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

I managed to survive the Blizzard of 2010 here in Pittsburgh mostly intact.  We lost power Friday night and didn’t get it back until Saturday night.  This put me somewhat behind on putting together this week’s installment of Under Siege, not that I’m sure many will notice.  Anyway, this week’s releases brought major installments as things get ratcheted up.

Siege #2

Ares engages Balder as the siege of Asgard continues.  It is then, thanks to Heimdall, that Ares finally sees that he’s on the wrong side of the fight.  It just seems like it’s taken him way too long to finally figure this little detail out.

Meanwhile, Osborn and some of his higher powered flunkies have downed Thor and are attempting to take him into custody when Maria Hill shows up on the scene.  Did I mention she’s in a pick-up truck with a hick and a rocket launcher?  With a little help from a badly beaten Thor, she’s able to get him off of the field and into town.

Back at Avengers Hideout in New York, Captain America makes a stirring speech to a group I’m pretty sure don’t need convincing that it’s time to take Osborn down.  He’s assembled a team made up of New Avengers, Young Avengers, Classic Avengers, and Nick Fury leading his Secret Warriors.

Back at Asgard, Osborn takes another hit as Ares makes his move and calls Osborn out.  Before Ares can put an end to it all, Sentry comes in and removes Ares from the battle with extreme prejudice.  It is certainly the most graphic scene in the issue.

Cap and his team load up to head out, except for Phobos.  For whatever reason, Fury is keeping the kid out of this fight and we learn that the god of fear really has nothing on Fury.  This is followed up by a big old gift giving scene when Bucky gives Cap the shield back and Jarvis gives Cap a briefcase that belongs to a friend in need near the battle (Hint: Tony Stark used to cary the Iron Man suit around in a briefcase).

Finally, Osborn sends Daken out to find Thor only to find that Thor isn’t really one for hiding and has cooked Daken but good.  Osborn then gets one more incoming alert, something round and shield-like that’s going to clang him in the noggin.

Bendis has kept the writing and pacing tight on this issue and the art is still peak.  This issue though is all build up setting issue #3 up to possibly be the tipping point.  Either that or the next issue will just be a lot of Cap and Osborn hitting each other and spouting dialogue as the big three get ready to come back together again.  The Jonathan Hickman-esque text bit at the end of the issue was a nice way to fill in the gaps that people who haven’t been reading Secret Warriors might be experiencing.

Siege: Embedded #2

One could say that this book is mainly a road trip story with an overweight Scandinavian  but that would simplify things a bit too much.  Embedded’s battlefield is not Asgard nor is it wherever Volstagg decides to hit people.  Embedded works its battlefield as that of the press and it works it very well.

Ben Urich and Will Sturn are escorting Volstaag back to Oklahoma where he plans to turn himself into the proper authorities because of what happened at Soldier Field.  Urich uses the trip to talk with the people they run into to see how the nation is reacting.

On the other side of this field is Todd Keller, a loosely-veiled caricature of Glenn Beck if ever I saw one.  He has sold his journalistic integrity to get inside the biggest story and to make buddies with Norman Osborn.  Now, I don’t mind me some overt satire of high profile media personalities, but it would have been nice if they had made Keller look not so much like Beck.  Seriously, you don’t have to hit us over the head with a hammer.

As Keller finds out that the real Osborn doesn’t have the time to actually speak with him on the air, Urich, Sturn, and Volstaag have a run-in on the road with H.A.M.M.E.R forces.  Volstaag winds up acquiring one of the agent’s flying sleds and proceeds to deliver some justice on them.  All the while, Urich and Sturn are arrested and taken to Tinker Air Force Base where they make a Scooby-Doo-like escape from custody.

The humor and humanity of this book is what makes it a great addition to the bigger event.  The story is less about Volstaag and more about the everyman and their existence in the larger Marvel Universe.  Brian Reed has a real knack for this dialogue and brings these people to life, even when they’re being portrayed as types.

That's this week's Siege installments.  Hopefully next weekend I'll be able to dig myself out and get to the coffee shop where I normally write these things...

...till the next...

~M