I think it also comes down to the fact that Civil War covers 100+ issues and they're all supposed to be interconnected. So different writers cared about different things and wrote characters in different ways. That's ALWAYS a problem in comic books (seriously, did Steve Rogers recently get depowered and become a tiny old man or a buff powered guy who just looks old?) but in an event like that it becomes particularly acute.

Secret Wars was great because the whole "hey every writer explore a weird alt-verse and somehow those are all Secret War related but leave Jonathan Hickman mostly alone to do what he's doing" worked fairly well and set it up to be fun and not painful.

Civil War did produce some amazing particular stories by particular writers that are worth reading. For example:

• The Illuminati stuff with Stark in the lead-up and Brian Michael Bendis' New Avengers stuff was solid. Tony and Reed are basically my BROTP during this era.


• Cap and Tony's own comics at the time (which had the advantage of being run by Warren freakin' Ellis and Ed Brubaker) really were great - Tony was struggling with losing Happy, having Extremis and having to take on the burden of being the guy in charge and Cap had only just finally found Bucky when everything kicked off so that (as it most definitely will in the movie version) definitely plays a role in how hardcore he is about things.


• Much like with the lead-up to Secret Wars and the "destruction" of the Marvel universes, I do appreciate that it really does come down to the personal relationship between Tony and Steve. My favourite part of the whole thing and an amazing moment in their relationship is when Tony confesses to Steve's dead body that Steve would at least be proud that throughout the entire thing, Tony never once took a drink and he now knows that if he can be sober through this, he can be sober through anything. Although, seriously... if the fate of the universe hinges so clearly on two guys' bromance and whether they would risk everyone else to kill each other, I would NOT want to live in that universe. They should not be in charge, obviously.


• The Front Line stuff with Ben Urich and a fellow reporter works super well as they investigate the government bureaucracy and implicate Stark in financial misdeeds.


• Wolverine has a fantastic story where he wears the Iron Man suit and is the only guy looking to figure out who actually is responsible for the school explosion (he tracks the MGH spread to the company Damage Control).
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• The question of who the mutants would side with, especially because this was just after House of M when there were so few of them, was actually handled in an interesting way considering your normal assumed answer would be "Why the eff would mutants ever side with Tony?".

The problem is that most of the stuff that really doesn't work is in the main eight event issues. And in a lot of characters' comics, Civil War just detracts from their usual stories in a negative way and completely diverts the reader from other interesting stuff that might have been going on.