Reading the Fantastic Four comics from the start. Here’s another look at everything else happening during Marvel’s Civil War mega-event, including lots of Punisher, new characters, and one of the most disliked comics of all time.

First, we’ve got to go back to the beginning of the crossover for Civil War: Runaways/Young Avengers, which takes place between Civil War issues 1 and 2. This miniseries doubled as a sequel/reboot of Grant Morrison’s Marvel Boy mini from a few years earlier. The Cube is an interdimensional top-secret jail for extraterrestrials, and this is where Kree warrior Noh-Varr, a.k.a. Marvel Boy, is imprisoned and being mind-wiped. Maria Hill of S.H.I.E.L.D. visits the Cube, saying she wants to reactivate Noh-Varr and have him deal with California’s teen superhero problem.

The Runaways encounter the Young Avengers while on the run from S.H.I.E.L.D.’s so-called “cape killers.” They fight among each other for a bit (the Runaways don’t like the idea of Avengers in general), only for Noh-Varr and the cape-killers to attack and abduct some members from each team.

The remaining Runaways and Young Avengers form a team of sorts to break into the Cube and rescue their friends. As they do, Noh-Varr gets his mind back and overthrows the Cube’s corrupt warden. He takes control of the Cube and announces a plan to turn it into a new Kree city. The Young Avengers leave for New York, setting up the events of Civil War #2, while the Runaways choose to stay in L.A. and (what else?) run away from the conflict.

Running parallel to Civil War #5 and Amazing Spider-Man #535, we have the debut of a new Punisher War Journal series. The Punisher has returned New York after being in hiding for a while. He murders Stilt-Man (!) and is then pursued by more S.H.I.E.L.D. cape killers. He tracks down the tinkerer, and then a genius named Stuart Clarke, who has hacked Stark tech to make illegal miniature Iron Man robots. Clarke becomes Punisher’s new Microchip (his tech guy, basically) and he converts the Stark tech into a tracker that Punisher uses to locate Captain America’s safehouses and follow the members of Cap’s team.

After some more vigilante-isms, Punisher gets a hit on the tracker from the sewer. He follows it, right into the big fight from Civil War #5, where Jester and Jack o’ Lantern are beating up Spider-Man. He kills the two villains and gets Spidey through the sewer to Cap’s safehouse.

Captain America and Punisher have a talk. Cap doesn’t approve of Punisher’s ways, but Punisher is able to talk the talk, addressing Cap as a fellow soldier. Cap gives Punisher an opportunity to fight – under Cap’s command. It seems like a done deal, but then Cap punches Punisher through a wall just to tell him that Punisher’s using non-lethal weapons from now on. The rest of Cap’s anti-reg heroes don’t like the Punisher being among them, but Cap tells them, “I’m not asking.”

Then there’s several pages of Captain America and the Punisher working side-by-side, breaking into S.H.I.E.L.D. bases for intel-gathering, plotting routes around cape killer patrols, and fighting the Molten Man without killing him. Cap tells him, “Good job, soldier.” Punisher goes back to Clarke and asks for his help on breaking into the new Baxter Building to free all the imprisoned heroes from the Negative Zone. While all this has been happening, a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent named Bridge has been pursuing the Punisher and Clarke in secret. At this point, we stick a bookmark in issue #3 and come back to it later, because the rest of the issue crosses over with Civil War #6.

But there’s even more Punisher-related Civil War action to be had. Marvel used the event to debut a brand-new character in the miniseries Underworld. That’s where we meet Jack Dio, formerly an enforcer for the Silvermane crime family. The Kingpin is in jail, leaving the rest of NYC’s organized crime to fight over the top spot, all while the Civil War is happening. Jack takes a job for the Owl, where he’s exposed to a variation of the super-soldier formula that gave us Captain America. A tech whiz supplies him with high-tech guns linked to his high-tech sunglasses, allowing him to perfectly shoot anything he looks at. He fights a bunch of villains and has an especially tense run-in with the Punisher. Then he gets a serum that gives him a Wolverine-style healing factor.

Jack’s story comes to a head when he fights his childhood rival, who also got some super-soldier juice and now calls himself Mr. Pain. Jack then learns that a genius named the Consultant was secretly manipulating all these events in hopes of turning Jackie into the ultimate supervillain. Jack rejects the Consultant’s plan and instead goes into business for himself. And he gives himself a cool new name: Underworld.

This brings us to Civil War: War Crimes, for more about the Kingpin. He’s locked up in Ryker’s Prison, where’s he’s pretty much the boss of the place. He’s also taking secret meetings with Tony Stark. Kingpin gives Stark info on which superheroes are raiding the pro-reg storehouses. Kingpin says it’s in his best interests to help Stark win the Civil War. In New York, super-criminal Hammerhead meets with a bunch of other villains. He says that once the government is done registering all the heroes, they’ll come after super-powered crooks next. The meeting is interrupted by our new favorite guy Underworld, who shoots up the place. But he’s actually there to join Hammerhead’s new gang.

Kingpin continues to pass info to Stark while making more and more enemies among his fellow prisoners. He promises game-changing info about Captain America’s hideout in exchange for his release from prison. Tony agrees to it. As Iron Man, he leads the New Avengers to the address Kingpin gave him. Except it’s not Captain America’s hideout, it’s Hammerhead’s. A huge battle breaks out and Hammerhead is caught in the crossfire. A newspaper headline reports that several more died.

Stark wants to know why Kingpin tricked him like that, especially since Stark was about to make good on his promise to free him. Then we cut to Captain America, where we learn he too was making secret deals with the Kingpin, in hopes of weakening Cap’s team and stopping Hammerhead.

At a hospital, we see Hammerhead survived but is badly injured. Underworld sneaks into the room. Underworld was also secretly working with Kingpin, saying that he knows Kingpin will always come out on top. Underworld shoots and kills Hammerhead. While still in jail, the Kingpin smiles with knowing that he’s won.

Meanwhile the Front Line series kept chugging along, doing an excellent job of showing all the fear and destruction caused by the Civil War. The later issues were mostly focused on reporters Ben Urich and Sally Floyd as they tracked the story of Robbie Baldwin, formerly known as Speedball of the New Warriors.

In one of the crossover’s grimmest, most downbeat moments, Robbie constructs a new suit of armor for himself containing spikes on the inside that stab him every time he moves. This activates his powers, but also reminds him of all the deaths he caused in Civil War #1. He renames himself Penance and sets out on his journey to be darkest antihero of them all.

Thunderbolts was on its 101st issue when it crossed over with Civil War. For someone who doesn’t follow this series regularly, diving into issue #101 was a bewildering task. There are tons of characters, and everyone has some kind of interpersonal drama with everyone else. Thunderbolts leader Baron Zemo attends a meeting with Iron Man, Hank Pym (secretly a Skrull in disguise) and the FF’s own Reed Richards. Although Zemo is a good guy now, there’s still a lot of bad blood between him and the Avengers. Iron Man says that with all the heroes fighting each other, the villains are running around unchecked. He wants the Thunderbolts to track down other villains, not to arrest them, but to recruit them to Iron Man’s side. Zemo agrees to the deal, only to reveal to the other Thunderbolts that he’s already been recruiting villains in secret. This army of villains is his dream of who the Thunderbolts could truly be.

But Zemo’s not done. Next he goes to Captain America and offers vital information that can turn the tide in Cap’s favor. He gives a big speech about their shared history, arguing that despite everything he’s done in the past, he can be better. Cap agrees to the deal. (Or does he?)

Okay, enough with all these street-level crooks and gangsters. Time to get cosmic in Civil War: The Return. There’s been a breakout inside the Negative Zone prison. Inside the prison’s main office we see… Mar-Vell, this universe’s original Captain Marvel. He’s back from the dead for the first time since the landmark Death of Captain Marvel graphic novel in 1982. How is he alive again? Let’s see… his spirit was floating in space, he investigated a mysterious fissure, and the fissure violently brought him back to life as he passed through it. Sure, why not?

Alive again, Mar-Vell was then rescued by the Sentry. Unlike the other Marvel heroes, Mar-Vell remembers his friendship with Sentry. The Sentry makes Mar-Vell an offer, to be the warden of the Negative Zone prison. Mar-Vell spends the rest of the issue reflecting on his life while debating with himself whether to put on his powerful Quantum Bands and return to action. He does, but we don’t see the action that follows because the issue ends there.

Let’s get real. Civil War: The Return was published as Marvel’s ongoing attempt to claim ownership of the name “Captain Marvel” for themselves and not let DC have it. They’d eventually succeed, but not for years later.  I don’t know what the lawyers thought, but fans over the years have called this comic one of the worst ever made. Mar-Vell’s return is as unceremonious as it gets, and the story is all just him standing around a room thinking, with any action or excitement unseen. I can see why Marvel gave the name to Carol.

Unstable molecule: Zemo tries to out-science Reed by bragging about the Thunderbolts’ new interdimensional headquarters. He says it’s far beyond anything Reed or Tony Stark could envision. Yeah, I’m sure.

Fade out: We get a few glimpses of Sue while she’s hanging out with anti-reg heroes in Captain America’s hideout.

Trivia time: After spending five issues on his origin story, and then getting him involved with the Punisher and the Kingpin, our new hero Underworld never appeared again! (Maybe Kate Beckinsale’s lawyers called.)

The Marvel Wiki has a strange note saying that the Underworld who appeared in War Crimes may or may not be a different character than the one in the Underworld miniseries. I don’t know where they got that one from.

Robbie Baldwin would continue to the dark antihero thing as Penance for quite some time, getting involved with the Thunderbolts and during Dark Reign. He returned to his original Speedball suit and persona during the Heroic Age crossover, and he later started a new version of the New Warriors.

Upon meeting Hulkling, the Runaways’ resident Skrull Xavin remarks that Hulkling is a chosen one with a great destiny. This would later be fulfilled when Hulkling became Emporer Dorrek, leader of the Kree/Skrull Alliance. 

Gimmie a gimmick: Marvel published a special edition of Punisher War Journal #1 entirely in black and white, hoping for a classic film noir feel. In the next issue, the Punisher says to Captain America, “It’s not that black and white.”

Fantastic or frightful? The Punisher issues are quite good. They gave him a macabre sense of humor, and his unlikely friendship with Captain America makes him feel like a relatable person and not just a constant murder machine. Underworld is also quite good, and it’s a wasted opportunity they never brought the character back. Thunderbolts is confusing for newbies, Runaways/Young Avengers is more interested in Marvel Boy, and the less said about The Return the better. These comics are, as the saying goes, a mixed bag.

Next: Lost in mad thought.

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