There's Book Smart, and There's Clever

Civil War: Front Line #5 made me realize Reed Richards has become quite devious. He built his little "prison for people who don't conform" in the Negative Zone. Now offhand, that doesn't look too smart. I mean, the Negative Zone is Annihilus' home, and place he rules 97% of, and I'm sure he claims the other 3% is under his dominion as well. When you consider that Annihilation is Annihilus waging war on the Marvel Universe because the damn universe - not the inhabitants, the universe, due to natural entropic forces - has the temerity to expand into the space his empire occupies, deciding to use his land to house your unwanted doesn't seem like a bright idea.

But see, Reed figures he's playing with house money. He knows all about what Annihilus is up to. Super Skrull told him about it, when he came to Reed for a way to reach the Negative Zone in Annihilation:Super-Skrull #1. Reed knows that Annihilus is off in the Skrull Empire waging war (or he was when Reed talked to Super Skrull, he's in Kree Space now), and therefore isn't paying as much attention to what's going on in his own back yard. So the prison is actually in about the last place Annihilus would ever run across it. It's in a relatively low-risk location. Consider the possibilities:

If Annihilus isn't stopped, well the people in the prison are probably the safest of all, since the people of Earth are going to die much sooner for daring to "invade" Annihilus' territory. And Earth would die. I have no confidence in the ability of Marvel's heroes to get their shit together right now and actually fight something evil, as opposed to fighting each other. Even if they did, it'd be disorganized, and piecemeal, so they'd have about as much success as all the characters in the Annihilation mini-series were having, when they were scattered everywhere, each trying to fight their own little battles. They'd have to work together, and unless Ben Grimm slaps everyone upside the head, I don't see their differences being put aside quickly enough.

If Annihilus' advance is eventually halted (I can't see him deciding he's annexed enough space and calling it a day), then he'll have that much more area to rule, which makes it even less likely he'd notice a prison set on a single asteroid back in his old stomping grounds. He'd likely be kind of busy, either getting stuff in his new territory set up the way he's likes it (I'm guessing desolate and miserable), or quieting down any uprisings that may have started up back in the N-Zone while he was away. You never know, the knowledge of Super-Skrull's attacks on the prison and throughout the N-Zone, may have given some people hope. So, it would occupy the Big Bug for at least a little while, dealing with that, and the prsion could probably escape notice. Until someone mentioned seeing to try and save their life.

Of course if he's defeated, and he retreats to the Negative Zone, then the prison is in trouble, since Annihlus is likely to be in a foul mood, and not likely to be merciful to any intruders he discovers. But hey, the only people at risk are a bunch of cons (it's mostly robots watching them, right?). So it's not really any big deal to Reed if Annihilus rips Speedball or Typeface limb from limb. After all, they're just insurrectionists and baby killers, right Reed?

This is just sort of a side note, but I was watching the first episode of S-cry-ed (not for the first time) a couple of nights ago, and I was really struck by the similarity to Civil War. I mean you have the people with superpowers who work for the government (Ryuhou and Sherrice), who are still feared, but at least allowed to live peacefully, and you have the ones who live out in the Lost Ground, that use their powers in whatever manner most benefits their survival (Kazuma and Ayase, for example). And the government doesn't care what those methods are, those uncontrolled "alters" (basically, think like DCs "Metas"), are unacceptable. They have to be brought in line.

In the first episode alone, Kazuma is fighting another unregistered Alter that's using his powers to push around a gang of mostly kids, and add their territory to his. Kazuma defends the kids (for money, but he liked them), but he's still considered a criminal, and gets the crap beat out of him and arrested. Granted, the beating came because he tried to fight the government forces, but they still planned to arrest him, so he might as well go down fighting.

I don't suppose it's any suprise. Wizard has been saying for years that 'If you like the X-Men, you'll like S-cry-ed!', and since Civil War is just the Mutant Registration Act writ larger, it probably figures there'd be similarities. It's just the fact that in Civil War it's OK to have powers, as long as you work for the government, whereas the Mutant Registration stuff always seemed to imply there was no such thing as an OK mutant, so the comparison actually seems to fit a little better. I just wanted to throw that in.