Civil War II: Choosing Sides #1Comic Book Review/Recap

Civil War II: Choosing Sides #1 – Nick Fury, Night Thrasher, and Damage Control

Civil War II: Choosing Sides #1 Recap

On the SHIELD Helicarrier, Nick Fury gets an update on his latest mission. A HYDRA cell posing as SHIELD agents are planning an attack. With all the super hero nonsense going on, it seems like they are taking advantage of the situation. HYDRA should be out of commission due to recent actions on the part of Sam Wilson, but it seems like they are still around. And the Inhuman precog Ulysses has discovered that if the HYDRA attack is successful, SHIELD is done for.

They’re vulnerable, so Fury has full authorization to kill, or do whatever else it takes to succeed. Nick is not pleased when he sees his team, remarking on how young they are. But SHIELD is stretched thin, and they all volunteered. With that, they take off. However, it does not take Nick long to realize something is wrong.

As the traitorous agents charge at Fury, they shout that SHIELD must live. Nick realizes this doesn’t sound like HYDRA. They go on to say they serve a higher purpose – a Leader. SHIELD must live, so Fury must die. Whoever these guys were, they were not HYDRA. They want him dead. There will be traitors elsewhere, so Nick has to go underground. He’ll be listed MIA, presumed dead, but it will buy him time. He’s on his own for this one. One way or another.. Nick Fury is dead.

In Times Square, a Celestial rampages, with an army of advanced aliens in tow. The Inhumans called in everyone they could, so Blue Marvel called a friend. His name is Dwayne Taylor, and he is the Night Thrasher. In the field of battle, he is saved by Iron Man. Though Dwayne is grateful, he notices a young girl trapped in a bus, unimpressed by Tony who simply remarks the area should have been evacuated. The hero saves the civilian and Tony compliments him on a job well done, but they need to focus on containing the situation. Night Thrasher is well aware of this, and makes a note to himself to block his comm systems from any Stark hardware in the future.

He then sees Carol Danvers knocked down by one of the alien’s blasts. However, she is not so easily beaten, and is able to blast the attacker away. The two heroes share some friendly banter before teaming up to take down a whole squad of the invaders. With that finished, Carol goes to help the NYPD, while she asks Night Thrasher to check in on the girl he saved. Her heart is stopped and the defibrillator is not working, so Dwayne rigs his suit to function as a makeshift replacement. It works.

Dwayne started out as a crusader for vengeance. He was fueled by misery. But this, granting second chances, this is the right side of justice. This is something he can build his life on. These people are the ones that matter. He talks to the girl, asking what she was doing on that bus. She said she was meeting her parents here. They left Baltimore for a new stark here in NYC. Dwayne asks what the girl will do now. This place is a mess. So is Baltimore.

In the aftermath of the Celestial attack, the heroes get ready to help with clean-up. But these guys just saved the city. Damage Control is on the job, and the team insist that the heroes take the afternoon off. The next morning, though, the company is having trouble restructuring itself. They’re almost broke, and the employees aren’t happy with their latest ad campaign nor their public image. This is their third pro-bono clean-up in as many months, and they are still being accused of war profiteering. However, these concerns will have to wait. There’s trouble at the work site.

It seems the crew was robbed last night, with many of the construction vehicles left partially dismantled. The foreman is upset when the accountants realize it will take time before they can replace the machines that easily, at least not until they get in touch with their insurance. In order to insure the rest of the equipment isn’t stolen again, the employees reluctantly agree to camp out overnight to keep watch. That night, they hear a noise, and go outside to find a monstrous being stealing the equipment.

It introduces itself as Trull the Unhuman, and orders his mighty vehicles to – wait – no – they’re going the wrong way. Hang on… there we go. Watching this, the foreman decides to talk to the Unhuman. Both agree nobody is looking for a fight, but the team needs to do work here, but Trull, in spite of his apparent hostility, is actually just trying to build himself a family. Trull’s new machines are young, but he wanted somewhere to belong.

Seeing a opportunity, the foreman decides to offer the Unhuman a job. The other employees are shocked, but once they get over it, they start opening up to the idea. They could pay Trull and his machines, and the work would go quite well with such intelligent beings. Trull readily accepts, but says his young creations will probably just need to observe at first. Until they are ready, it’s best left to the professionals. One of the employees has a thought, and just like that, Damage Control has a new motto, and a pretty cool spokesperson.

Civil War II: Choosing Sides #1 Review

Hello and welcome to Comic Island! My name is Arden, and this is my recap, and review, of Civil War: Choosing Sides #1!

So, it’s been a while since we’ve done one of these anthology comics, but here we are with a pretty cool one that on the whole I enjoyed. Let’s break my review up by story. First up is Nick Fury’s – part one of a story called “Post Prologue” that will presumably run throughout the Choosing Sides comic. Written and drawn by Declan Shalvey, I’d say this part of the comic offers the least, but that’s mostly just because unlike the other two comics, this one stands on its own just fine. It was pretty good – nothing special though, just a nice set-up for a pretty standard spy thriller. Still, I liked it, and it will be interesting to see who these rogue SHIELD agents were working for. I’m not sure if this Leader they are referring to is the villain that goes by that name, or another leader currently unknown. I will say these guys seemed really interested in Nick Fury himself, so whatever that means, it sure is to prove interesting going forward.

Next up was the Night Thrasher story, written by Brandon Easton and with art by Paul Davidson. This one was pretty great. It was a standard story that wasn’t very long or deep, but I did like how it fleshed out the Celestial battle a bit and really gave a good sense of what that fight was like on the ground level. Night Thrasher, a character I was barely familiar with, was fun as a less successful version of Tony Stark. The comic as a whole does a good job at something these anthology comics are usually best at – giving the Marvel universe a sense of scale and depth. I also like this comic’s ending. After Dwayne has a hopeful moment of clarity saving the girl’s life, we get a pretty morose thought – her and her family were basically fleeing Baltimore for a new life… and this is what they got. It’s a small detail in the story but something that stuck with me. This was a pretty great story and one I enjoyed.

But my absolute favorite has to be the Damage Control segment. It was funny and charming, enough so that it made me chuckle and laugh a few times. Trull was just excellent, as this guy setting himself up as a big bad villain with like, a bunch of children running around. So while he’s doing the big villain speech he keeps getting distracted and breaking his intimidating talk with funny little interruptions – righting the machines when they topple, trying to keep them under control – it was great. Damage Control is often an overlooked gem of the Marvel Universe, so it was really fun to see them here. I liked the characters and it’s the sort of thing that could really work as it’s own series… or television show.

So yeah, that’s three stories, and all of which I liked. This is an easy comic to recommend. It’s a great Civil War tie-in, filling in some gaps from the first two issues of the core series. No, this isn’t really about choosing sides like the title suggests, but we haven’t really gotten to the part of the story yet where sides are to be chosen. And that’s okay, because instead the comic does a good job at telling stories within this early part of the Civil War, and well next issue promises to bring even more cool stuff our way, and might actually feature some sides being taken.