Marvel's Civil War II # 1

 By Mark Rodriguez

Last time, She-Hulk tried to defend the supervillain Jester in court because even though he committed crimes before, he did nothing this time. He was still found guilty and was killed in prison. She-Hulk is upset but Maria Hill from SHIELD chocks it up to 'oh, he would have committed more crimes anyway'. This angers She-Hulk. Meanwhile the Terrigen Mist hit some kids and turned two of them into Inhumans. One of them came out looking like a demonic monster, another one seemingly passed out with fire in his eyes. When he woke up the entire city they were in was burnt to cinders.

The story opens with Ulysses, the kid from before, running away until he finally trips and falls. Medusa and the rest of the Inhumans (Beast is there too) says they can help him and that what happened to him was a good thing.

Meanwhile in Manhattan, the Avengers, in this case, Iron Man, Miles Morales Spider-Man, Sam Wilson Captain America, Nova and Ms. Marvel were all hit by something. They soon stand back up and get ready to face it. They are facing some sort of giant robot surrounded by lots of (I assume) regular size ones that kinda look like Sentinels and Ultron fused with Galactus.

Just then Thor (female version) arrives and leads the charge with a whole brigade of superheroes including Beast, Medusa, War Machine, Peter Parker Spider-Man, She-Hulk, Black Panther, Storm and Deadpool, among many others.

You know it's a big deal when even Deadpool gets invited, most of them can barely stand the guy. Or maybe he saw all the heroes headed somewhere and he decided to tag along.

The heroes that can fly attack the normal-sized robots while Dr. Strange gathers all the magic users to prepare The Group Spell of Dimension Reversal. As the giant robot monster is being attacked by the spell, Spider-Man (Parker) and Spider-Woman keep local kids out of harm's way. The giant robot monster is sent back to the dimension it came from and the sky is now clear. Nova wonders how everyone knew that thing was coming and who alerted everyone but is pretty much ignored by everyone. Captain Marvel says the drinks are on Stark.

The next evening at the Stark building almost every Marvel superhero is gathered and Tony raises a toast. He says they rarely get such a clean win and want to thank the Inhumans for giving them plenty of warning ahead of time so they would be able to stop that menace. As the heroes mingle, She-Hulk asks Captain Marvel just how did the Inhumans know about the giant invader that was coming. Captain Marvel doesn't know and offers to ask Medusa. Medusa tells them to come with them.

In a dark room away from the rest of the party, Medusa introduces them to Ulysses who says he was able to see that thing coming. He doesn't know how to describe it, since he just became an Inhuman. Tony suggests to bring Jean Grey to help out. Steve Rogers says there's a rift between the X-Men and the Inhumans and Tony says it's a party.

Jean Grey offers to link everyone's mind to Ulysses so they can see what he means as he explains his story. He explains how the Terrigen Mist hit his college a few months ago. Just then the room goes dark and Ulysses is the only one in the room. Jean tells everyone that his mind can't be read. Captain Marvel offers him a position with the Ultimates since they want to stop disasters before they happen.

Tony isn't too sure about this since this is a kid they don't know, whose mind can't be read and he predicts possible futures. Rhodes says the giant robot did come as predicted, but Tony says they managed to stop it so it wasn't the future that Ulysses saw, but a possible future. Tony asks the kid for his full story.

Ulysses once again explains how he was affected by the Terrigen said he didn't feel or look any different, but he was suddenly able to see things. The visions were so real, he felt like he was actually there. He was lost going from one vision to the next. The Inhumans found him and helped him. He learned to keep calm whenever he gets a vision and look around for details. He saw the vision of the apocalypse and looked around to see what day this way, but it was stopped thanks to the heroes.

Tony gives an example and says what if Ulysses tells them that The Hulk and Utron had a baby that turned out to be Hitler, do they stop the Hulk before it happens, do they lock him away before he does something they don't like? Tony says the other day was an easy call to make, just stop the giant monster from invading... but what if the nest threat is one of them? He asks Captain Marvel what is SHE turns out to be a threat and they have to stop her even though it's before she even thought of doing anything. Captain Marvel says she thought Tony was a futurist. Tony says they should just be careful with the things Ulysses says and how they react to them and to enjoy the party.

Three weeks later, Ulysses has a horrible vision and tells Medusa that they have to tell the Ultimates.

Tony Stark is in his lab looking for his new stealth armor (it's invisible and he's trying to find it) when his assistant Watson arrives. She tells him that Rhodes is gone. Tony suits up and goes to find his body, surprised that something was able to blast through his armor. He asks how this happened. Maria Hill explains that Captain Marvel arranged a task force and Tony goes off yelling for Carol.

Tony sees that Carol is also messed up, with a badly damaged eye, and She-Hulk is in intensive care as well. Carol says she's alive but they're not sure if she'll ever wake up or if she'll ever walk again. They need Bruce Banner to see her since her body is so unique due to the gamma rays. Carol says it was Thanos. He didn't attack them.... they were the ones that ambushed him. Thanos was on Earth thinking there was still a cosmic cube somewhere on the planet and the heroes jumped him. Carol has a flashback of Thanos ramming his fist right through War Machine.

Good God. Since Rhodes didn't die in Captain America Civil War, I guess they decided to kill him off for real in this comic!

Tony asks how they knew where Thanos was going to be. She remains silent. She then says that Ulysses has a vision. Tony is angry and says this is as if Carol killed his friend herself. She says he was a soldier and he chose to go into battle. He just happened to be there when the kid warned the Ultimates and he volunteered to join in. Tony asks where Thanos is now. She says they have him in a cell down below. Tony storms off saying he's going to make sure that they don't play god again.

She tries to go after him, but She-Hulk manages to hold her hand. She tells her to 'fight for it'. She tells them it's their future, not his. Just then she flatlines and everyone panics.

My opinions-

Wow, what an issue. So the city that was destroyed last time was one of this kid's visions, possibly by this giant robot monster thing. And also from what I gather, after Secret Wars, not only do Parker and Morales co-exist, but so do the Ultimates and the Avengers. Our Wolverine is still dead, but Old Man Logan from an alternate story is now running around in his place. And I see that young 'plucked out of the past' Jean Grey is still there, filling in for the modern day version that is still dead.

The comic was fun to read, even though most of it was chatter... but it was fun chatter. I almost felt like I was watching the movies and I could hear Robert Downey Jr saying all of Iron Man's lines. The party scene was full of good lines all around. Rhodes complaining about his older armor '80's hand-me-downs' because Tony won't upgrade his suit for him. Tony saying he's not going to get into a moral debate with Steve since it never works out well for him. Spider-Man throwing in one liners every chance he gets. Even the background shows She-Hulk arm wrestling with female Thor. It's kinda cool seeing all the heroes get along. For a few seconds anyway.

Tony gives a good example of moral implications of trying to stop something before it starts. It ties into the last issue where the Jester was killed in prison before he actually did anything. It's also similar to how the Shi'Ar wanted to kill the young Jean Grey from the past for her crimes as the Phoenix in the X-Men/Guardians of the Galaxy crossover, when from her point of view, this happened way before she ever got in contact with the Phoenix.

The only thing is, while Tony had a case, the tragedy in the fight against Thanos wasn't exactly the best example. Thanos would have arrived on Earth anyway and wreak havoc, and people would have died, and maybe in this battle Rhodes or someone else would have died anyway. A better example would have been Ulysses predicting Captain America being HYDRA all along and whatever his master plan would have been. In fact I'm kinda surprised Steve seems so calm and collected when in the same room with a kid that could call him out as HYDRA at any moment.

As for Ulysses himself... kinda funny how he was literally a nobody in the last issue (noone even knew his name) and now he's on everybody's lips. I wonder what happened to the other girl though, the one that became a demonic monster thing? Also I'm a bit confused with all the uproar he's causing. Surely with all of the years upon years of heroes, villains, mutants and Inhumans the Marvel Universe has come across someone that can see visions of the future before?

On the topic of Rhodes dying, I wonder if it was a coincidence that this happened due to fake out in the at-the-time new movie Captain America Civil War. Just to explain, at the time the fanbase was complaining that the Marvel movies never had any real 'stakes' or any real consequences and things always ended with a happy ending. No one really had anything personal against Rhodey per say, but the movie had a scene where Vision accidentally shot him down and everybody was expecting a dramatic scene as Tony now had to deal with the death of his closest friend. Rhodey was still alive, even though he lost the use of his legs, which would carry over to later movies, but many people called it a fake out and 'another example of the MCU playing it safe'. I wonder if this story was somehow reactionary to that because we will see just how far Tony is gonna take things after the death of his friend.

Anyways let's see what happens next issue as Iron Man goes AWOL.