Marvel's Civil War II # 0

 By Mark Rodriguez

So the Free Comic Book Day issue back in 2016 dealt with several heroes helping a new Inhuman named Ulysses with his future visions. One of his visions predicts that Thanos will arrive to cause trouble, so the heroes go to fight him. However during this fight War Machine dies and She-Hulk is gravely injured. Let's take a step back to what led to these events.

The story opens with attorney Jennifer Walters AKA She-Hulk defending her client, Jonathan Powers, AKA the Jester (one of the lame bad guys the Superior Spider-Man once beat within an inch of his life) who was tricked into discussing his past crimes with undercover officers. She says since they couldn't pin anything on him, they arrested him basically for talking about the good old days, even though currently he has committed no crime. She argues that he shouldn't be arrested for his thoughts, it would lead to us losing our rights as free people.

Meanwhile in Latveria, War Machine tells armed terrorists to drop their weapons. This is being watched in the White House Situation Room where the president thanks him for a job well done. He offers Rhodes a chance to be the Secretary of Defense and use that as a stepping stone to someday be president. He says sooner or later some superhero would try to run for office, he'd rather it be someone like James Rhodes instead of Tony Stark.

At Ohio State University, a guy tries to ask a girl out but is interrupted by everyone staring at the Terrigen arriving. As this bizzare mist washes over the student body, the girls explains that this affects Inhumans and reveals whatever powers they might have had. It seems the girl and guy were both affected and are now in giant cocoons. The other kids don't know what to do or what will happen now.

Meanwhile in The Triskelion where the Ultimates reside, Captain Marvel asks for updates on Alpha Flight and the A Force. She gets a visit from Doc Samson. They discuss how Captain Marvel is using her team to try to stop disasters before they even start. Doc Samson tries to balance his life both as a psychoanalyst and as a superhero. He asks her if she misses the civilian life. She asks if she's trying to psychoanalyze her, and he says he's concerned with everything she's been taking on. She's worried about if something big happens and they're not enough to stop it.

Jennifer, now as She-Hulk arrives in front of Maria Hill who asks her how she's doing regarding the Jester. She-Hulk says she not too happy that she lost the case but she's lost cases before and will appeal this one. Maria says that the Jester is dead, killed in jail when he was attacked by inmates and a guard shot him.

She-Hulk is upset because this time he went to jail without doing anything. Maria says he was a repeat offender and would have committed crimes again, like super villains always do. She-Hulk looks noticeably upset.

Meanwhile there's a crowd gathered around the two cocoons. The guys breaks out first and everyone bombards him with questions. Just then the other breaks opens and Michelle pops out as some sort of demonic monster. The guy's eyes glows red and he seems to pass out. When he snaps out of it, there is fire all around him and everyone is gone as if a big fire blast hit everything. Not only did this effect the immediate area... the entire city is now a raging inferno with all the buildings burnt to a crisp and everyone gone from sight!

My Thoughts-

While the movie Captain America Civil War was very different from the comics, the basic idea was the same. A tragedy happened and the government decided all heroes had to sign up for their registration program. Tony agreed the heroes needed to stay in check while Steve didn't, because he feels the government will either send them to places they shouldn't or stop them when they have to act, and thus started the divide between the heroes. This led to the big divide among the Avengers which would cause issues during Infinity War and End Game where things might have gone differently had the heroes stood together from the start.

This time we have a kid that just gained the powers to look into the future after the Terrigen Mist unlocked his Inhuman abilities. Captain Marvel's team intends to use this to their advantage and stop tragedies before they occur while Iron Man wants to put him down. While the Sam Wilson Captain America isn't leading the team, he's still on Carol's side in a manner of speaking this will be Captain America VS Iron Man again. A lot has happened in the Marvel comics throughout the years and I do believe this is one of the first stories I read with Carol as Captain Marvel rather than Avengers VS X-Men where she was still Miss Marvel.

The comic does raise interesting commentary on what is basically 'thought-policing' where the idea is to take action against someone who is merely thinking of committing a crime or might potentially committing a crime before he or she actually does it. The problem is, what if the person was to not actually do anything? In this case She-Hulk tries to defend Jester from serving time while not actually having done anything at the moment. 

Speaking of which, I never thought I'd ever hear from Jester again. The only thing I know from him was that he and another villain named Screwball were playing pranks on Spider-Man and basically making a fool out of him. Unfortunately for them, this was when Spidey was the Superior Spider-Man, with Doctor Octopus' mind in his body. The good doctor didn't take too kindly to their pranks and beat them nearly to death. And now Jester has been flat out killed off, and by random no-name thugs in prison no less. Maria Hill brings up the subject that maybe one shouldn't feel remorse over the death of a super villain that was bound to cause more trouble. Now maybe if we were talking about someone like the Green Goblin or Carnage, that would make sense as morbid as it sounds... but the Jester seemed more like a goofball that might have committed heists but never flat out murder people. The punishment doesn't fight the crime there Maria.

I also have to laugh at the poor kid who nobody seems to know. Everyone seems to know Michelle and worry about her being trapped in the cocoon and whenever she's about to get out. When it comes to the kid that tried to ask her out everyone is like 'who's the other one' 'I don't know'. Poor kid musta been a nobody. That's about to change for him real soon.