50 Word Review- Civil War #5: A study in divide and conquer manipulation, individualism and collectivism

Writer: Charles Soule
Art: Leinil Francis Yu
Publisher: Marvel
Released: 14th October 2015


End of Civil War arc resonates with reality. Both sides manipulated into war. Narrative conclusion highlights real world male/female divide. Feminine/left gives up liberty for illusion of security. This is why governments target females, demonising men/family/tradition. Right/male choose individuality versus collectivism. Peter Parker chooses anarchy/morality/individualism, makes me smile, worthwhile arc.


Rating: 9/10


This arc was occasionally confusing, and a lot of things didn’t make sense to me, but the conclusion offers something that I can get my teeth into. Read it as you like, but what I see here is an admission that a lot of manipulation is going on in the real world, and that when the puppet masters are revealed, and destroyed, there will be a choice to make. That choice will be individualism versus collectivism. The totalitarian, feminine left, versus the individualistic, masculine right. This is not a gender war. It’s an ideological war. Comic book readers are predominantly male, and predominantly left wing and feminine in their world-views. They are statist/collectivists, liberals, progressives, and slaves to the state, the idea that you have to give up personal liberty in order to have personal freedom. It’s a contradiction, as the more liberty you give up, the less freedom you have. The mainstream political establishment is liberal/progressive today. Comic books are also mainstream liberal/progressive in their world-views, so it’s nice to see the other side in a comic book for a change. This Civil War arc by Charles Soule, gives fair airing to that other side, and for that reason alone it’s a very valuable and worthwhile comic book to read and to get in tpb as soon as it’s available.


*The image at the head of this review is the Lo-Karr, Bringer of Doom variant cover by John Cassaday.

Comic review: Civil War #2- Anarchy Versus Democratic Collectivism

Writer: Charles Soule
Artist: Leinil Francis Yu
Inker: Gerry Alanguilan
Colours: Sunny Gho
Publisher: Marvel
Released: 5th August 2015



I’m not too sure if anybody is reading this book, as the buzz on it has been non-existent, but I’m reading it, and I’m enjoying it as well.

I’m enjoying it for two reasons. Firstly, it’s taking the unsatisfactory ending to the original Mark Millar Civil War arc, continuing it, and making it better.

Secondly, it’s throwing in a lot of real world issues, issues that you don’t usually see being discussed within the overly corporate and neo-liberal ‘progressive’ world of Marvel comics.

In Civil War #2 there are two sides. One side (Iron Man’s Red) is about safety, control, totalitarianism really, but wrapped up in the need for order, for safety, to put the people in a giant spy drone, surveillance state prison for their own good. On the other side (Captain America’s Blue) there are two rules: 1- Hurt no one. 2- Help when you can.

Here’s the scary thing about it. The Red side looks a lot like collectivist, centralised government, neo-liberal western democracy as it stands today, and the Blue looks a lot like anarchy, or a society structured around individualism, morality and mutual self respect.

That makes Captain America an anarchist, and Iron Man a contemporary political leader, pick a party it doesn’t matter, they are all pretty much the same in the west today.

Is that not a fascinating concept to explore in a contemporary comic book coming out of a declining western civilisation that is falling into governmental tyranny and lawlessness, with perpetual wars for resources and control, whilst encroaching on the civil liberties of it’s own people?

Civil War is a comic book that is actually saying something about the state of the world as it is today. Do you know how rare that is in a mainstream comic book? It’s like finding a nugget of gold in an ocean of s***.

Added to that is a plot twist that suggests that the two warring sides are being manipulated by an outside force, and you have the ‘conspiracy’ aspect that people talk about today when they discuss groups like the illuminati.

These ideas are coming from the (obviously far more switched on than I’d previously thought) mind of writer Charles Soule, and are brought to life by the gritty, grainy pencils of Leinil Francis Yu.

The art also features washed out colouring, and deep, heavy black inking, adding drab, dusty realism to the narrative, and a sense of dry, dirty realism that forces the reader to take the narrative seriously, and not just treat it as another bit of comic book puns and powers fluff.

It’s only two issues in, but this book really has me hooked now. It has Spiderman in it, and he’s talking like an adult. There are no quips, puns and self-aware ‘cool’ moments either. I’m not going to go over the top on it as of yet, as mainstream comic books have burned me so many times in the past, hinting at a bit of truth telling then going back into their corporate, careerist shell, but this book really does stand out as something a bit better than the usual mainstream superhero fare.

I don’t know why people aren’t talking about it, but Civil War is a very intriguing book, there’s a lot going on, it’s touching real world concerns and it’s the only mainstream superhero comic book that is really exciting me at the moment. If you haven’t read it, give it a go. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. I was, and I’m already looking forward to next month’s instalment. Me looking forward to a mainstream comic book coming out??? Do you know how rare that is these days? Thank you Charles Soule, top work here mate, top work.



Rating: 9/10 (Far better than I ever thought that it could be.)

Comic review: Guardians of Knowhere #1- Bendis poops out another classic

Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Artist: Mike Deodato
Colours: Frank Martin
Publisher: Marvel (Disney)
Released: 15th July 2015


I haven’t read any Bendis for a while. I’d been deliberately avoiding him, mainly because I was fed up with the way that he writes jokes into his dialogue, mimimising what is happening, turning every character into a vehicle where he can show off just how witty and clever that he is as a writer.

I used to enjoy him, but I changed. I started to read, to learn about important things, and the cleverness of people like Bendis and Tarrantino and Kevin Smith no longer had any power over me. The magic diminished. I was no longer young and obsessed with cool. I started to hate clever, started to hate cool, I wanted real, and I wasn’t seeing real in any of my old reading and viewing material.

Now, when I see a Tarrantino flick I’m disgusted with the violence, the casual disregard for human life, the swearing, the cool factor dripping in gore, it disgusts me. Kevin Smith is a joke to me now, a drugged up blob who cannot fit into an airline seat. A masturbating child-man, regurgitating young man stoner jokes, unable to reflect anything but ego, a self-love touring machine, cleverness declining, he had some good jokes, but now has nothing to say.

And Brian Michael Bendis, the comic book genius of my past. He’s still here in 2015, and he’s still up to his old tricks. Why did I pick up this book? I really don’t know. Call it an accident, or call it fate, but I purchased the book, and here’s what I thought of it.

In ‘Guardians of Knowhere #1’ writer Brian Michael Bendis is working with a brilliant artist in Mike Deodato, and an equally as talented colourist in Frank Martin.

They hide his flaws so very well.

The narrative is, as is usual with Bendis, unimportant. It’s the characters, the quips, the dialogue, and the cool factor that is important. The plot is background to the characters, just as it always is. There’s vague references to not believing in God/Doom, but not believing in a higher power is common place today, especially amongst the young, and there’s no real rebellion coming from them, none that I can see anyway, so sod the young. If this book engages in a bit of religion/god bashing, then all it’s going to be doing is preaching to the already long converted. There’s no controversy there, well, not unless it mentions Allah, and I’m 100% certain that it’s not going to be doing that.

The narrative meat of issue #1 involves an order follower doing what order followers do, and a bunch of rebels doing what rebels do, fighting and eventually running from the aforementioned order follower. In comic books the order followers are evil because they work for dictators. In reality order followers will work for anybody. Pay them to kill, and they will kill. It’s not about dictators; it’s about the immorality of following orders in the first place. Comic books hide that truth, because the truth is hidden within the lie that is democratic, neoliberal statism, the lie that is the backbone not just to comic books, but the entire western world as it is today.

So is Bendis going to say something about statism, neoliberal democracy and the immorality of following orders in this book?

Don’t be daft. He has a career to think about, so all you are going to get here is more evil dictator stuff, and so it proves at the conclusion of this limp first issue.

Most of the characters in the book talk like teenagers. I find that to be very telling, as that is the mindset and level of emotional maturity that the book is set at. The readers might not be teenagers in physical years, but ‘Guardians of Knowhere #1’ is a book that only a teenage mindset could enjoy.

‘That was like, so totally uncool and disrespectful man.’

That line wasn’t actually in the book, but it might as well have been. I can’t stand this teen idiot talk. I’m forty-two years old, and this too cool for school teen dialogue is annoying the heck out of me. Every line of dialogue concludes with a knowing joke, or a pun, or an attempt to be cool. It’s annoying, really, really annoying. People don’t talk like that in the real world. The only people that talk like that are characters in a bad US television show that is being played for cheap laughs. What is being created here is a world where nothing is real, nothing is important, and nothing matters. It’s a sad clown joke where you fart, laugh and savour the pungent aroma of cool, clever, smug self-satisfaction that is suffocating the life out of everything.

It’s amazing how far you can go on cool, clever, smug self-satisfaction. With this prized combination you can enjoy a lengthy career writing comic books. People will queue up and worship you, not because you have anything to say, but because you do the postmodernism thing, because you make things look cool, and because you come across as ‘one of the fans.’ Readers can convince themselves that they are part of a select little club, that they are clever, that they are cool. They understand the knowing jokes and references. They are educated. They have a degree. They love it. Give them more of the wisecracking Racoon, they’ll eat that s*** up with a spoon. They love the Racoon, they are smart, they have joined the super secret special team, and you (as the great writer) can sit at the convention and have these poor saps bow to you, worship you, and to literally throw money at your no-nothing, saying nothing feet.

Yay, team geek, the saddest people in the room, telling themselves that they are cool over and over again until they become so deluded that they actually start to believe that it’s true. Sorry kids, it’s not true at all. Losers buy comic books. Winners write and draw them, and they look at their customers as walking bags of money. Welcome to the latest big comic book convention, populated by walking bags of loser money and corporate vampires. How depressing it all is.

I paid money for this book, and now it’s sitting on my computer desk laughing at me, telling me that I’m the fool. I’m the moron. I’m the sucker. I’m the dupe. I’m the loser. Oh crap, I hate it when the talking comic book is right, and now I hate myself because that last line read like something that bloody Bendis himself would write.

I need to flush this one away as soon as possible. I need to wipe away the soiled memories and get back to reading something of worth. I was such an idiot as a young man, and this comic book reminds me of the idiot that I used to be. It reminds of my wasted youth, of reading cool nothingness from corporate clones, and I don’t enjoy that empty feeling anymore. I’m over cool. I’m all grown up now, and I no longer have time to waste on pointless, nauseating, cool and clever comic books.

Reading this book took me back to a time and place that I no longer recognise. It’s funny how the past becomes alien after a while. Was I really there at all? Did I really think and do those stupid things. I did, but I’m not the same person anymore. My past embarrasses me, and this latest comic book invitation to return has never felt less appealing.


Rating: 6/10 (More of the same from the Bendis machine, this time with superior art helpers)

Comic review: Civil War (2015) #1- The hour is late, but freedom is still an option

Writer: Charles Soule
Artist: Leinil Francis Yu
Publisher: Marvel (Disney)
Released: 8th July 2015



If, like myself, you felt that the ending of Mark Millar’s Civil War arc was a massively anti-climatic letdown (Captain America surrendered because he didn’t want people to get hurt) then this version of Civil War will be right up your comic book alley.

In this book, Cap doesn’t surrender. The war continues, with the ‘nation’ split in two. On one side (The Iron) is the progressively totalitarian Iron Man, with laws made by him (because he knows best), you obey, or you go to jail. On the other side is Captain America’s ‘The Blue’ where freedom and individuality reigns, and the collectivist co-ordinator class is stripped of their authoritarian big brother powers:

‘Captain America made a land with only two laws. Hurt no one, and help where you can.’

Wouldn’t it be nice if we had the option to choose between the two in the real world? As it is, we are living in the authoritarian ‘Iron,’ with the ‘authorities’ telling us what we can and cannot do (see the drug laws) because they know best. There is a battle going on, but it’s a battle for power, not a battle for freedom. It’s a red and blue struggle for authoritarian control.

Politics is a battle between authoritarian personality types; to be the ‘expert’ telling everybody else how they should or should not live their lives.

What is happening right now in the west is that the totalitarian mindset of the old right has now switched to the new left. The mindset has not changed, it’s still about control, still about telling people what is best for them, and what is bad for them, and what they can and cannot do.

We now have a situation where social justice warriors (young Marxists straight out of university and loaded up with feminist rhetoric) are trying to enact social change around issues of sexuality, gender and race. All they want is control. They are ‘educated’ and they know best, so they are the ones who will tell us what we can or cannot think, do or say. They want ‘change’ but not real change. All they really want is for you to obey them, to do exactly what they say, they are the experts, they know best.

This collectivist nonsense is all wrapped up in ‘social justice’ but the bottom line is the same. They want Iron Man totalitarianism, you must agree with them, and if you don’t, you will be arrested, thrown in jail, and silenced. It will be for the best, it will help maintain the collective, it will make the world a better place, because they say that it will, and they are right, and everybody else is wrong.

What social justice warriors really want is a communist society, with a mass of order following workers being dictated to and controlled by a select controller class (them), just as is happening today in the slave labour camp called China. SJW's are control freaks. They are the wannabe co-ordinator class of a politically correct communist hellhole. You must grovel, you must obey, and if you don’t you will be called a racist, sexist, homophobic bigot and be ostracised from the new totalitarian paradise that they are creating for all of us.

Sorry, big rant there, but that’s what you get here on my blog.

The original comic book Civil War had to end with a defeat for freedom, because that defeat reflects what is actually happening in America then, and today. Forget ‘conspiracies’ what is democracy, other than a competition between control freak authoritarian mind-sets, of people looking to control the top-down, centralised control system? That is what America is. That is what the UK is. That is what democracy is. Vote for a controller. If you don’t want a controller, tough luck, you’re going to get one anyway. And that isn’t even mentioning the controllers behind the political puppets, the controllers you elect who you don’t even get to see or hear about. That is democracy, and democracy is freedom, even though it’s not.

I enjoyed this book because it takes the defeat of freedom that happens in the original Civil War comic book and retells the end of the story, showing that an anarchist society (meaning freedom from the violent coercion of the state), and based on the no-harm principle, can actually work.

We all instinctively knew that Iron Man was the villain in Civil War, that his argument was weak, that it advocated slavery to government and that his idea of ‘order’ was fascism. But he won, and we all accept his idea of control and totalitarianism in our own lives, even though we know that it is wrong.

We demonstrate this when we go out to vote time after time after time for a new version of Iron Man to rule over us.  The option advocated by Captain America in this comic book, the idea that you should be free as long as you don’t harm anyone, is not available at the ballot box. You don’t get freedom through voting between an old or new slavemaster; of course you don’t, yet that’s what we do when we vote.

Civil War #1 then is a look at the possibility of freedom from a centralised control system, of experts, hen-pecking, telling us what we can and cannot do and say, and what is good or bad for us. It offers us the choice between freedom and tyranny that we should have in our real world, yet because of our acquiescence to government, fail to realise is even there.

Here’s a closely guarded secret that you won’t hear the pretty people on tell lie vision discuss. We do have a choice.  We don’t have to choose between a red or blue control system of henpecking authoritarian beaurucrats. In this comic book the choice is easy. Iron Man totalitarianism, or Captain America freedom and the no harm principal. However, in the real world that choice is hidden, with the corporate elite’s doing their best to hide it from us, and with social justice warrior twerps thinking they are making the world a better place, when all they are doing is maintaining the current paradigm of totalitarian control. Their change is stuck in the old control system paradigm, but the possibility of real change does exist.

There is a choice in the real world, as there is in this comic book, but the human slavery control system is not going to broadcast it from their propaganda ‘programming’ machines.

The choice is between voting for slavery, for control systems, or to abstain from voting altogether, to withdraw your consent to be governed. That’s the new paradigm, that’s the one thing that we all need to do en-masse in order to break free from the tyranny that has controlled and manipulated us for far too long.

Civil War #1 is a worthwhile comic book because it continues a story that had an unsatisfying ending, and because it reveals a truth about the society that we are living in today. The truth is that freedom exists, but it can only exist outside of a centralised control system called government.

Iron Man was the winner in the original Civil War, and Captain America was led away in handcuffs. In this version of Civil War, the battle for freedom continues, and just like in the real world, the struggle for independence, for genuine human emancipation from the tyrannical top down control system that is government never ends. Most fight for control, the few fight for individual freedom. Join the few, fight against collectivism, and fight to uphold the no harm principle as advocated by fictional heroes, and their real world counterparts as well.


Rating: 8/10 (Civil War lives again, and freedom is still an option)