CIVIL WAR: FRONTLINE

By: KURT AMACKER
Review Date: Friday, June 09, 2006

CIVIL WAR: FRONTLINE launches this week as a companion series to Marvel's CIVIL WAR miniseries. It purports to show the stories in the background of the seven-month event. In this issue, it presents two stories. The first follows reporters Ben Urich and Sally Floyd -- the former in favor of the Superhero Registration Act and the latter against -- as they report on the unfolding crisis in the Marvel Universe. The kicker here comes at the end, when Iron Man holds a press conference with an unexpected finale. I admit I was pleasantly surprised, as this ending suggests Marvel might allow CIVIL WAR to resonate a bit longer than certain past events.

The second story shows us poor Speedball, having survived the Stamford Disaster that killed hundreds of people on a botched episode of the New Warriors' reality show. I won't spoil the ending, but the poor chap's now powerless and in a hell of a lot of trouble.

I must give Marvel and Paul Jenkins credit for releasing a companion title with 32 pages of content and no advertisements. I thought the issue felt a little long when I read it, and with good reason, it seems. That said, FRONT LINE never grabbed me like the first issue of CIVIL WAR did, but I've never read anything by Jenkins that really goes hit the gas like that. I don't mean that in any pejorative sense -- I like his writing. However, his style is far more restrained than the bombastic, Hollywood-worthy work Mark Millar produces.


I must also credit the publisher and writer for focusing on Ben Urich and Sally Floyd. The journalists of the Marvel Universe have long been an interesting and often underused set of characters. I already miss THE PULSE. Thus far, it seems Jenkins will use Urich and Floyd to juxtapose the opposing political ideologies examined by the entire CIVIL WAR crossover. Speaking of politics, Jenkins concludes the issue with a three-page short piece about a Japanese family moving into an internment camp during World War II, narrated by an anonymously-written poem circulated at the Poston War Relocation Camp. Spider-Man lurks in the foreground, though not within the story itself. Marvel has given Jenkins carte blanche to address all manner of political issues in FRONT LINE, so the militantly apolitical might want to avoid this one.

FRONT LINE offers an interesting, if more restrained, look at the looming crisis in Marvel Universe. Anyone already reading CIVIL WAR should probably pick this one up.

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