Longbox Special: Under Siege: The Finale

Here we are at the end my friends.  The end of Marvel’s latest super hero epic.  No longer will we be

I’m going to break with my usual format this time around and just go ahead and talk about this weeks final five books interchangeably.  Where to start though?  Let’s start with how much of a fizzle I felt Siege #4 was.  Up until this point, Bendis had been ratcheting things up with each issue and giving us a little bit of pay off each time.  This issue should have been the big pay off, the last boss battle, the part of the story that should have hit us hard in the face and make us want more after.  It didn’t really deliver that feeling, it felt more like a disjointed sequence of events that didn’t really mesh well.

Opening with Loki’s plea to his dead father to help the heroes overcome the Void seemed to play against what Loki had been working towards all this time.  The argument can be made that he didn’t think it would get as bad as all this but I have to ask just why would it matter to him?  From what we’ve seen in the Siege: Loki one shot, he wanted to be free from all that Asgard represented.  Doesn’t its fall mark the biggest freedom he could get from it?  I can understand a desire to save his fellow Asgardians but he decides to power up the assembled heroes, leaving his brothers and sisters to simply stand by and watch.

Once the heroes are powered up, things really don’t improve much, mainly because there isn’t much difference in how they appear.  We get little snippets of pretty cliche dialogue telling us things like Iron Man’s batteries are charged and his systems are online.  Great.  Iron Man is on par with my car.  The battle itself is underwhelming with the heroes taking shots at the Void until the Void destroys the Norn stones and Loki along with them.  Then a non-suped up Thor proceeds to essentially hit the Void until it doesn’t move anymore.  Why didn’t he just do this in the first place when he had more power at his disposal?  Finally, he kills Bob and whisks his body off to a burial in the sun which lacks any kind of emotional weight.

This lack of emotional weight carries over in The Sentry: Fallen Sun where heroes gather to remember The Sentry.  The book plods along and is fairly unremarkable as a memorial or farewell to the character.  Of course there are the hints that he’ll be back.  Also, apparently he and rogue hooked up.  Great.

Siege: Embedded also managed to fall flat for me.  It was a lot of Ben Urich just watching stuff happen and reminding us how small normal people are in the face of an event of this magnitude.  The problem was that the book just didn’t feel big enough and I wasn’t sold on Ben’s sense of awe.  It does give us a bit more Volstaag, which has always been enjoyable in this book.

Finally, there are two books that wrap up their runs along side the final installment of Siege; Dark Avengers and Avengers: The Initiative.  Of the two, Avengers: The Initiative is arguable the weakest.  It attempts to tie up all of the loose ends of the three stories it’s been weaving throughout the past few months.  It also tries to set things up for the book set to replace it, Avengers Academy (or whatever they’re calling it).  I really liked this book when it was focused on Taskmaster simply because he seemed like such an unlikely protagonist for the story.  Things got bogged down when they started putting focus on fairly uninteresting side stories.

Dark Avengers was the one book that gave a really good send off to itself.  It’s also been the only book to really portray Norman Osborn in something that resembles a sympathetic light.  The coda that Osborn gets at the end of the book is some really fantastic writing from Bendis.  I wonder where that kind of writing was for the last issue of Siege?  If I haven’t mentioned it before, Victoria Hand was also an up point of this book.  I’m happy to see that she made it through this and will be around for what follows.

So that’s it, the end, fin, I’ve got no more to say really.  I had considered throwing The New Avengers Finale into this week’s article but it technically isn’t part of Siege.  Also, it was pretty lacking too.  Siege built itself up pretty nicely as did some of the tie-in books but in the end it didn’t feel like it delivered the goods.  Sure, things are set up for Marvel’s Heroic Age and all that, but it would have been nice to have a better end to Osborn’s Dark Reign.  In any case, it was fun doing these pieces even though it pulled me away from doing proper comic book reviews (if one can call my reviews proper).  Maybe we’ll do this again sometime.  Maybe I’ll just drink myself into a stupor instead.  Take care and be well...

Longbox Special: Under Siege

After not one but two weeks without any Siege material from Marvel, we get the main book, two tie-ins and all hell breaking loose.

Siege #3 opens with the White House reacting to the assault on Asgard calling for the arrest of Norman Osborn as Captain America and his Avengers show up to launch their counteroffensive.  Thor engages Sentry on the streets of Broxton, which does not look like a fight that will end well for the thunder god.  Meanwhile, with Osborn’s forces on the ropes, backup arrives in the form of The Hood and his gang and Speed of the Young Avengers makes a delivery from Steve Rogers to Tony Stark.

The action moves along a good clip as Cap and his team get an assist from the U.S. government as H.A.M.M.E.R forces are taken down.  Iron Man shows up to neutralize Osborn’s armor and Norman finally makes the snap everyone has been waiting for.  However, this doesn’t happen before he has Sentry disengage Thor and bring Asgard to the ground.  The issue ends with a big cliffhanger and a new threat.

Bendis moves the action along really well in this issue and continues to portray Osborn as a fully dimensional character, not just a psychopath in power.  Coipel’s art brings the action to life in a way I have only seen since Bryan Hitch.  I’m very excited with the question of just how they’re going to wrap this up.  Also, it was good to see Iron Man back in the game.

Siege: Embedded #3 continues Ben Urich’s adventure to the front lines of Asgard as he stows away as an embedded reporter on a H.A.M.M.E.R transport with Todd Keller, the apparent Glenn Beck of the Marvel universe who is on the side of Norman Osborn.  Things go awry when the craft is hit by a thrown Venom and gets worse when it looks like all on board are on the menu for the monster.

A fortunately timed crash seems to save just about everyone on board, save those Venom already ate.  Venom also seems to have taken off to rejoin the battle as Ben and Keller’s nonplused producer manage to dig Keller out of the wreckage only to be forced at gunpoint to set up a broadcast from the streets of Asgard.  Meanwhile, Urich’s friend Will Stern has made his way to Asgard just in time to capture its fall on camera.

I’ve enjoyed how this tie-in book works the press angle and the fight that goes on via the news.  However, I’m still uncomfortable with the Todd Keller character.  He’s seemed very flat from the outset and doesn’t really get much depth.  It would be nice if he at least got one monologue like those given to Osborn to help flesh him out and maybe make a touch more sympathetic as a person.

Finally, Dark Avengers #15 continues to reveal just how it is that Norman Osborn got not only Sentry but The Void into his pocket.  The events of the Cabal meeting where Doom takes himself out of the mix is fully revealed and we see it’s The Void that was Osborn’s secret weapon.  It is in the wake of this even that the problem of Bob’s wife Lindy is taken care of.

During the attack, Avenger’s tower is evacuated giving Hawk/Bullseye the opportunity to take Lindy out to sea and neutralize her.  Upon his return, he relays that she couldn’t take her life anymore and jumped into the ocean sending Sentry off to find her.  There is a follow up scene with Victoria Hand and Osborn as Norman tells her to relay that the attack on Avengers Tower was an act of Latverian terrorism.

This issue works really well with the main event book in that it gives just enough information to allow an understanding why Sentry is behaving as he is.  It will be interesting to see just what they do with the next issue since I’m assuming it will be the last, wrapping things up with the wrap up of the event.

This was a good week for the Siege event and I’m interested in seeing they’ll be able to keep this level of quality through the rest of this month.  I know there were a couple of weak books last month and this month we’re going to see some other titles brought in with Mighty Avengers #35 and New Mutants #11.  I’m not sure what New Mutants is doing in there and it concerns me just a little bit with Second Coming just around the corner for the X-Books.

Longbox Special: Under Siege

Last week, Marvel gave me a break by not putting out any Siege stuff and this week they went easy on me again by just putting out the one book to talk about.  So without further ado, let’s get back to it...

This week, we return to The Sentry with Dark Avengers #14, but not until we get to see Norman Osborn and Victoria Hand have it out a bit.  They get into a debate about Osborn talking with a psychotherapist and Ms. Hand winning out.  This was one of my favorite parts about this book just because Bendis handles the exchange skillfully and also manages to make me feel sympathetic for Osborn.  The whole scene portrays him as a real man who, while certainly working his own agenda, has more complicated things going on inside his head.  Hand is presented as a person who not only thinks that Osborn has done some good work but who is also compassionate towards his history and situation and doesn’t want to see him fall into being a super-villain again.

Following another great scene with Hand putting her foot down with Moonstone (Osborn’s Ms. Marvel), we pick up where last issue left off with The Void preparing to level the world as a way to punish Robert Reynolds and his wife Lindy, who tried to kill him fearing where things were going.  Osborn suits up and takes off to have a chat with Sentry’s alter ego/nemesis in an attempt to talk him down.  This is another great scene, mainly because of the juxtaposition with the previous discussion Osborn had with Hand.  If anything, this is a manifestation of Hand’s fear of Osborn becoming the Green Goblin again and losing everything.  Having finally talked things out, Osborn begins to put things in motion to solve what he sees as the big problem with Sentry... Lindy.

This week’s tie in material really doesn’t move forward the events in Asgard in that they take place three days before.  However, this book does seem to be presenting the method by which Osborn gains the level of control over Sentry that he exhibits in the main book.  There’s also a lot of development with Hand and Osborn’s professional relationship and I’m really interested in seeing if Hand has an agenda of her own in all of this.

Longbox Special: Under Siege

Not too long ago I wrote up my review for the first issue of Marvel’s latest event, “Siege”. Well, I decided I would take a hand at writing a weekly bit about the books coming out that looks at the tie-ins. This past week we got installments of Dark Avengers and Dark Wolverine...

Dark Avengers #13 gives a bit of insight into the character of The Sentry. I admit to not having what one would consider a comprehensive understanding of this guy, I didn’t read any of the stuff that introduced him. What I’ve come to understand is that he’s a Superman-like character as far as his powers but has that wonderful quirk of being mentally unstable. Not only is he The Sentry but he is also his own arch-nemesis, The Void.


It is revealed that Robert “Bob” Reynolds, the guy who became The Sentry, is that he was not some innocent, bright-eyed kid who wandered into a lab and drank a serum that he shouldn’t have and gained the powers that he did. It turns out Bob was a junkie and was looking for his next high by rooting through a lab for materials. He drank a serum, got that first spike of power, and like most junkies he wanted more.


It’s also revealed that what is understood about The Void, that it’s just a darker impulses of Bob, is wrong. Apparently The Void is in some way connected to the wrath of God. The force that killed all the first-born of Egypt but spared the Israelites who marked their door with the blood of a lamb? The Void.


The thing that confuses me though is that I thought The Void had been locked up inside the mind of Scott Summers after Emma Frost had extracted it from Bob and held it in her mind by remaining in her diamond form. Hopefully this will not go unnoticed and will be further explained next issue.

Dark Wolverine #82 is my first exposure to the book since the Wolverine title was changed for “Dark Reign”. This is another situation where the character is new to me save for a small amount of exposure in the other X-books that led up to “Dark Reign”. What I know is that Daken is Wolverine’s son and that he hates his dad, of course, and seems to swing on both sides of the sexual orientation fence.


This issue raises questions about just why Daken is involved with Osborn and there’s a teasing of some kind of secret that he’s managed to keep from the H.A.M.M.E.R leader. He is also tied to the Asgardians as entities that I can only assume are a kind of Norse version of the Sisters of Fate, watch Daken from afar and comment that he is the bringer of Ragnarok, the Norse apocalypse.


Daken is definitely playing his own agenda in all of this and there is what seems to be an 11th hour betrayal in the middle of the siege on Asgard. How this will all play into the bigger picture of the main story is unclear, if it will happen at all. More than likely, this will all just play into a hopeful advancement of the character that will extend past the event.


These two books were both solid background pieces on characters involved with Osborn’s plan. However, I wouldn’t consider either of them essential reading to understand the larger story, at least as far as it stands now. If you like The Sentry or Daken, you’ll certainly want to pick these up as they are solid character pieces.