The Disturbing Truth Behind Marvel's Civil War
Comic Books As Mainstream Manipulation
Now this isn't a historical account of closed door decisions, but a theory based on what's happened in the past ten years. However, it certainly looks probable; we do know for sure that Civil War will have had a massive impact on the early acceptance of the MCU and, more importantly, that Marvel aren't above drastically reshaping their comic universe.
Since the MCU exploded on the scene there's been many, major status quo shifts; Guardians Of The Galaxy rebooted and then completely changed, Inhumans were boosted to the centre stage as the X-Men slinked (slightly) away, the Fantastic Four was flat-out cancelled and countless of other slight alterations were made (Nick Fury was revealed to have a black son who eventually took over as Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.). Heck, what is the recent, brand-wide reboot All-New, All-Different Marvel if not an attempt to bring the entire 616 universe in line with the movies? This is different to the practice of making comics that tie into upcoming movies, like a new #1 or this year's Civil War II (although even that makes the telling decision of replacing Steve Rogers with Captain Marvel, whose own film arrives in 2018) - this is an attempt to bring everything together for an wider, ongoing purpose.
With such a willingness on the publishing's side to bend to the studio's will, it's easy to see how Civil War could indeed be a targeted change.
Many fans have bemoaned these changes, finding they weaken existing stories, characters and the wider continuity in a vain attempt to convert some of the $1.5 billion movie audience to comics when few cinemagoers really care. And that's true. No matter how much someone loves Captain America: Civil War, they're unlikely to go out and read the comic. It's a different form of media; thinking someone will rush out for more of the same but different is like expecting every person who saw The Force Awakens to read the (admittedly enlightening) tie-in novel.
But outreach isn't totally why Marvel are doing this. Part of AN-AD appears to be to road test ideas for future movies (similar to Captain Bucky after the original Civil War) and give any "out there" turns some proper of comic grounding so fans don't turn against them like Trevor Slattery in Iron Man 3. Although, as with Civil War, it may be motivated by a metric even less measurable than that.
If you stop publishing Fantastic Four, people will talk about it, and, while many criticised Marvel for the movie, the bigger message was the First Family are no longer relevant. That's not why Fant4stic bombed, but it played a part in why no one really cared. It's in the background for many people, sure, but Marvel are subtly pushing alterations to comics to better base their world. This is like boosting Cap and Shellhead's reputation, only on a bigger, widespread scale.
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