Side Lines

Today is D-Day for many local comics shops -- or should that be C-Day, for Infinite Crisis and Civil War?

Regular readers of this site will remember my frustrations with Infinite Crisis. It took too long to percolate. Identity Crisis was just a big tease. The lead-ins were uneven. Cathy Lee Crosby was miscolored. The staples weren’t properly aligned.

It wasn’t all bad. Geoff Johns gave Batman a lot of good lines (although Bart Allen got the best single-word balloon) and Phil Jiminez managed all the action pretty well. The George Pérez and Jerry Ordway pages were much appreciated. The issues sometimes felt disjointed from each other without the material in the Specials, but each issue seemed pretty fun on its own.

Even so, I won’t be sorry to bid Alex Luthor and Superboy-Prime adieu later today. I’m looking forward more to 52 as a one-stop tour through DC’s big year of readjustment. (I’m also wondering whether DC will at last abandon its unwieldy 10- to 12-year timeline for something a bit more expansive, like this one here.) In short, thanks to Identity Crisis, Infinite Crisis, and their attendant mini-events, I have crossover fatigue.

That’s why I think this may be the perfect opportunity for me to pick up Civil War #1. It offers casual Marvel fans like me the chance to experience its latest big event without the burdens of expectations or backstory. The only Civil War-related issues I have read so far are the two Fantastic Fours dealing with Thor’s hammer, and a Comics 101 essay on the Illuminati special. I can come to Civil War fairly cold, almost like those hypothetical new readers Marvel hopes to entice with all its news coverage. As much hype and backstory as I absorbed before and during Infinite Crisis, that’s how much I will lack going into Civil War.

Honestly, I have read at least one regular Marvel book every month for most of the past twenty years, and I tend not to get caught up in its big events. I think the last big Marvel crossover I bought into was "Heroes Reborn." I’m interested in Civil War now because the advance word has been positive, and because it would be an opportunity for me to look at it with something approaching objectivity. I don’t feel the need to read it just to keep up with the handful of Marvel books I currently follow – if it’s that important, its effects will be reflected in the pages of those books. I also have the option of waiting for the collection. Finally, lest we forget, crossover fatigue.

So, we’ll see what happens later today. Will I fork over $3.99 for some philosophy and an apparently stunning Captain America sequence? When everything goes into the toilet, on whose side am I?

(I hate ending sentences with prepositions.)