Marvel VP Explains 'Captain America: Civil War' and 'Avengers: Infinity War' Original Storylines

— -- On Tuesday, Marvel made its big announcement, which included nine future movies running through 2019.

That reveal of "Captain America: Civil War" and "Avengers: Infinity War" part 1 and 2 just opened the door for more questions from fans.

"Wait, Captain America is going to fight Iron Man?" and "What the heck is the Infinity War?" were some of the questions asked by those who don't read the comic books.

ABC News caught up with Marvel Executive Editor and Senior VP Tom Brevoort to talk about the storylines.

He warned that he obviously works on the publishing side and he doesn't actually work on the films, but that Marvel studios have been great in crafting the movies and mining the past books for inspiration.

So, these storylines are not "literal adaptations," but the comic incarnations and original stories from with the movies will draw content from.

ABC: Tell Us about the "Civil War" plot?

Brevoort: "Civil War was a project we did in 2005. It made headlines at the time. It was very much taken form the zeitgeist of the era. In the post 9-11 world, one of the questions that we as a nation had to grapple with is the question of the balancing act of the need for security and the desire for privacy and public freedom. That was dramatized in Civil War.

"The inciting incident is a conflict between a young team of teenage superheros and super villains. They engage in a battle ... one of the villains is this character Nitro, who explodes and he blows up, taking out a school and killing like 700 people, most of them kids. This sets off a wave of sentiment ... this set up a scenario in which there was a movement and a desire for superheros to register with the government or register with SHIELD. Come forward and get their credentials and be trained."

ABC: Why do Captain America and Iron Man fight?

Brevoort: "From the point of view of Captain America, this was an infringement on the civil liberties of these people, this was overstepping turning all these super-powered individuals and turning them effectively into soldiers. Iron Man on the other hand, saw the validity of this. Just because a guy has powers and puts on a costume doesn't mean he is trained to use them responsibility, even if his intentions are good, people can get hurt. This became an ideological divide between Cap and Iron Man and it played out in bold superhero fashion with laser blasts and fisticuffs. Different characters within the Marvel aligned themselves philosophically with one side or the other. The person who was caught in the middle was Spider-Man. Peter Parker starts off on the Iron Man side and in fact, reveals his identity to the world ... as a result, everything goes to hell for him. He switches his resolve to the other side, even though it seems too late for him.

"The Fantastic Four were split on this question ... What we tried to do was create a situation in which both sides had a point of view you could look at and go that's legitimate. It's the same sort of thing right now the conversation about Ebola and the quarantine of doctors ... There was no real absolute right or wrong answer. That's what made Civil War such a compelling story for people. It wasn't white hat versus black hat, it was good guy versus good guy."

ABC: Amazing, so what's the deal with 'Infinity War' and why would Marvel need two films -- Part 1 and 2?

Brevoort: "Inifnity War really was part of a trilogy. We did three stories -- Infinity Gauntlet, Infinity War and Infinity Crusade. It was this big, sprawling, epic Thanos story [who appears a bit in 'Guardians of the Galaxy]. How much the films will pull remains to be seen ... The crux of this Infinity Trilogy, Thanos as a character is one of the most powerful villains in the Marvel Universe. He's certainly one of the most grandiose. He exists on sort of a galactic scale. He's an alien being, he's from a race called the Eternals, who pretty much live forever. They are what anchient man thought of as Gods.

"Thanos is a nihilist. He worships and loves death almost as a person ... he will almost court her. In the course of this story, there were six items of power, six gems that were the Infinity Gems ... Thanos went on a quest throughout the universe to gather them together and form them into the Infinity Gauntlet, which he wore on his hand and made him omnipotent."

ABC: What did he do with that unlimited power?

Brevoort: "His first act was to whip out 50 percent of the beings in the universe as sort of a sacrifice to death. One day, suddenly half of the people in the universe vanished or dropped dead. This became an enormous struggle that not just the Avengers, but every superhero on Earth, everybody that was left had to grapple with ... Because Thanos presented a threat to everybody. He was so absolutely unstoppable. Ultimately, the good guys won and it all turned out okay ... I imagine, the only you could do and the reason it needs to be two movies rather than one, is that the scale of it is just going to be larger than even a typical Avengers movie. I don't know what Marvel Studios has planned, but by that point, there will certainly be a lot more characters in the Marvel Universe that could be in those movies. That is sort of the promise of the Infinity War, as a concept. When that series was published in 1990, just about every character that existed was a character in that story. It's an absolute mob scene of people. If Avengers was sort of the topper on Iron Man, Captain America, Thor and Hulk, then Infinity War sort of implies that it is a topper on an Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy, bigger than anything else. More Epic, just completely bonkers!"