Some Suggestions For Civil War 2

Because you know it's coming.

A lot of people are upset that Civil War kind of sucked - that it wasn't very civil, and that its events didn't really constitute a war. Civil War was kind of like when you break up with your girlfriend and you keep running into her and she makes unwarranted catty remarks about you behind your back and calls this new girl you're seeing a whore. Just like that, except Black Goliath died.

Quality aside, though, Civil War made boatloads of money for The House of Ideas, so it's going to probably stick around for awhile, and in a year or two, we'll get Civil War 2. I mean, they already announced the Annihilation sequel and that only made one boatload of money. So, to the unlucky for-hire writer tasked with delivering this superficially dystopian tale, I have some cautionary advice to offer:

1. Make sure that characters have reasons to behave the way they do. I mean, I'm a comic fan, so I know the dangerous allure of sitting around and saying, "hey, what if Green Lantern were a crossdresser?" but I know - and I hope you do, too - that wishing doesn't make Hal Jordan put on a dress for no reason. It also, despite that one issue of Exiles, does not make Tony Stark into Doctor Doom.

2. Dammit, it's a Thor robot! Stop calling it a clone. The only rationale for a clone of Thor being full of sparks, metal and circuits is that Thor, and by extension all Asgardians, were robots in the first place. Ultron, I wouldst 01000100101011101 with thee!

3. Don't resort to cloning. Howard Mackie learned this the hard way, and you shouldn't repeat his mistakes. The only place to go from a robot clone of Thor is a group of robot Thor clones, and I am pretty sure that a gang of robots with god DNA is something Grant Morrison comes up with every morning during breakfast and then says, "No, that won't work no matter how hard I try." No, not even if they're called The T.H.O.R.* Corps.

4. Recruiting serial killers and sociopaths to arrest costumed heroes is not only too extravagant as a metaphor, it's also pretty retarded.

5. Try killing a white hero that's been in a book sometime in the past five years. Or, if we're to trust the Distinguished Competition, you can substitute a C-list hero's wife for added controversy. But, really, Marvel's only got like three black heroes, so don't kill off two of them during your event.

6. Think tactically. If you're Captain America, and you're going to teleport a bunch of superpowered individuals somewhere where they can duke it out to the death, don't go to a heavily populated urban center. Jersey was right there, Cap. Go to the Pine Barrens, or Paterson.

7. Learn diplomacy. If a teammate voices some reservations about the current system for doing things, it's better to hear him out and discuss your differences over lunch and a cocktail, not just order a bunch of goons to fire assault rifles at him.

You might be wondering, "Jeff, what in Civil War was good?" Well, I like the part where Captain America surfs on a fighter jet. And the part where Hercules beats the shit out of clone Thor with his own clone hammer. And the part where the Invisible Woman basically flips clone Thor the bird. That stuff with Spider-Man was alright, too, but we all know it'll get retconned eventually. The moral here is to embrace senseless violence and nearly completely disregard the vagaries of your story. Have Wolverine and Snake Eyes fight, with no explanation of what he's doing in the Marvel Universe, and have SuperPro rescue a more established hero from certain doom. Do something big and ridiculous at the end - have Loki show up, or have Magneto try to drop Rhode Island on everyone. As in character as I might think it is, ending on "Yep, yep, let's pack it in, guys. They got us good," is what we in the industry call anticlimactic.

*Tressed, Hammer-Operating Robots, naturally.