This one wasn't exactly subtle, but you can be forgiven if you missed the political subtext that's barely concealed beneath all the superheroes knocking seven shades of shinola out of each other. Because superheroes knocking seven shades of shinola out of each other is pretty entertaining in and of itself. Coming in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the US government's response to that atrocity, Civil War picked up on the national mood and transplanted it into the world of Marvel Comics, with all the ensuing paranoia, moral relativism and death. A fair amount of death. Whilst the story was chocka with parallels to suicide bombings (the inciting incident of the series was a supervillain exploding and killing a bunch of people, including a bus full of schoolkids), profiling (all superpeople are then inherently distrusted) and political mishandlings (basically everything SHIELD does over the course of the event), it was the controversial Patriot Act that was being riffed on most directly. An act of congress that was designed to keep the public "safe" from future terrorist attacks, this real-life decree also encroached on the general public's civil liberties and right to privacy. In Civil War the equivalent was the Superhero Registration Act which, following that exploding supervillain debacle, meant that all people with superpowers were legally obliged to disclose the nature of their abilities and secret identities with the government in order to be properly policed; and if you didn't do so, you were immediately shoved into a Guantanamo-style super prison, without trial. Like we said, not exactly subtle.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
