Fists about to fly in "Civil War"

Marvel’s “Civil War” still has me on the edge of the seat, but now that the war is truly erupting, I’m having a few problems with it.

Among the big stack of comics I picked up this week at Bargain Comics is “Amazing Spider-Man” No. 533 and “Civil War: Front Line” No. 2; both pick up threads from Spider-Man’s dramatic public unmasking at the end of “Civil War” No. 2 a couple of weeks ago. Now that the government has enacted the Super Hero Registration Act, Marvel’s heroes are about to go to war - with each other.

I can easily buy that the heroes are passionately split over the issue, which pits civil rights against our nation’s security. But I have some trouble believing that Iron Man and his followers would so easily start kicking superhero butt to enforce the law. At the end of “Amazing Spider-Man,” Iron Man makes a remark something to the effect of, “Now the dying begins.” I know he’s a man of iron, on the outside anyway, but that’s pretty cold.

In fact, while Marvel writers insist they’re not on one side of the war or the other, the sympathy seems to be growing for the non-registration side. Tony “Iron Man” Stark has become a creep, pressuring Spider-Man to reveal to the world that he’s Peter Parker and including him in the war against his fellow heroes without asking. Reed Richards, who’s on Iron Man’s side, has also been more unfeeling than usual. And poor Speedball, whose disastrous superhero fight with Nitro fueled the push for the superhero act, is being portrayed as a victim of a government that views him as having no rights at all apparently.