Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Marvel Honchos Reveal Original Civil War Concept

Tom Brevoort has released some correspondence between himself, Mark Millar and Joe Quesada from early on in the development of Marvel's recent Civil War mega-event. There are some significant ways in which it differs from the version that eventually found its way into our hands. For one, it was planned as a 12-issue series, not 7. One of the big reasons seems to be that it would have included World War Hulk.... kindof. From the article:

"I’d really like to see the Hulk attack Earth and bring with him small, five foot versions of the Hulk called Hulk Babies who are just as powerful and dangerous, but the spawn of the Hulk after he’s bedded a hundred thousand alien chicks. They should all look the same and do enormous amounts of damage when they show up with Dad."

A hundred thousand alien chicks! Millar's either a genius or a very lonely man. More highlights after the jump, including Super Stealth Versions of our favorite heroes, Dr. Doom's Throne of Depowerment, and Captain America's original fate.

So apparently in Millar's early conception, the Anti-Registration heroes would go underground and don Ninja garb! Well not quite, but:
"The other side, led by Cap, have formed a new team and they’re all wearing new stealth costumes (redesigns of their original costumes that can’t be picked up by satellite or radar) and their objective is equally simple; they want to perform their superhero duties without being captured by the first time. They’re a secret society. An underground movement."
Quesada has some interesting thoughts on Captain America and the Punisher, in reaction to a dustup they get into when the Punisher blows the heads of some supervillains that want to volunteer for the cause:
"When you really look at these two characters standing side by side, they really are our Batman and Superman. Cap’s almost an alien being, Christ figure while Frank is the man without powers who lost his family and what they share is two wars that couldn’t be more different."
Apprehended renegade heroes were originally fated to Dr. Doom's Throne of Depowerment:
"There’s been talk of some machinery recovered from Latveria after the Secret War and the SHIELD techies are building a half-finished device Doctor Doom was working on which turns super-people into ordinary human beings. The plan is to humanize each and every one of these guys banged up in [the Negative Zone]."

"This is being used on Speedball, the hero who kicked this whole thing off, and we see him stripped of his superpowers on live TV and returned to society. It should be an awesome moment and one the heroes watch with a certain amount of fear."
In the original ending, Cap sacrifices his powers to destroy the DoomTech (they never actually refer to it as a Throne, but c'mon, it's Dr. Doom!), and then shares a touching scene with Col. Nick Fury:
"We close the whole thing with Nick Fury talking to the 97lb Steve Rogers in the closing pages. ...[Cap] admits that, despite everything, he’s kind of excited to get his life back again. He’s heading out to discover America and rediscover himself and Nick smiles. Steve hopes he isn’t being selfish and Nick says no way. 'One Hell of a tour of duty you just had, soldier,' he tells Steve and Steve just smiles. They salute and Steve Rogers, skinny as a rake, walks off into the sunset like all the best heroes should."
*sniff* *sniff* Oh yeah, I forgot mention that they were friends again at this point because all the heroes united to deal with World War Hulk. Didn't see that coming. Is this what we can expect to come out of the current WWH? A clean fix to all the Marvel Universe's problems and a return to the status quo because Hulk mad smash puny humans? I sure hope not, heroes at odds reuniting to face a common threat is the oldest comic cliche in the book.

Anyway, if you're interested at all in this stuff the full post is a must-read. There is a lot of good behind the scenes chat, and many vague references to "that alien invasion we talked about".... Can anyone say Skrulls?

Via Newsarama.

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