1. Straight-Up Supervillain
Civil War was one of those massive crossover events where the publishers swear up and down that nothing will
ever be the same again, before promptly reversing just about everything that was changed within the next few years (or sometimes the next few months). Instead of completely changing everything we knew about the Marvel Universe, it was mostly an overhyped and ridiculous story about superheroes being forced to register their identities with the government. Basically, it was an excuse to have heroes fight, regardless of how flimsy their reasoning was. And there was no character that was more true for than Iron Man. This story saw Tony acting at his supervillainous best, but unlike with The Crossing, this time he was doing it all of his own free will. In this seven-issue limited series, Tony got more done than any other major Marvel supervillain had since well, ever. The story behind this is that after a fight between the New Warriors and some random villains ended in the deaths of hundred of children, public outcry led to the government to pass a law requiring all superheroes to reveal their identities to the government. Some heroes were for registration with others against it, the entire idea being that this was a real moral dilemma. Hard to see that dilemma when the pro-registration side, led by Iron Man, sent a psychotic robot/clone of Thor to kill the heroes, then followed that up with sending an entire freaking
army of supervillains after them and imprisoned any heroes they captured in another dimension. Oh and Tony also convinced Spider-Man to reveal to the entire world that he was really Peter Parker. And that ended exactly the way Peter always feared it would, with his loved ones being targeted (and led to him making a deal with the devil... don't ask). And at the end of the day, Tony was put in charge of SHIELD and tasked with bringing down his old friends. The real kicker is when Tony was given an out by having his memory partially erased (long story), he said if he could redo things,
he would have done exactly the same thing! I know Tony has always been portrayed as something of a dick, but come on! Makes you wonder if Doctor Doom sent him a congratulatory fruit basket.
Likelihood: Despite basically being a character assassination piece, Civil War was very successful and already served as the basis for the video game, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2. Plus, Feige has indicated that The Avengers 3 could very well be the perfect place to do a Civil War story.
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