Civil War #3 delivers on the promising confrontation from last issue and sets up the finale with aplomb. Spider-Man’s team continues their infiltration of the Iron’s research facility while She-Hulk’s mission to discover the identity of Miriam Sharpe’s killer doesn’t go as planned. The action really ramps up from the first two issues, as does the intrigue, though a few character moments left me a bit concerned for the rest of the series.

The issue continues from the exact moment last month’s ended: Spider-Man, Elektra, Venom, and Black Panther are faced with several large Iron Sentinels as they enter Stark’s research facility. They take them out fairly quickly, but not without losses. Elektra is fried by one of the sentinels (reminiscent of some panels in X-Men: Days of Future Past) and Black Panther (Azari, son of the original) is extremely shaken. This battle shows some interesting synergy in Peter’s battle tactics, particularly when he uses his Falcon wings and web-shooters to destroy one of the Sentinels. Leinil Yu’s skill at developing battle scenes is evident here, as the flow is great–even for only a few pages. It’s concise, clear, and the pages work very well together.

Peter’s increasingly callous attitude is displayed during this sequence as well; it’s one of those character moments I suggested concerned me. I’m not saying that this change in attitude is out of nowhere, but it feels a bit abrupt compared to his earlier behavior. I suppose this is writer Charles Soule’s way of emphasizing the effects of war on someone like Peter. He doesn’t seem to care at all about Elektra’s death, just seeing it as another in a long list of casualties of war. Frankly, after so many years of constant superpowered conflict, that list is sure to be high.

The infiltration continues as the team takes out several more sentries before confronting the leader of the facility, a grotesque hybrid of Kingpin and Doctor Octopus. Leinil Yu’s art continues to impress here, and his design for “King Ock” is appropriately horrific. Doc Ock’s tentacles have taken over the corpse of Kingpin, and the result is more deranged than either of its predecessors.
Yu’s art isn’t always allowed to command the scene, particularly during an over-expository moment between Peter and Beast wherein one of them just openly explains why he behaved a certain way. It’s the kind of scene that would have been wholly more effective without dialogue, perhaps a word or two interspersed with images of Peter’s family and the violence he has seen in order to get back to them. Comics provide a rich visual medium for this sort of interesting depiction of emotions and thoughts, and just stating the facts seems like a missed opportunity.

Additionally, Battleworld makes the temporal and geographical positioning of events pretty difficult. For instance, one scene has Bucky and Stark discussing patriotism, as last issue featured Spider-Man and Captain America doing the same thing. Would this domain on Battleworld really have patriotism? How would that work in the context of these nations? Is Black Panther the king of Wakanda, being that this is a tiny country? These are questions without answer, most likely, and the way Battleworld is constructed doesn’t lend itself to any easy solutions, but I don’t think it needs to in order to tell compelling stories (see Weirdworld or Marvel Zombies).

I found She-Hulk’s half of the book to be far more intriguing than the Spider-Man plot, however brief it was, and I’m again compelled to keep going for the next two issues. There was a divide in the two plots for me. Spider-Man and his team featured interesting action, while She-Hulk’s built upon the earlier plot threads in a meaningful way.

This was a decent climax for Civil War. It delivered on the promises from the last two issues, built new mysteries for the next two issues, and showed some very interesting action. While I have some issues with the character development, I’m anticipating where Soule might go with those threads in upcoming issues. For the middle issue of a miniseries, this was solid and compelling, and it makes me want to keep reading until the ultimate conclusion.