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Yeah OmegaRayJay I agree the story just ain't working
and I'm 100% with Babs on this, Maybe not 100% I might mark it a bit lower like a 2 out of 5 but this is a comic site and it wouldn't be much of a comic site if we all trashed every comic we read.
Siege has some ok moments, it has some great moments of visual color but overall I don't think the Siege works, like some of us say overall the Siege makes little sense or the story just lacks longer term impact.
As great as the art is I don't think it can really save this issue, the Dark Reign and Dark Avengers were really a follow on from the average Skrull and the Dark Avengers arc....a long, long reign of the writer Bendis that may finally be coming to a definite end.
Bendis started as a small, talented writer for detective stories like Daredevil, his big dominating run comes with the Galactic Empire called Skrulls, these aliens get p*ssed off after suffering wave after wave of defeat from Galactus eating their homeworld to the Annihilation Wave coming in and blowing bits out of everyone's Galaxy. So back in 2007-2008 Bendis writes a big arc with the religious Skrulls seeing Earth as their safe haven
and these Skrulls invade Earth like a War of the World style invasion to set up their new heavenly throne. It was all going so well, everyone beaten by the Skrulls, every team infiltrated until Tony, Thor, Reed, Ms Marvel, Panther and the rest of Earth's heroes finally discover a way to hit back so they make a last stand against the Skrulls
Green Goblin Norman Osborn steps in on he final fight, Osborn lands the death blow and becomes the greatest hero on Earth. So before the setting of Seige and after the Skrull, Osborn became Earth's champ
all the other real heroes were declared incompetent so Norman Obsorn puts on one of Ironman's suits, calls himself Captain Patriot,
Ossie grabs a bunch of B-lister villians/Heroes like Moonstone, Ares, Daken and Sentry, puts all these new guys into a new team and declares war on everyone he doesn't like. The US government seemed to be ok with all this new dark Avengers thing and had no contingency plan if Norman and his ilk were just a bunch of insane thugs.
Siege starts out promising to be this big revelation, this big final that will wrap everything up but IMO it seems Bendis has Zapped out all his creative juices and now the battery has run flat, the story was meant to be twisting and shocking but really it started to run out of gas once Sentry ripped Ares in half.
Nothing since the bloody blockbuster Ares explosion has ever really been as shocking since, the arc ran out of gas early which explains why old issues of Blackest Night outsell the new Seige by 30 thousand copies. It's not all bad at Marvel, they did have some great stories like Ultimates, World War Hulk was a thrilling fight for those of you into battles, War Machine was a beautiful little number and Guardians of the Galaxy is one of the best written, exciting, on going comic book arcs. but Siege IMO it doesn't work anymore, Thor could have been far more interesting. A story about what the whole thing meant to the Gods, once JMS was gone Kieron Gillen and Billy Tan were given a tough job, try to keep Thor's epic run moving after people like Joe and Brain decided to turn Asgard on its head and blow away what JMS was doing to build the character. Matt Fraction and artist Pasqual Ferry will have work to do trying to keep the story running.
I think Marvel management wanted to move away from all that heavenly mythology and have the Gods of Asgard to come crashing down to Earth so they can hang out in the towns and take jobs as doctors, barmen or security officers or whatever job may be going. Olivier Coipel has been shining in Siege, his art is top quality and he is on familiar ground but I don't think his writing director Brain is delivering much material, if you read Coipel/JMS every page meant something, the art and the writing were deep. With a Bendis directed arc it depends too much on splash pages, all wows and bangs, and a bunch of heroes jumping in to pitch their stars and stripes shield into Goblins face. That's the strange thing about beautiful art, even if it is a nice shot sometimes you have to cut it if it adds nothing to the overall story. Go back to basics with simpler page of art and a stronger page of writing . The Dark Avengers #15 IMO was one of the few Siege issues worth buying, it is wrote better, the art depends less on big fight scenes and it had that stunning moment where Bullseye (doing some Hawkeye cosplay) reveals himself as a psychopath and takes out Lindy Reynolds, there is much more going on and the dialogue is stronger. When Siege goes it will mark the the End of an Era, the End of Bendis and the End of writers attempts to fit people like Ares and Sentry into the main continuity. Since 2006 writers like him shocked us, but now its all coming to an end. At the time most of the stories topped the charts because they had really turned Marvelverse on its head but when you look back most of it was hype and lame substance. Reading back on the old comics I do not think that they hold up, apart from Civil War that's a few back issues and TPBs worth buying but beyond Civil War I would not recommend my friends anything else unless its GoTG, Independent or a DC story.
Siege to me is like one of those forgettable Summer Blockbusters, you go in buy your popcorn, get dazzled with some shoot outs, explosions and special Fx but 10 mins after walking out of the theatre you've already forgotten most of the lines and just ask yourselves what the hell was all that about?
Siege lacks complexity, it is missing a heart and does not have a long term epic tale, its because there is so little in the Siege which is why it is so difficult to define what exactly is wrong with it.
Which is why a review that takes this comic apart needs to be scripted and you need to take notes!!
It's hard to pin point what's wrong with the Siege without look back over the comic and going oh I see they got it wrong at part A and part B is just silly. Siege is stumbling and its style is just not appealing to everyone.
When you're a kid you don't really give a damn about anyone else's unique tastes, you buy into your own games and your own thing. If you like to be scared you sneak into a Horror, if you love your scifi you rent out some Cloverfield or StarWars movies, it doesn't matter if the movies, games or book you enjoy lack substance you check out your own thing, you wallow in your own favorite genre. Then you learn to make compromises, you go to a theatre to watch a film both you and the girlfriend can enjoy. You read books that not just you like but something your friends and family might have read, you stop being selfish and rent a DVD the kids might enjoy not just something for you and that's why Siege isn't working for me, it only caters to one taste, the big blockbuster explosive tastes. The girls can buy their Twlight movies or Anita Blake comics but I always liked the X-Men's ability to break boundaries, it appealed to all demographics, it had the adult themes, the high school themes, something for the guys and the girls, war, romance, betrayal, crazy giant mutants messing with people's genetic codes and calling themselves Apocalypse, the Xmen genre at its peak did it all and did it great. Bendis Avengers to me just caters to one taste, I can understand how some people enjoy it but to me its just some kind of block buster goth alien movie with no substance and no deep meaning. Thor and his Olympian buddies look like Marvel's greatest tomato cans, if Thor can not make himself the hard man and take out some big bad guy when really needed what's the point in keeping Thor or his Asgardian jobbers around? They can't even become men and defend their own turf they did for centuries.
Siege became predictable, sometimes as frantic as the battles got they just came off as a little boring. For months and years many of us knew Sentry and Osborn were becoming these crazy bad people but to have them nuke Asgard and literally turn them into monsters that just looked so lame to me. Yeah I know the art is great but the art does not tell a good story, I mean we knew these guys where bad but did you really have to give the both of them these ugly demon heads, it just seemed so clichéd to me that we got no new villain in Siege we just got old ones with a face lift to look like these demonic heads.
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