Amazing Spider-Man #535 Marvel Comics

Well, the shit has hit the fan. Peter has realized exactly who is working for, and what they are doing. It starts out simply enough. Peter wakes up the morning after Goliath died, and watching the news realizes that Stark is making insane amounts of money from the civil war… Next we have peter, being uncharacteristically serious asking Tony to show him the detention facility. Arriving at the Baxter building Reed opens the Negative Zone Portal and in they go. We also get indications from Reed that Tony has been keeping things from Peter, and getting no clear answer where the rest of the Fantastic Four are. Entering the Negative Zone Tony gives Peter a tour of the prison complex. The first prisoner they happen upon is Prodigy, one of the Slingers, the sort of Spiderman groupies from years gone by, a costume and identity that Spiderman himself started.

Then we get some nameless woman who is being kept in a virtual reality suite, while Tony calls it some form of recreation, the woman is begging for help.

This is where things get strenuous. Peter asks Tony flat out if this is a temporary thing. He says no. They get into quite a heated argument about it, basically that since this is the negative zone, the US laws do not need to apply, and that She-Hulks legal maneuvers trying to get people released will come to nothing as it’s an act of congress signed by the president. The only way to get the people out of the negative zone would be to get the Supreme Court to sign off on it, and Tony knows they won’t. The people that are being restrained are in that prison until they register as superheroes, and become one of the governments Avengers.

When they return and Tony leaves, Peter asks Reed one question. “Why?” Reed sort of hums and haws a bit about the answer, but finally reveals his reason for backing registration, his uncle. Reed had a writer/eccentric Uncle Ted Richards, his father’s older brother. During the Communist witch hunts of the McCarthy era he was called in to testify, he basically told them to go to hell. They held him in contempt of congress for six months. This destroyed him. He wasn’t able to find work, people wouldn’t talk to him, he was a pariah. Reed never spoke to him again. After a pause, Reed admits that this killed him… I think he killed himself by the reaction Reed gave.

Reed continues that basically his uncle was in the wrong, and that we give the law the power to take everything away from us to be safe, if we murder, if we kidnap, or even tell powerful men to go to hell…. Basically Reeds point of view is that he law is the law and they must support it even if its wrong. Peter leaves Reed in the dark telling him that he would have liked his uncle, but Reed loved him. This looks like it gives Reed Pause.

Later Tony and Peter are talking, Tony wants Peter to take a break, and peter tells him no, he doesn’t need one. Later that night Peter starts gathering up his family, telling aunt may, and Mary Jane that they need to get out, find safety, that he’s made a horrible mistake, and that he’s been on the wrong side.

Hearing some booms he dons the new Stark Spiderman suit and goes to see what’s going on. Iron man busts through the wall and attacks him, “I thought you knew what side you were on?”