Civil War II: The Oath #1
Marvel Comics, January 25, 2017
Writer: Nick Spencer
“Civil War II: The Oath” is a new title spun out of American publisher Marvel Comics’ 2016 crossover promotional event called “Civil War II”. The plot for this saw two factions consisting of Marvel’s most popular mainstream character properties pitted against each other. The trigger was an ideological dispute concerning how best to utilize a new character named Ulysses and his ability to predict the future. The first faction, led by a female superhero called Captain Marvel, wanted to use this precognitive ability to stop crimes before they happen. The other side, led by Marvel Comics’ famous character Iron Man, want to study the ability first in order to ensure that the predictions are not affected by Ulysses’ own bias.
“The Oath” serves as an epilogue to the main “Civil War II” crossover event, but also relies on a story arc set up in the pages of the 2016 title “Captain America: Steve Rogers”. Captain America’s long character history has been controversially rewritten so that he has always been a double agent since the character’s creation in the 1940s (achieved through the use of a cosmic wish-granting artifact/plot device called the Cosmic Cube).
