The Marvel Civil War story-line is the first major comic 'event' I've read. Whilst the ideas behind the Civil War story are fairly simple, the complexity comes in all the various 'tie-in' books and sub-stories that surround it.

Whilst filming a reality TV show, a group of super heroes attempt to apprehend a group of super villains. A battle ensues, there is a big BOOOMMM!, and innocent people are dead. This leads to the introduction of the Superhuman Registration Act in the United States. Any person in the United States with superhuman abilities must register with the federal government and receive proper training. Superheroes are to transform into Civil Servants overnight.

As a by-product of this, super heroes abiding by the Superhuman Registration Act are forced to reveal their true identities to the authorities. This could be a big deal, particularly for someone like Spider-Man who has battled to keep his true identity secret all his life.

The Marvel superhero world is split into two, the pro-registration camp, led by Iron Man, and the anti-registration camp, led by Captain America. From there the story continues, as the who's who of superheroes battle it out. The events in Civil War will ultimately lead to Captain America's assassination, heroes becoming villains and villains becoming heroes.

The story involves the entire Marvel Universe, so all the major players take part at some level. Basically all the characters from Marvel Ultimate Alliance (on PS2 or Xbox) show up at some point. Characters such as Wolverine, Spider-man, Fantastic Four, Deadpool, and the X-Men have their own tie-in stories which cleverly link into the main story arc providing a different perspective of events. It's a nice touch.

The Civil War trade paper back collects the main Civil War story line (Civil War #1-7) and I'd recommend grabbing this rather than trying to pick up the 7 issues individually.


The Civil War TPB is the first of the Civil War stories that I've read, I'll definitely be reading more. I'm currently working my way through the Civil War: Frontline series. I've completed volume 1, so once I've finished volume 2, I might also write about that here.