Warning: spoilers for Avengers #45!
It’s been fifteen years since Marvel Comics published its groundbreaking the King in Black has been dealt with, and a new, far more insidious peril has risen to take the Void God’s place: Dracula and the Vampire Nation.
No longer content to skulk in the shadows, the vampires are from vampire-hunter to vampire sheriff, but there’s far more to it than that. In fact, the Avengers have unwittingly become trapped by the machinations of world government signaled in Mark Millar and Steve McNiven’s Civil War.
The crux of the conflict in Civil War rested on the issue of the “Superhuman Registration Act”. Spearheaded by Iron Man and the United States Congress, the act required all those possessing superhuman abilities—whether they be technological, magical, or genetic—to reveal their secret identities and declare their powers to the federal government. A countermovement soon emerged led by Captain America. When speaking to Maria Hill in Civil War #1, Steve Rogers the interests of their respective governments. The United States’ Squadron Supreme and Russia’s Winter Guard are both problematic actors the Avengers are having to contend with in recent storylines. Unfortunately, when boundaries are transgressed by these parties, their political affiliations make it so the Avengers can’t go after them with the same impunity as they would Kang the Conqueror, or Loki, for example.
The current status quo is certainly truer to the complex moral grey zones and unending bureaucratic red tape of the real world, but heroes like Captain America were created for a universe in which the good guys and the bad guys were more clearly defined. And it’s too easy to say that Steve Rogers’ Captain America doesn’t like playing politics. Unlike his counterparts, the First Avenger had firsthand experience during WWII of what happens when governments overextend their authority, and how obeying the law can lead to crimes against humanity. Ironically, the rapid ascendancy of the X-Men has also led to mutantdom experiencing similar obstacles. Just like Krakoans, the Avengers are effectively hamstrung by the same political mechanisms designed to keep powerful nations in check.
The Avengers may have risen to the heights of being their own masters thanks to the leadership of superheroes like Black Panther, but they are far from free of the system. The events of Civil War may be long past, but it sadly appears as though the world of Marvel Comics is doomed to repeat them. Ultimately, Captain America and his fellow teammates have taken a big step towards being told who the super-villains really are.
