iron Man. The other half, led by Captain America, strongly disagree.

It’s an amazing book, and the inner turmoil that the various heroes suffer is as exciting, even on the illustrated page, as the magnificent action. The dialog is intelligent – Millar is no mug – and the art is glorious. Spider-Man plays a significant part in the story, so it’s exciting that Marvel Studios and Sony were able to come up with an agreement to allow the web-slinger’s involvement in MCU movies.

The Infinity Gauntlet was written by Jim Starlin and published in 1991, a full 15 years before Civil War, and yet the movie will come after. This book is epic, with the villainous Thanos taking hold of the infinity gauntlet of the title, basically a glove decorated with powerful gems that, when together, gift the bearer with God-like powers. Thanos is the absolute worst person to get hold of it, so the many heroes of the Marvel world come together to try to defeat him. It takes some doing.

Guardians of the Galaxy took the MCU into space, and the forthcoming Phase 3 Inhumans movie will further that. Dr. Strange will introduce a supernatural element, and all of that will come into play for Infinity Gauntlet. The book is one of the greatest, so the movie should be worth the wait.