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Any good comic book event is comprised of a single story, the main thrust that drives the event, and the dozens of separate plot threads that follow the weft and the weave of the main plot, spinning together to form a grand tapestry. It's a noble enterprise, and one that is no doubt rewarding financially as well as creatively. And it's probably all the more financially rewarding if you sweep up all the stray lost threads and try to knit them into something else you can sell, like turning barber shop sweepings into a hair necklace. Such is the case with Civil War: The Return, which is a bunch of nothing spun into comic book form.
The Return features two stories, one detailing the return of Captain Marvel from beyond the grave, and the other dealing with The Sentry's final decision regarding the registration act. Both are written by Paul Jenkins, and neither elaborates on or advances the Civil War storyline much further. As for the first story, it's well told, in its way, but it feels inconsequential in terms of the storyline, all the more so because it's essentially an ad for the upcoming Captain Marvel ongoing series. Jenkins has an earlier incarnation of Marvel appearing in the present through some sort of time rift in the Negative Zone. Informed of his future self's death from cancer, he becomes the warden of File 42, where anti-registration superheroes are held, all the while struggling with the paradoxical implications of his future/past/present death, not the least of which is how difficult it is to explain his current situation in a sentence. As the prison's security systems fail, Jenkins has Marvel musing on metaphysical issues, but while interesting ideas are explored, nothing is accomplished or settled by the end.
The second story has the Sentry fighting the Absorbing Man, before deciding to register. I was under the distinct impression that he had already registered, so the end of the story seemed a little anti-climactic to me. As well, the way Absorbing Man is written, with his dialogue all phonetic transcriptions of what upper middle class people think dockworkers sound like, seems a little childish. Again, the need for this story to be told isn't evident. It feels like filler, but it's not really filling anything out, like I've just bought some of the bubble plastic wrap in a box without the electronics inside.
Tom Raney's pencils are effective, but don't stand out. The Sentry looks a little, shall we say, delicate, and some of Raney's more dynamic poses have a tendency to swell the character's faces, like superheroes with botulism. Creel, The Absorbing Man, looks frightening in the second story, but the layouts are standard and there's nothing really to distinguish the pencils from the industry standard. Despite some of the quality work that has been done with the characters and themes of Marvel's Civil War, The Return doesn't do anything to advance the story, choosing instead to try and make something out of nothing, and wasting a lot of time in the process.
Rating: 4 on 10
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