Top 5 Missed opportunities in Marvel's Civil War.

1) Audience Participation.  13:17 mark of The Blockbuster Buster’s Top 10 Hispanic Heroes countdown brings us the most relevant character to this article, Paladin al Cacique.  The Buster mentioned the extra excitement added to an admittedly not-so-great series by seeing familiar local sites in the series.  Marvel’s letter’s method and the news letter back from the sixties made audience participation a huge selling point for them.  Having readers submit photos and tidbits about places in their respective takes the pressure of all that research off of the company’s shoulders.  And showing that they see the rest of the US as more than just a target for on-panel destruction would compensate for perceived quality of the books if the quality ever declined.  
2) More books, More Profit, More demographics.  The 50 states are composed of 46 States, 4 Commonwealths.  And that’s before we count districts and territories.  1 ongoing series for each of these means hoarding a lot of the talent pool in the industry.  There would be too many to distribute them all each in the same stores.  So they couldn’t be too significant to the overall Marvel Universe, but they could explore long dormant properties.  Rom the Space Knight still needs to see licensing renewed to reappear, but the Spaceknights mythos is still owned by Marvel.  And one of those cyborgs was named “Terminator.”  Use of time travel allows pretty much anyone from any Marvel or Malibu (who marvel had already purchased) franchise to show up in any of the books.  Although who would go in what book would be an issue for the editors.  Very difficult in theory, but remember: Back in their Atlas Comics days, the company was able to put out 75 books a month at one point.  Now on top of crossover events, adding these numbers would surpass that.  But not by much.  It had been done before, so who’s to say it could never be done again?  
3) Exploring the wide world of Marvel’s incorporated properties.  I’ve already mentioned Rom: SpaceKnight, but other licensed properties include 2001: A Space Odyssey, US-1, Micronauts and even Transformers.  This was spun from a 2000’s Crossover event.  The 2000’s loved them some 80’s.  Almost all of those Licensed deals were from the 80’s.  And excepting the Transformers Marvel still has the rights to their contributions to those respective mythos.  
Also, Marvel has generally seemed very uncomfortable with applying their various Golden Age characters until a point when most all of them would be dead.  Even back in the Silver Age, they shifted the All-Winners Squadron into the Invaders, cutting out some members, making the Sidekicks exempt from the present era, and returning all but one of the rest as villains in the present for the Fantastic Four to Fight.  Agents of Atlas, Destroyer, and the Twelve all came out in the 2000’s.  That certainly took awhile.  So unless there’s Time Travel, suspended animation, cloning (as if) etc pre-established vitality/longevity, Immortality (pre-established or retconned in), it’s almost certain that they won’t still be around.  Old Case Files, successors, surviving sidekicks, could depict past exploits providing period piece diversions from the plot and setting up for pending events.  
Then there are the public domain characters and untapped mythologies to explore.  Many Superheroes from other publishers put out in Cap’s Day could be reimagined or reintroduced at various points along the timeline, or get their start here.  Kid Sidekicks were much more common then.  The ethics, responsibilities, backlash, international laws, and other responses to taking a kid into battle on the public dollar would need to be hammered in.  
And one character in particular who is a missed opportunity in and of himself is Mighty Man, who’s publication history is a story-arc in and of itself.  Originally created by American Creators for South African audiences, Mighty Man and others like him had to conform to the repressive Apartheid governments standards as propaganda material to be published.  SPOILER WARNING: it backfired.  Hard.  As uprisings arose in the mid-seventies, Mighty Man’s books were burned by disgruntled masses.  Read the full story here: southafricancomicbooks.blogspo….  Later he was revived by Malibu Comics with some tweeks in his powers and backstory.  And then Marvel bought Malibu Comics, and attained creative control of Malibu creations.  In summary, my point is this: If you want to depict people operating solely on the logic of “Illegal=bad” as bad or dangerous, I cannot think of a better character that Marvel could have used.  

4) Vast reactions to events, and feedback from the dormant beings in the past.  One huge criticism of this series (Especially the “Front Line” Tie-in) was that it was there to bash the government.  Or at least one administration within.  The bipartisan rushing a law through without applying any legislative process and enforcing it before it’s even been passed.  That would draw criticism from any lawyers or politicians loyal to those affected.  On its own it just makes the writers and editors look ignorant and too lazy to do their homework.  Incorporate the way the Registration Act is depicted is at odds with the way the government is actually structured to work.  Then Captain America has a profound and compelling argument for his actions.  Rather than saying “Superpowers don’t hurt people” in response to 128 people killed by 1 superhuman’s attack… with a super power.  
Cap’s established Argument fell apart completely as soon as he had Spider-Man on the team.  Spider-man’s untested webbing additive triggered the death of George Stacy which helped raise Sam Bullit to DA in his place, and Sam wasn’t above a little lynching on the side.  Spider-man’s one reckless experiment did not end with just one violent act towards people he was sworn to protect.  Not to mention all the other members of Spidey’s supporting cast rendered dead or catatonic at the hands of his enemies or his battles with them.  After all, why do superheroes fight supervillains?  On the surface it is supposed to be about keeping the populace from coming to harm from superfolk.  So if he’s trying to decree that the government is overreaching, and I know, I’m stressing this twice now, point out how the government is depicted LITERALLY overstepping it’s real-world authority.  Given the way Marvel likes to ground it’s settings in the real world sense regardless of power, events, or advances depicted with, that could lend so much added relevance to the situation.  
And another thing.  Richard Rider saw the Civil War as petty bickering.  The entire universe was left to die by all the people on earth because Earthlings were either 1) Perpetuating this conflict, or 2) needing to focus on it as a here and now threat.  Preventing their destruction at the hands of Galactus or any other device wielded by Anhihulus became a more faroff problem that had to wait.  If they even knew about it at all.  Reed was briefed on this by Super-Skrull as Super-Skrull prepared to take the fight to the Negative Zone.  Then Reed proceeded to tell NO ONE about the coming threat.  What would people say to that?  While we’re at it, they were constructing a prison in the Negative Zone.  No one thought it odd that at no time ever, this incursion went unpunished?  Was everyone so fixated on domestic security that no one
Or to Shield pretending that they’re still relevant.  They certainly don’t deserve to be.  Withdrawing all support from the UN to make it an exclusively US institution leaves billions of people more susceptible to Hydra.  Who were strangely quiet during the Civil War.  How much did Hydra gain, I wonder?  They must be very grateful to Captain America for occupying SHEILD so thoroughly.  I wonder how much they gained.  
5) Remaining mutants and depowered mutants in-depth reaction to Registration.  Heck, an honest pros and cons argument about registration has been well overdue now.  Ethical, Legal & Social Information (ELSI) will likely become a game of roulette.  Iron Man may be eager to keep that information private, but it goes through many hands before it ever reaches his own.  Legally genetic information is prohibited from insurance companies, but that goes for Joe and Jane Public.  What about Mutants, and now without them prevalent, the remainder of the Superhuman and caped communities.  Both groups are now subject to the Marvel Universe’s version of the Draft.  There’s no guarantee that that those mentally or physically unable to serve in some capacity would be exempt.  There’s not even a promise.  The masses seem happy to see every Super gone (at least in New England) and the given options for those under the act are 1) joining Jack-booted troops, 2) Depowered and living with a cripple status, 3) Living under the keep of a sadist in a prison built and operated in Annihulus’s territory.  So if you weren’t a threat in any way, but didn’t cut it in Camp Hammond for whatever reason, something unique to you would be cut away forever, or you would be left to rot for the rest of your life (with your family possibly joining you) in a synthesized Hell, deliberately constructed in a facsimile of Hell.  Why didn’t more of the mutant community speak up about this?  They get treated to similar horrors every day, including but not limited to Death-Camps.