Kemper's Reviews > Fantastic Four: Civil War

A lot of the blame for Civil War can be placed on Tony Stark, but in the Marvel history books there should also be a fair portion assigned to Reed Richards, too. Which shouldn’t be a surprise because that guy has always been kind of a jerk.

The idea here is to show how Marvel’s First Family is torn apart by the conflict. Reed is a staunch supporter of registration and is using his big brain to help the government including building a prison in the Negative Zone to house super powered people who refuse to follow the Superhero Registration Act, and they won’t be getting a trial. Sue questions the new law as well as what Reed and Tony are doing, and she leaves to join Team Cap. Johnny was badly beaten by a crowd of civilians looking for a superhero to blame after the Stamford explosion, but he’s still on his sister’s side. Poor Ben Grimm is the one torn up the most about what’s happening to his friends and his country because he thinks the law is terrible, but he also doesn’t believe in fighting against his own government so he decides to just go hang out in Paris for a while.

These FF comics should have been a series of devastating stories if Marvel wanted to really sell readers on the idea of how the Civil War was splitting the ranks of its superheroes, but it never gets to that level where you fear that that irrevocable damage is being done. Sue leaves Reed for a while, but that’s happened before so while it’s sad there’s not that much bite. Johnny is strangely MIA for a lot of the story. I felt for Ben the most as he struggles with his conscience, and the best bit in the whole thing when he stops a battle between the two sides by pointing out the damage they’re doing all around them. This also includes some things celebrating the FF's 45th anniversary including a mildly funny meta story featuring Stan Lee. It's not bad, but it seems weird to have something celebrating the team in a story that should be about it disintegrating.

I did like the piece with Reed calling in his former foe The Thinker to essentially check his math on his projections about what would happen if they don’t accept registration, and he offers an explanation there about how both he and Tony are absolutely certain that following the SRA is the only chance to avoid bloodier conflict and possibly the entire destruction of the superhero community. It’s those moments that remind you that Tony and Reed are heroes and not just jackasses tearing Marvel apart for funsies.