Comic: Age of Ultron 1

[Thebestoftherest]

I think using an inhuman prediction as fact even if it is highly activate is wrong.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Have you guys really only been talking about the first out of three videos?

[clearspira]

Wait, I thought the plot of CW2 was Carol wanted to make the Marvel universe like minority report, and Stark didn't want people to be arrested for crimes they didn't do yet?

That's the simple version everyone uses to demonize Carol and legitimize Tony's stance despite everything that happens.

The real plot is there's an Inhuman that can predict the future very accurately, every possible terrible thing that could happen. Carol decides this is an asset given how often and how frequent world ending events occur on this planet. Tony doesn't like it because he believes to future is akin to God and they should mess with it, as if there's some divine plan we can't discern and we should just react instead of prevent bad things.

The Inhuman predicts Thanos is going to steal a cosmic cube. Carol calls up as many of her friends as she can to help her stop Thanos from getting it. They succeed, but She-Hulk is badly hurt and War Machine is killed by Thanos. Naturally, Tony blames the person who volunteered to help save the planet from Thanos and not the actual mad titan who killed him. He chews out Carol over this ridiculous notion that this proves him right, despite never offering an alternative to what they should've done when they heard Thanos was coming.

He then races off to kidnap the Inhuman, tortures him under threat of physical harm in an experiment he has not consented to, all in an effort to prove himself right. Ignoring that Carol was going to perform these very tests without all the various ethical violations that basically taint whatever his results are going to be.

Another vision occurs when the heroes SAVE the Inhuman from his KIDNAPPER Tony Stark who will never be charged with the crime of kidnapping. It shows Hulk destroying New York and killing everyone. Banner has supposedly been cured of the Hulk, nothing new honestly, so they head to his secret lab thousands of miles away, specifically because since the vision takes place in New York, being on the other side of the country when they confront means they can prevent it. They find evidence that suggests he could've brought the Hulk back by accident in his fear to keep it contained. As they are detaining him, Hawkeye kills him with an arrow.

This was NOT Carol's plan and actually went against her plan. Tony accuses her anyway and does so repeatedly, even at the trial, where Carol is a witness for the Prosecution. You know, cause she arrested Clint to try to hold him accountable. Everyone blames Carol, despite the fact she had no knowledge about what is actually a plan Banner set it motion. He asked Hawkeye to use a special arrow he created to kill him if the Hulk came back. Clint was just following Banner's request. He's acquited because the civilians of the Marvel Universe hate Hulk enough to decide Barton gets a pass.

Tony's stupid bullshit experiment results come in and suggest the Inhuman's predictive abilities are only fifty percent accurate, despite all evidence to the contrary concerning that, as every prediction we see in the tie-ins is accurate to a T and always seems to come true or will come true if not prevented. So the comic's claims do not match the evidence of the overall event.

However it looks like Tony might be right when a woman accused of being a Hydra Terrorist does not have a bomb she's supposed to have. She later turns out to be an active superhero hater, just not Hydra, and commits several murders. (Both this and that story are written by Bendis by the by.) She is able to do this because Tony breaks her out and assaults the Triskelion. The goal of this terrorist attack being... I guess he wants to kidnap the Inhuman again. We never really learn what his goal is, only that it makes everyone he tricks into coming with him into a damn terrorist by proxy.

A fight ensues, the only major one in this Civil War, and another vision hits, revealing Miles Morales is going to kill Captain America. A shocking impossible prediction that couldn't possibly be true! Except all the readers who know what the fuck is up know that it is highly likely because Steve Rogers is currently a Hydra Double Agent. If Carol was allowed to investigate this vision, like she does all of these visions, to the full extent, it's likely she would've discovered this. But HydraCap gaslights everyone into letting Miles go for his own twisted agenda, basically to prevent them from digging too deep and figuring out who he is. (Spoiers this vision nearly comes to pass too, it is only changed because HydraCap prepares for it.)

This culminates in a faceoff at the Capitol Building, where Miles is trying to prove that he's not a criminal by standing at the place his future crime is going to occur. It is not a good plan. Carol manages to call off the police, but then Tony shows up wearing a suit of armor that lookes like a beefed up War Machine. I should mention Carol was in a relationship with Rhodey, so this is fucking low, even by Stark's standards. It is designed to trigger and piss her off. It is even called "The Carolbuster" because fuck Tony. This is the point I lost all sympathy for the asshole.

He then tries to kill her... and I mean tries. Missiles, electrofist punches, laser beams designed to damage her despite her energy absorbtion powers. It is literally a weapon built to KILL Carol, and despite this she keeps asking him to stand down, he refuses. Her only option is to defend herself and put the dumb rich fuck into a coma.

Everyone blames her for this... despite the fact HE attacked HER! And had been the aggressor in every aspect of this stupid war. The comics blame Carol for starting the fight, despite never throwing the first punch. In fact, she let Stark punch her several times before she even retaliated in full! She had grounds to arrest him on kidnapping charges and never did!

It is a shameless railroading of Carol by the comic. She does nothing wrong... but she's portrayed as the bad guy because Minority Report told us her position is the bad guy and we can't have a nuanced discussion about the nature of predictive justice. No, just repeat what the dumb Cruise movie that dumbed the original story's plot down said!

And that's what CW2 is! A shameless attempt by Marvel to portray Carol Danvers as a villain while claiming to do her a favor! And all the while, despite being the bad guy of this event, she never once does anything wrong! It is infuriating! Not a single person I know, besides me, bothers to talk about this issue! That Tony Stark is worse in this event... and yet Carol is in the wrong and gets called a Fascist! For what? Wanting to prevent Thanos from murdering everyone? Oh wow! So evil! She stopped an intergalactic mass murderer! But someone died during the mission! What a monster! Lock her up! Lock her up!

Marvel often calls itself the world outside our window. And in 2016 that was no more true than Civil War 2! It perfectly encapsulated a political climate where a powerful woman was decried as an inhuman monster by a rich asshole who was doing far worse in the open, but everyone ignored his crimes and focused on hers! Bravo, Marvel!

Comparing a badly written comic book to Harvey Weinstein is going too far. Keep it light.

[Rodan56]

I think using an inhuman prediction as fact even if it is highly activate is wrong.

I understand what you were attempting to say, so I'll elaborate. The Inhuman could predict more than just crimes. He could predict disasters, monster attacks, cosmic invasions, major accidents and various other things beyond murders or robbery.

Are you okay with being able to predict where hurricanes are going to hit? Or an Earthquake? If a giant monster was going to come on shore and destroy a city, would you like to know when and where? Alien invaders are coming, will you do nothing? A nuclear plant is going to explode, will you just shrug?

The fact is, the ability to predict the future was not a one sum game in that instance. He could do more than predict murders, he could warn about impending danger. That's how the event started, he warned the heroes about a massive cosmic horror that was going to destroy the planet.

So if you're not okay with the crime prediction, but you'd be fine with him predicting those sorts of things, why? If you feel that this is always unethical, even if the predictions save lives and don't always punish people, can you justify doing nothing if you're warned beforehand? And if you decide to intervene there, why not other incidents? See where this is going?

Comparing a badly written comic book to Harvey Weinstein is going too far. Keep it light.

I wasn't refrencing Weinstein. Tony Stark is a stand in for another rich asshole who shall not be named. And honestly, given the fact they are both blatant hypocrites who see themselves as above the law, the comparisson is apt.

[Thebestoftherest]

I think using an inhuman prediction as fact even if it is highly activate is wrong.

I understand what you were attempting to say, so I'll elaborate. The Inhuman could predict more than just crimes. He could predict disasters, monster attacks, cosmic invasions, major accidents and various other things beyond murders or robbery.

Are you okay with being able to predict where hurricanes are going to hit? Or an Earthquake? If a giant monster was going to come on shore and destroy a city, would you like to know when and where? Alien invaders are coming, will you do nothing? A nuclear plant is going to explode, will you just shrug?

The fact is, the ability to predict the future was not a one sum game in that instance. He could do more than predict murders, he could warn about impending danger. That's how the event started, he warned the heroes about a massive cosmic horror that was going to destroy the planet.

So if you're not okay with the crime prediction, but you'd be fine with him predicting those sorts of things, why? If you feel that this is always unethical, even if the predictions save lives and don't always punish people, can you justify doing nothing if you're warned beforehand? And if you decide to intervene there, why not other incidents? See where this is going?

Comparing a badly written comic book to Harvey Weinstein is going too far. Keep it light.

I wasn't refrencing Weinstein. Tony Stark is a stand in for another rich asshole who shall not be named. And honestly, given the fact they are both blatant hypocrites who see themselves as above the law, the comparisson is apt.

Good point, nice Avatar.

[Jonathan101]

I thought Red Hulk debuted just before OMD, but it turned out it was after (well, "Red Hulk" debuted after). Still, shame on Chuck for thinking TASKmaster must have debuted after OMD just because he hadn't heard of him. Also, I do think he should have reviewed the Superior Spiderman issue as well, especially since it isn't actually Peter anyway.

Anyway, haven't read this comic, but my biggest issue with it by a country mile is how, once again, the writers ignore how time travel works in the Marvel universe for the sake of the story they wanting to tell. Time travel does not truly alter the future in Marvel comics; it simply creates another parallel universe, and ALL of the characters in this story should know that based on the adventures they have had. It certainly shouldn't have broken the universe or caused any harmful effects to Wolverine (who has time travelled plenty of times already).

Also annoyed that the story seems to be implying that Dr Doom is the only one who has such a machine, when several other characters not only have them but use them fairly casually, even for holidays, the fact that nobody considers using it until they learn that Ultron is operating from the future, the fact that their attack on future-Ultron went exactly as you would expect when a bunch of scientific and strategic supergeniuses decide to attack the enemy ulta-mega-death stronghold with zero intel, or that nobody seems to have considered all of the alternate options for dealing with this sort of thing- appealing to higher cosmic powers, getting the Infinity Gauntlet or Cosmic Cube or some other powerful artefact, travelling to alternate realities and waging war from there...

Basically, AoU sounds like your bog standard "everyone acts like an idiot and forgets all of the things they could do instead for the sake of the plot" sort of deal. Ultron / Dormammu / Red Skull / Dr Doom taking over the world and being stopped by altering the timeline is not an "event" in the Marvel universe; it is every other Tuesday, and the heroes should know how to deal with it by now.

[Jonathan101]

While I'm at it, assassinating Hank Pym should have led to a world ruled by Egghead.

Missed opportunity.

[Thebestoftherest]

While I'm at it, assassinating Hank Pym should have led to a world ruled by Egghead.

Missed opportunity.

Personally I would have love I killing him made the world a million time better.

[Fianna]

Wait, I thought the plot of CW2 was Carol wanted to make the Marvel universe like minority report, and Stark didn't want people to be arrested for crimes they didn't do yet?

That's the simple version everyone uses to demonize Carol and legitimize Tony's stance despite everything that happens.

The real plot is there's an Inhuman that can predict the future very accurately, every possible terrible thing that could happen. Carol decides this is an asset given how often and how frequent world ending events occur on this planet. Tony doesn't like it because he believes to future is akin to God and they should mess with it, as if there's some divine plan we can't discern and we should just react instead of prevent bad things.

The Inhuman predicts Thanos is going to steal a cosmic cube. Carol calls up as many of her friends as she can to help her stop Thanos from getting it. They succeed, but She-Hulk is badly hurt and War Machine is killed by Thanos. Naturally, Tony blames the person who volunteered to help save the planet from Thanos and not the actual mad titan who killed him. He chews out Carol over this ridiculous notion that this proves him right, despite never offering an alternative to what they should've done when they heard Thanos was coming.

He then races off to kidnap the Inhuman, tortures him under threat of physical harm in an experiment he has not consented to, all in an effort to prove himself right. Ignoring that Carol was going to perform these very tests without all the various ethical violations that basically taint whatever his results are going to be.

Another vision occurs when the heroes SAVE the Inhuman from his KIDNAPPER Tony Stark who will never be charged with the crime of kidnapping. It shows Hulk destroying New York and killing everyone. Banner has supposedly been cured of the Hulk, nothing new honestly, so they head to his secret lab thousands of miles away, specifically because since the vision takes place in New York, being on the other side of the country when they confront means they can prevent it. They find evidence that suggests he could've brought the Hulk back by accident in his fear to keep it contained. As they are detaining him, Hawkeye kills him with an arrow.

This was NOT Carol's plan and actually went against her plan. Tony accuses her anyway and does so repeatedly, even at the trial, where Carol is a witness for the Prosecution. You know, cause she arrested Clint to try to hold him accountable. Everyone blames Carol, despite the fact she had no knowledge about what is actually a plan Banner set it motion. He asked Hawkeye to use a special arrow he created to kill him if the Hulk came back. Clint was just following Banner's request. He's acquited because the civilians of the Marvel Universe hate Hulk enough to decide Barton gets a pass.

Tony's stupid bullshit experiment results come in and suggest the Inhuman's predictive abilities are only fifty percent accurate, despite all evidence to the contrary concerning that, as every prediction we see in the tie-ins is accurate to a T and always seems to come true or will come true if not prevented. So the comic's claims do not match the evidence of the overall event.

However it looks like Tony might be right when a woman accused of being a Hydra Terrorist does not have a bomb she's supposed to have. She later turns out to be an active superhero hater, just not Hydra, and commits several murders. (Both this and that story are written by Bendis by the by.) She is able to do this because Tony breaks her out and assaults the Triskelion. The goal of this terrorist attack being... I guess he wants to kidnap the Inhuman again. We never really learn what his goal is, only that it makes everyone he tricks into coming with him into a damn terrorist by proxy.

A fight ensues, the only major one in this Civil War, and another vision hits, revealing Miles Morales is going to kill Captain America. A shocking impossible prediction that couldn't possibly be true! Except all the readers who know what the fuck is up know that it is highly likely because Steve Rogers is currently a Hydra Double Agent. If Carol was allowed to investigate this vision, like she does all of these visions, to the full extent, it's likely she would've discovered this. But HydraCap gaslights everyone into letting Miles go for his own twisted agenda, basically to prevent them from digging too deep and figuring out who he is. (Spoiers this vision nearly comes to pass too, it is only changed because HydraCap prepares for it.)

This culminates in a faceoff at the Capitol Building, where Miles is trying to prove that he's not a criminal by standing at the place his future crime is going to occur. It is not a good plan. Carol manages to call off the police, but then Tony shows up wearing a suit of armor that lookes like a beefed up War Machine. I should mention Carol was in a relationship with Rhodey, so this is fucking low, even by Stark's standards. It is designed to trigger and piss her off. It is even called "The Carolbuster" because fuck Tony. This is the point I lost all sympathy for the asshole.

He then tries to kill her... and I mean tries. Missiles, electrofist punches, laser beams designed to damage her despite her energy absorbtion powers. It is literally a weapon built to KILL Carol, and despite this she keeps asking him to stand down, he refuses. Her only option is to defend herself and put the dumb rich fuck into a coma.

Everyone blames her for this... despite the fact HE attacked HER! And had been the aggressor in every aspect of this stupid war. The comics blame Carol for starting the fight, despite never throwing the first punch. In fact, she let Stark punch her several times before she even retaliated in full! She had grounds to arrest him on kidnapping charges and never did!

It is a shameless railroading of Carol by the comic. She does nothing wrong... but she's portrayed as the bad guy because Minority Report told us her position is the bad guy and we can't have a nuanced discussion about the nature of predictive justice. No, just repeat what the dumb Cruise movie that dumbed the original story's plot down said!

And that's what CW2 is! A shameless attempt by Marvel to portray Carol Danvers as a villain while claiming to do her a favor! And all the while, despite being the bad guy of this event, she never once does anything wrong! It is infuriating! Not a single person I know, besides me, bothers to talk about this issue! That Tony Stark is worse in this event... and yet Carol is in the wrong and gets called a Fascist! For what? Wanting to prevent Thanos from murdering everyone? Oh wow! So evil! She stopped an intergalactic mass murderer! But someone died during the mission! What a monster! Lock her up! Lock her up!

Marvel often calls itself the world outside our window. And in 2016 that was no more true than Civil War 2! It perfectly encapsulated a political climate where a powerful woman was decried as an inhuman monster by a rich asshole who was doing far worse in the open, but everyone ignored his crimes and focused on hers! Bravo, Marvel!

I haven't read Civil War II myself, a number of comments I've read have seen it as being a metaphor for real life racial profiling. Even if it's a poorly done metaphor that doesn't hold up to scrutiny, that's still going to color how people view the characters and their actions.

[Rodan56]

I haven't read Civil War II myself, a number of comments I've read have seen it as being a metaphor for real life racial profiling. Even if it's a poorly done metaphor that doesn't hold up to scrutiny, that's still going to color how people view the characters and their actions.

A fair point, and one that is easily observable. However, the fact the thematic elements, even done poorly, will color the perceptions of the characters and their actions still leaves a few glaring issues at hand.

1: It breeds false conceptions and perpetuates inaccuracies about the storyline. Specifically, Carol Danvers being called a fascist despite none of her actions being fascistic or based in that ideology. Everyone who is arrested has the right to full legal representation under the law, they can even get out on bail/parole. At worst it is authoritarian, but that does not make it fascistic, those are two different things that don't always preclude the other. However, a youtuber making the claim Carol creates concentration camps in this storyline comes from that perception and it is wrong regardless of how colored the thematic elements make this storyline, because Carol does not ever create concentration camps. EVER! No where in this story does she create concentration camps and anyone who claims otherwise is lying or mistaken. And they should be corrected.

2: The fact it is badly done further illustrates why they shouldn't have gone with the angle. Not only is it politically charged, Marvel should've expected a degree of backlash to the character of Carol Danvers. They should've known that this was going to hurt her image regardless of anything else they did because of the implications. You cannot typically sell the idea of predicive justice to most people unless you are willing to put in more work to justify the idea within universe and with the character. And they didn't, they only made it harder on Carol by putting her in a position of a bad guy and never properly giving her a chance to defend herself. They stacked the deck against her and felt that it was the best way to get her out into the spotlight, by making most people's first interaction with the character in a mainstream event as the bad guy who wants to arrest people for crimes they haven't committed yet. That's going to be a hard sell unless you put in the work to do it right, and the fact they did it poorly only hurts the story more.

3: Ultimately the issue comes down to the fact that this isn't racial profiling. The Inhuman himself is a minority, he has Latino heritage and, evidently, no real racial or political prejudice. Most of the people in the visions are white and there is no direct prediliction towards race. So calling it racial profiling is inaccurate, so Bendis just calls it profiling. Which is not the same thing. Racial profiling is based on personal prejudices, no real scientific basis, and are targetted at specific groups. Profiling is a tool used by the law enforcement to limit the suspect pool in very specific cases. It is based off of the actual science of Criminology and is never deemed as evidence alone. It is simply a means to focus law enforcement on specific individuals, not populations and is never based on racial prejudices if done properly. The Inhuman visions are not even this, despite what the story claims. How do you profile an earthquake? Or a cosmic being invading a planet? That's not what profiling does, it cannot predict the future and even the FBI will tell you that.

Meanwhile, in universe, predicting the future is not some weird esoteric thing that has only been discovered now in this Inhuman. We have had time travellers, psychics, mystics, people who can see or have come from the future with prophecies of their own. Magical and tech related means of predicting the future have always been a thing. Even Iron Man tried it during his proactive stint in the 90s, they based a damn cartoon off of that particular run. Acting like this Inhuman is new, strange, foreign and unknowable to them all is ridiculous. Predicting the future is a scientific fact within the Marvel universe. As scientific as aliens, other dimensions, time travel, sapient artificial intelligence and shrink rays! You cannot act like this is something that has never been done before because it has been. And you cannot relate it to Profiling because it makes no sense for it to be in this context!

Bendis wanted to do a political message that he felt was important today, and unfortunately he screwed up because he had no idea what he was even talking about. He could've made something cerebral, something actually challenging and interesting. Instead he just made a dumber version of the movie version of Minority Report and his editors shoved the Civil War name onto to it to capitalize on another movie that was coming out.

So you're right, the event did color the perception of people regardless of how well it was written, but that doesn't make it any less badly handled and the reaction to Carol Danvers afterwards any less unfair.