After being disappointed with the Art of Marvel’s Ant-Man, I thought perhaps the Marvel art books were becoming redundant. How many ways can you present concept art and still keep it interesting? After receiving The Art of Civil War, I realized the underlying material is essential. While Ant-man was a fun film, his origin and “world” were fairly straightforward and even mundane compared to other heroes. Civil War is more epic in scope, and the art showcases that.

The Art of Civil War was excellent, on par with the two Avengers films art books. This is partly due to so many characters taking part, in particular brand new ones (Spidey and Black Panther), but also because the environments were spread globally. Further, rather than just being inspired by decades of comics, Civil War has a very specific comic event that underlies the story. This enhanced the narrative sections immensely as we see how the two compared. Some art depicted characters both Team Cap and Team Iron Man, as the line-up was still being worked out in the early stages. It was great to see concept art for unused fight sequences and the various costume upgrades (though I was surprised at the number of pages devoted to Crossbones considering his brief appearance!). The book has made me very excited for the inevitable Phase 3 films' art books.

The book has the same production values as previous entries, high gloss pages, full color, with the matching slipcase. A beautiful book. Overall, this was a worthy addition to the Marvel art book collection. Highly recommended. ( )