How Civil War & Civil War 2 Could Have Been Much, Much Shorter

NSA-jerk Henry Peter Gyrich has been making the Avengers jump through hoops to keep their government-issued security clearances, going so far as to dictate their line-up.

Well, he's still not happy with how they operate, because jerk, so he's convened a special hearing of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee to try and strip away their ability to access any government cooperation...

Meanwhile, a mysterious intruder from space is running amok through New York...

SPOILER ALERT: Don't tell anyone, but it's the Grey Gargoyle in a fancy space-suit...

So as the hearing continues...

[Note--by law, Captain America is the one person allowed to violate Godwin's Law with impunity...]

Man, I miss this version of the Beast...

Anyway, the Avengers save the day, and the hearing results do not go quite the way Gyrich expected:

Ouch, Pete.

See, back in the day, "Let heroes be heroes" was a winning argument, not a debatable subject that led to civil wars and public distrust and random character deaths and terribly-written and terribly late Bendis scripts and...

Just sayin.

From Avengers #190 (1979). The final panel above is from Avengers #191 (1980)