Civil War II

I do a terrible job of keeping up with Marvel and their ginormous stable of characters; which made the beginning of this book rather confusing. I was quite lost through a few of the first chapters. There are many moments where the timeline jumps from the past to the present with zero notification of a change. The authors/artists take the time to put a little box explaining WHERE you are, but not WHEN. Your few hints that maybe this is a different time, are things like Spider-Man being a completely different person, or a female character's hair being straight rather than wavy. I'm sure all of this would have been more understandable to me if I followed Marvel's mythology more closely. Thank goodness for my bestie/Marvel-Guru. If you don't have one of these, get one at your local comic book store, or get REALLY talented at reading Wikipedia without spoiling anything for yourself (unlikely).

That all being said, this story is phenomenal! I am blown away by the relevance to today's issues of whether thought and speech are a crime that is legally/morally punishable. Do we punish people for what we “know” they're going to do? Then of course, the age-old questions of fate and free will and whether either exist. Heart-wrenching, gut-twisting events made me flip through the pages in a single day. The story also finally fleshes itself out and things start clicking into place less than a quarter of the way through. So despite starting out hopelessly confused, I quickly started to gain enough of an understanding to enjoy the story immensely! I'm even chomping at the bit to read more about certain characters that really stood out; female Thor never intrigued me until now, and The Inhumans REALLY caught my interest.

Whether you're an avid Marvel fan, or just the casual reader; I'd most definitely recommend the Civil War series! It's a great snapshot of the Marvelverse, and gives a wonderful preview of what the franchise has to offer.