I apologized if I offended you in any way.

I really didn't/don't think I was acting snobby. You know, I've also had to work on a factory line before - but this isn't about me.

I was just trying to emphasis that "a million dollars" isn't really that much money anymore, due to inflation. The current inflation rate as of October is 3.5%. It's the old thief.

Calling Tony-Starks armor "million-dollar-tech" is just ridiculous, that's the sole of my point. It's like calling a tank an investment of "hundreds of dollars".

I'm sorry if money is a sensitive issue, and I apologize if using myself as an example to prove a point came off bad, but really - it's nothing worth getting bent out of shape about.

Well, Iron Man did set up a prison camp (the conditions of which horrified Peter Parker) and sent people there with no due process.

That at least says facist to me.

No, not at all.

Unfortunately, with how badly Civil War was handled, no one was quite clear on the prison.

It was merely a holding facility until those inside could be tried. They were not to be held there indefinitely, simply until the "war" had ended.

For the official story of Civil War, as it was intended to be told, ignore most of what you see in Amazing Spider-Man. That comic screwed up ALL the details.

The thing about internment camps and nebulous wars on concepts (terror, unlicensed heroism) is that they never really reach the point where they could be called "over." Tony knew that going in and he built it anyway.

The combination of big money investments in government programs and enforced governmental authority over facets of everyday life (like the fact you have superpowers, whether you want them or not) is pretty much definitionally Corporate Fascism.

I've heard Millar complain that the tie-ins (amazing in particular) didn't get the details right. Fair enough. Even taking the best possible interpretation of Tony's actions in Civil War, Iron Man did set up a prison camp and sent people there with no due process.

That still says facist to me.

And then there was the clone/robot he created which killed a hero. I know the hero was considered a figitive at the time. But I still think Tony and Reed were guilty of involuntary manslaughter on that one. Not to mention the ethical quagmire of cloning Thor without his permission.

Just because they used the real world as an influence on Civil War doesn't mean that it's a mirror. It's just as likely Tony had a perfect time-table on when the trials would begin. Just because the war on terror has no clear end in sight doesn't mean Civil War didn't.

While many would agree with you that "W" is a facist too ...

It's a matter of degrees. Iron Man isn't the white hat ... he's the gray hat at best. He's trying to service the 'greater good', and he has to do some questionable things to do it. While it would be nice to give them due process ... consider the number of the heroes they had captured, and the ammount of time it would require to process all of them ... they would have to detain at least some of them for a long time before they got them all through trial. Similarly, you can't just let most of them out on bail ... heck consider how easy it is for super villains to bust out of prison on a regular basis. When you outlaw vigilantism, the vigilantes become outlaws. If you are willing to 'super-hero' without a liscense, why wouldn't you break out of the prison and never show up to your trial?

Similarly, the Thunderbolts thing was another "ends justify the means" move ... pulling a page from Checkmate and getting a suicide squad of villains to do your dirty work.

Tony was doing some very bad things to try to achive a 'greater good', in his mind. If Tony didn't step up, the anti-mutant 'types' would have likely led the fight against the heroes. Doing so would have meant that instead of giving them a "choice" of registering and essentially being 'law enforcement officials' that have a system of oversight and training, they would all be seen as criminals [or worse].

On the other side of the coin, Cap saw that Iron Man was doing some pretty scummy things, and was so focussed on "the ends do NOT justify the means" that he didn't notice that his resistance movement was only hurting the public's view of heroes, and causing the conflict was endangering lives needlessly, as you weren't going to beat Iron Man's registration movement on the battlefield ... since most of the public in the Marvel Universe would be seeing things from the perspective of "government vs. criminals".

True ... however, in the area of 'grey ethics' if one man dying saves thousands ... At least Tony is seen agonizing over the decisions, realizing he has to do bad things, for the ultimate good.

See, Tony is having to destroy his very soul, do horrible things, to try to make the World a better place. He could have taken the Cap road and just tried to not doing anything 'bad' ... but that wouldn't necessarily have made things better.

Batman keeps putting Joker back into jail, but killing him would be 'wrong' in terms of Batman's code of ethics. However, would weighing the ethical 'wrong' of killing Joker be offset by all the people that would be saved from future Joker killing sprees be any consolation.

Civil War is divisive, as it should be. It brings up stuff similar to Watchmen and Squadron Supreme and other stories like that. Whether it is better to stick to your ideals and avoid do anything ethically wrong, and stand up and fight for what you believe in ... even if it doesn't really do much to make the world a better place. Or to do things that are against your moral compass, to ruin yourself not just in the minds of your friends, but perhaps even to yourself, to truly change the world for the better. [Now, there is a whole seperate issue of whether or not the ultimate 'end' is in fact a better world or not.]

Hmm... a million dollars in my hand right now is "much" money to me... regardless of inflation.

And if anyone on this forum is into the mil/10mil range salary-wise, can you license the DC/Marvel properties and get the VS engine from UDE to guarantee it will be around for the next few years?

There is a big difference between having a million or even ten million as a NET WORTH and having it as a SALARY.

Million a year is salary is nice ... of course, even at that point, I highly doubt they'd be picking up some Iron Man armor any time soon [which is the 'ultimate' point that started the whole thing].

And while a million a year salary could perhaps get the engine and liscence away from UDE ... it would ALSO have to be spread out as salaries towards all the people designing, developping, printing, shipping the cards, plus the overhead costs of the places where those people would be working, the advertising costs for the game. Oh, and half the money would be gone to taxes before reinvestment. And then you'd probably have to actually spend some of the money on say, your own house, food, and other things people spend their money on.

There's one unanswered question, that's vital to the above by WaKo;

Would your VS cards be free?

Heck no ... but the entire project would hinge on the sales allowing the game to sustain itself [i.e. make enough money to pay back all the associated costs].

If it can do that, the salary is only an 'initial investment cost'.

However, having say, a 10-mil a year salary isn't going to guarantee the game goes on indefinitely any more than UDE running it. In fact, UDE has deeper pockets than that, and can afford to run at a bit of a loss for a while, not to mention it would have lower overhead costs because that overhead is spread over multiple products they produce.

You'd have to spend a lot of money before you'd start getting any money back from the initial investment. So, that would likely require getting a big loan [which you can get because of the big salary]. And, as long as you make back enough to continue producing the game, AND can continue to pay down the loan over time [which ultimately means you have to, on each set, make back not just the initial investment, which can allow you to produce another game, but over the course of say 5 years, you'll have to have gotten at least enough profit to pay back the original loan plus interest, while still having at least enough floating capital to produce each set. Even then, you are running it tight ... it would be better to have about double the ammount you'd need to produce a set at any given time, just to deal with any problems that could arise.

The 10-mil a year salary might mean that you could afford to do the work as "head of Vs." pro-bono ... of course you still have to do the job that you are getting paid the 10-mil a year for ... and that money would really only be allowing you to get the start up loan ... the 10 mil a year [after taxes and your other life expenses are taken into account] wouldn't be enough to make a significant enough investment to run the game yourself.

Wow... if you can't run a card game with 10mil a year... you are the suck.

But what do I know... maybe the licensing costs for DC/Marvel is 100k per year... that would put a damper in things for sure.

EDIT: Actually... I take that back... even 100k per year in licensing fees isn't that high. The personnel costs would probably be a big chunk so Yip and Billy would have to work for Top Ramen and TBS would just be happy as long as he doesn't have to go back Down Under.

That was a good summary of the Civil War issues.

One of my problems with Civil War as a story was that it took place in the Marvel Universe. Within that context, we see "ends justify the means" as a bad guy motivation. Magneto and Dr. Doom operate this way. The Avengers don't.

If the story had taken place in the real world or some other context, Tony's dilema might have been more sympathetic. But in the context of the established world of the Marvel Universe, he crossed a line and turned to the dark side.

10 mil a year salary means:

(a) You are losing at least half of it to taxes, that's before any other deductions

(b) You have a job that pays 10 mil a year, so you would have to hire people to run the card game for you, otherwise, why not just take a second job that pays 10 mil a year if you have so much free time ;)

So, you'd have about 4 mil a year to invest, that's giving the person 1 mil a year to pay for all their personal stuff, and 5 mil for the government. I'm not going to pretend to know the operating costs involved with Vs, but that would seem to be cutting it a little close to the bone for an operating budget, considering this is supposed to be an entirely seperate company from UDE, thus the cost for UDE to produce Vs. would be lower than the cost for this fictional company ... as they are ONLY producing a single card game, and thus wouldn't be benefitting from any costs that are shared by multiple games, or from discounts for shipping in larger quantities, etc. They'd have to make new deals with printing companies, and since you'd only be producing one game there, they would likely charge more than if you were using them to produce 10 times as much product.