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I totally agree regarding Siege. I was absolutely stunned to see Bendis’ first issue of a FOUR-PART mini-series read EXACTLY the same as the first part of his two EIGHT-PART mini-series. Fuck the heck? I mean, yeah, it probably will work when collected, but how do you shrink the size of the story in HALF and STILL come out with the same storytelling approach you used when you had double the pages to work with?

I can’t disagree with the comments that nothing new happens, but I do like the set up and approach that Bendis is doing. It reads less like a traditional Superhero fight and more like well, a siege.

I don’t think Bendis really is ever going to get the hang of writing events with Single Issues in Mind, but I feel like this is going to be quite decent in Trade.

Anytime anyone references Fire Joe Morgan, it makes me cry tears of joy. Thank you, Dread Lord and Master.

I didn’t read it, but holy crap Coipel’s art is stunning.

I really liked Coipel’s work like most people, but the two-page spread where Loki warns Balder is cluttered and quite bad. Nice attempt at a different, innovative layout, but it interferred with actually being able to understand the comic.

I really liked Coipel’s work like most people, but the two-page spread where Loki warns Balder is cluttered and quite bad. Nice attempt at a different, innovative layout, but it interferred with actually being able to understand the comic.

I didn’t mind that so much because I saw it as a sort of noble failure. Yeah, it didn’t work, but I so appreciated that he was trying some “out of the box” storytelling that I quickly gave him a mulligan.

I like Bendis but I think anyone who has read ANY Bendis event in the past pretty much knows to expect nothing but the event premise to occur in the first issue. And sometimes, not even that. Like in House of M if I remember correctly, the first issue was only about half of the premise. For that reason I’m waiting for the trade on this one. I predict much won’t happen 2nd issue either.

I like Bendis but I think anyone who has read ANY Bendis event in the past pretty much knows to expect nothing but the event premise to occur in the first issue.

But this series is half the length of House of M! You wouldn’t expect a change in approach with half the pages?

Here’s the thing: I think people have had this reaction to, like, every single first issue of an event for the past few years. Especially Marvel ones, including Civil War. A lot happened in this issue, and just because almost all of it was blabbered about in interviews doesn’t change the fact that this was a pretty fast-paced comic. Now that we’re at the end of What We Know, I’m pretty excited about breakneck-pacing Bendis with three more issues of What We Don’t Know.

Even Infinite Crisis #1 and Blackest Night #1 were mostly shit we knew from interviews until BIG LAST PAGE REVEALS. I’ll admit Steve Rogers getting angry at a television isn’t the same as Hawkman dying or the return of Limbo Superpeople, but the overall amount of shit that went on in the issue was pretty big. And I loved the backmatter.

I would expect most of the streamlining would come in the middle. After all, it’s not like they’re going to spend four issues focusing on a completely irrelevant fight against Beta Ray Bill in the Savage Lands.

I would agree, David, except, again, this is a four issue series as opposed to all those other series, which were seven and eight part series.

So Siege should not have the same storytelling approach of a series designed to be twice the length.

I agree with Brian and want to add: so what if that’s the standard? That doesn’t mean that’s the way these comics should be written. It doesn’t make it good.

Nothing really did happen that wasn’t already said but wow, was Coipel’s art awesome.

This is why I don’t buy Bendis’s books anymore; a book I can read in 5 minutes is just not worth it, even if it is a very good five minutes. For all his skill at dialog, he is horrible when it comes to pacing.

Aren’t most of these comics just a series of plot points now rather than an actual story? And most of the points we already know from interviews and leaks.

Chad, fair enough, I’m just saying it’s not a thing specific to Siege. Although Brian makes a really good point too, 25% is more to know going in than 14.29%.

Well I couldn’t find anything on Siege that surprised me. At this point of history I think I already know everything about Superman… err Thor bringing Kandor… err Asgard to Earth and General Lane… err Norman Osborn attacking it.

I would love a New Asgard sharing orbit on the other side of the Sun…

How fast can run Steve Rogers? Undoubtedly he can outrun a black ring but.. well, let’s see.

I had a very similar reaction. The marketing essentially makes the first issue redundant, yet that could probably be said of just about any big event these days. The first issue is something that must exist despite the fact it has no practical reason to. It’s an odd sensation.

“Have you read anything about Siege wherein the basic concept is explained?”

Wow, no, as it turns out. That’s actually not a bad premise for a big blow-’em-up.

Chris Samnee’s art on “Embedded” is better than the art in Siege #1. I know you all agree.

I couldn’t help but compare the Soldier Field disaster of Siege with the elementary school explosion from Civil War. Under this comparison, Siege was terrible.

A packed Soldier Field is 60 thousand + people, their mass death would be, literally, the deadliest moment in American History (not to mention the destruction of an historical landmark). Despite this fact, Civil War’s disaster had much more emotional impact than did Siege’s boom-boom. This is partly due to the art but also the placement within the issue. 60thousand deaths is maybe the 3rd or 4th most important beat in the issue where as the youngsters in Civil War were the story of issue one.

This was Siege’s chance for emotional impact. Because it fails to portray the event successfully the issue, as Chad says, turns out as nothing more than a restatement of the already known premise of the mini. I would disagree with Chad, though, and say that it was not well presented.

Disclaimer: I think I have event fatigue; despite liking all the events of the last 5 years from both companies, both this and blackest night are leaving me cold.

Disclaimer: I am from Chicago and a huge Bears fan.

I was disappointed by the fact that big battles scenes were always the staple of superhero books, but the fight with Thor is depicted from miles away and the account of the battle by a reporter is made more prominent than actually showing the fight between him and the Dark Avengers

I don’t quite agree, Tim, but Samnee’s art was damn good.

Even Coipel’s art can’t sucker me into reading Bendis.

I haven’t picked Siege up, but I wanted to weigh in on Bendis. I’ve stopped reading literally everything Bendis writes in the monthly format because it’s just not his forte. He’s a great writer, but he just can’t write monthly super-hero comics. Powers is fantastic, but it’s still basically Law & Order with capes. His pacing problems can be forgiven in Ultimate Spider-Man because it was such a novel choice when the series started, and Bendis’ voice is the only one we’ve known on the character. But it still reads better in collected editions, because Bendis writes in “chapters,” not issues. There are different rules, and he’s not following the tradition of how super-hero stories were being told before 2000. That’s not bad, but it can be frustrating at times like these when you’re trying to get satisfaction out of what is essentially the prologue of a much larger story.

I know we’re being promised and expecting a new “status quo” at the end of this series, but I wouldn’t be surprised if, at the end of January, Marvel comes out with a statement that Siege is expanding by an issue because four issues “just wasn’t enough to tell the whole story”? That’s happened–what–twice in the past several years?

Bendis. blech.
DFTBA

But this series is half the length of House of M! You wouldn’t expect a change in approach with half the pages?

Not really, because even with Bendis’s shorter storylines, he still seems to start off at a crawl and then just suddenly rushes through the climax and resolution in the last issue or last two issues. Seems no matter how short a storyline is, he just can’t avoid a really slow setup issue. I don’t like it when but I’ve just learned to accept it by sticking to trades with him.

That doesn’t mean that’s the way these comics should be written. It doesn’t make it good.

I’m not saying comics should be written in such a way, nor am I saying the issue is good. I’m just saying it’s not surprising. That’s all.

I also predict the last issue or two will have all the action and 75% of the plot points. He seems to backload his books. It kind of makes his story resolutions feel a little unfilling though to have such a slow buildup and then resolve all at once.

An invasion of Asgard? Is that really what this huge event is about? That sounds incredibly dull.
Well, now I don’t mind missing it. I’ve never liked any interaction between Asgard and the real world. It’s okay to have an Asgardian or two running around getting involved with the rest of the Marvel Universe (Thor, Valkyrie, Loki, Enchantress– it doesn’t matter which), but Asgard itself should be far removed and mythical as far as normal people are concerned. The same goes for Atlantis, the Skrull Empire, and any other fantasy worlds that Marvel deals with. Super-Hero stories involve a delicate balancing act with realism and fantasy, and I think it works best to keep the big fantasy worlds at arm’s length from the main world of the stories. Otherwise, the real world seems fake and out of place whenever it shows up.
And did they really kill 60, 000 people? What is the point of that? Hasn’t anyone realised yet that this degree of overkill reduces whatever emotional impact they’re trying for? I would think it would be obvious by now that anything more than a couple of dozen deaths means nothing. One or two deaths can be devastating; make it sixty-thousand and it becomes no more meaningfull than a video-game massacre.

The guy at the nearest comic-book store tells me Marvel isn’t planning any more epic crossovers after this. I really, really hope that’s true. I just want this all to finally end so my favourite series can tell their own stories at their own pace. I just hope this one doesn’t do any major long-term damage to any important characters or institutions. (I’m still waiting for things to get back to normal after that Civil War mess.)

Dan Felty– Wow, did you really not know anything about what Siege is about until now? If so, I’m so glad to hear that. It’s so good to know I’m not the only one.

Man, I know Osborn has come up in the world since … well, since being very, very dead, but Asgard has REALLY come down in the Midgard if it’s being invaded by the frickin’ Green Goblin.

Thanks, Chad! You have, indeed, saved me some money…

Shame, really…

You know, this is something that’s bugged me since Dark Reign began. He’s The Green Goblin. He’s not Dr. Doom, Red Skull, Loki, Thanos, etc. His biggest goals have been taking over New York’s underworld and killing Spider-Man. He’s simply never been this kind of threat before, nor has he ever shown that he wants to be.

Bendis is a very, very bad writer. It’s impossible to read his stories or what he thinks is dialogue. He can’t plot and can’t create good (or any) characterization at all and the mere fact that, despite all his many, many faults, he still is the main “brain” behind Marvel nowadays reveals a lot more about the dumbness of Joe Quesada than even Quesada himself will ever comes to realize. I don’t have any doubt that the very next day Quesada, Bendis, Millar and Brevoort step out of the office someone will erase almost all of the “changes” these people provoked.

I want to buy this so bad, but I know I’m going to be so disappointed if I do.

I see that criticism of Osborn all the time, and while I understand it, I don’t think it’s that big a stretch for him to be doing what he’s doing. Almost forever, he’s run Oscorp, successfully I believe. He’s always been fairly devious and a bit power hungry, and he leveraged some tragedies to gain a role managing a bunch of capes. He’s using them to invade Asgard.

It’s not like he’s always been a homeless nut who’s single-handedly invading Asgard.

He’s not a homeless nut, but he is a guy who, despite having alleged super-intelligence and a vast amount of money and technology behind him, repeatedly fails to kill or break the spirit of one nebbishy young adult despite that being Norman’s sole obsession for virtually his entire criminal career.

He also doesn’t always run OsCorp all that successfully in most stories, with the Death of Gwen Stacy story having his Goblin-breakdown in part triggered by impending bankruptcy. In fact, we’ve never really seen any hint of what the hell OsCorp really does before Dark Reign, let alone gotten any stories that make Norman out as a brilliant businessman.

His origin has him co-opting the work of his scientifically-gifted partner Mendel Stromm, who was the real creator of the Goblin serum, and much of OsCorp’s success in Dar Reign has been Norman tossing all the defense contracts its way now that he has political power. What he did before if he needs to do that now is…questionable.

The Green Goblin is, at best, a superhuman version of the guy from American Psycho but with real murders under his belt. He’s generally not been portrayed as a genius of any sort s much as a really disturbed man who’s greatest triumph remains throwing an unconscious twentysomething off a bridge.

Gaaah! “Whose,” not “who’s.” Stupid standard Internet typos!

Carl, honestly that’s been a problem from the moment he came back from the dead in the Clone Saga. I thought even masterminding the Clone Saga was a stretch for him. And it’s only gotten worse since then. Remember Millar’s big revelation that he was behind outfitting almost all the villains in the Marvel Universe?

Omar, not just that but in the original stories he was never even portrayed as being Spider-Man’s best enemy combatant. Most of the time he fared well because he had help (Enforcers, timely interruption by the Hulk, Sandman), Spidey was distracted (found out his Aunt was bedridden and in the hospital and had to run to help her), Spidey was holding back because he knew it was his best friend’s dad and also knew he couldn’t turn himself in without giving up his own secret identity. Not only was he not shown as much of a genius but he was only a competent combatant to boot.

Not being able to break Spider-Man, however, is not one of the things I would count against him as a weakness though. Spider-Man does have an above average indomitable spirit and will to win. Not being able to break him is not a sign of Norman’s weakness but a testament to Spider-Man’s resilience. Besides, that criticism about being unable to break one specific hero pretty much applies to all villains.

T, I think it’s a little bit of both Parker’s resilience and Osborne’s obsession and drive, which I think are the key components of his character. I never read the original Goblin stories (I came in around the time of Hobgoblin), but since his reemergence he’s been pretty consistently portrayed as a power-mad bully who has a Napoleon complex when comparing himself with with true heavy-hitters like Doom, Namor and the like. He sees himself as a leader not because he’s especially smart, but because he’s got the drive and he’s the kind of guy who can get things done.

And I think his character works since he has gotten into politics, because he has the kind of eat-or-be-eaten mentality that being a politician requires.

Not that he isn’t crazier than a shithouse rat, but you could say the same thing bout most Congresspersons.

True, T., but other big villains manage to gain their cred by accomplishing other things. Doom’s taken over the world twice over and stolen power from cosmic gods; Magneto’s threatened the world often and actually outright beaten the X-Men half the times they’ve clashed; event he Mandarin managed to turn China into a medieval nightmare once. And of course you have the Kingpin, who arguably did temporarily break Daredevil’s spirit.

Norman looks lame because all he did for so many years was try to break Peter Parker, meaning that the only goal he had, he failed at and failed hard. He has no other motivation most of the time. If all Doom ever did was go after Reed Richards, he’d look pretty crappy too. Suddenly giving Norman some other, nebulous “evil politician” shtick to make Dark Reign work comes out of the blue, and looks like a big push.

For all that, a lot of Dark Reign so far has been Norman still looking like a chumpo next to villains who really are big threats. Doom, Loki, and the rest of the Cabal have run rings around him from the start, and the Siege looks like nothing more than Norman being Loki’s soon-to-be-discarded tool for taking over Asgard. He’s not really the master villain even in what started out as his Big Push story.

Yeah, honestly Doc Ock always seemed a lot more formidable to me. Heck, even Kraven had his moments. The Goblin got a lot of exposure, but I always had trouble taking him seriously. The Gwen Stacy thing has serious, of course (her death, I mean, not the horrible and ridiculous retcon), but it wasn’t so much my god who would do such a thing — there are any number of villains would do such a thing — so much as the Goblin got lucky and Spidey got clumsy.

To be fair I’m a trade only reader and I am far enough behind on those that I have just read the “Dark Reign: Accept Change” trade so I’m just starting Dark Reign as the rest of you finish it.

But, that said, Omar aren’t you kind of arguing at the moment against Norman Osborn being treated as this a-list mastermind, but at the same time being manipulated into it by Loki? Your last post specifically seems a little damned if you do damned if you don’t.

Since his return, at least in the JM DeMattias Spectacular Issues, Osborn has been portrayed as a power hungry megalomaniac who will happily use the system to achieve his goals. After being placed in charge of the Thunderbolts during Civil War he found himself in a position to assume power following his role in the Secret Invasion, however you are correct when you say that he isn’t Doctor Doom… since gaining all of this power that he so covets he really has no idea what to do with it.

I don’t have a problem, so far since as I say I a way being, with the way Norman is being portrayed overall. Where my problem in the current storyline lies, and that I can’t get past comes much earlier, in that I cannot wrap my head around the idea that Tony Stark put the freak Green Goblin (and we all know he knew who Osborn was) into an position of power much less giving him command over a group of super powered psychopaths… but that’s another, and much older, complaint.

buttler – Doc Ock may be more formidable as a physical opponent, but the true greatness of the Spider-Man/Green Goblin relationship is that it is more about Peter and Norman than their alter-egos. Maybe not in Amazing #14, or the next few years, but ultimately it has come to pass, regardless of how “big” Norman has become the past couple years, that Norman and Peter hate each other way more than the Green Goblin and Spider-Man hate each other.

If portrayed correctly the Green Goblin is Spider-Man’s opposite (not Venom) the same way as Doctor Doom/Reed Richards, The Joker/Batman, etc. Doctor Octopus might put up more of a physical fight, but the pre-Brand New Day secret identity knowledge, and the many ties between Peter and the Osborn’s beyond their enmity make Goblin more formidable of a foe.

I would highly recommend the essays at Spideykicksbutt.com about the Goblins.

I’m arguing that the fan resposne “Norman is an A-lister and bigger than Spider-Man” isn’t supported much by
the story itself, which seems to be taking pains to set Norman up to fall back to midcard evil after the arc finishes.

Really, without his public image and political appointment, he’s NOT an A-list threat, and in some ways this story is about an idea Bendis likes: that the position, not the person in it, is at once the problem and the source of power. (The Kingpin in his Daredevil was much more about that role being a position of power than it was something special to Wilson Fisk, for example.)

Contrast Norman right now to any of the rest of the original Cabal save the Hood, an explicit successor to a “Kingpin” role and thus subject to the same themes as previous Bendis stories on the subject. Strip Doom of the Latverian throne, he’s still a nightmare. Namor has no kingdom, and was still dangerous and big enough that he had a seat. Emma Frost can navigate her own way, switching sides if she chooses. Loki’s a god of deception who can earn his wicked way in any world. Even the Hood was initially backed by Dormammu and is currently Loki’s pawn.

But Norman? Strip him of the institutional position as HAMMER Director, and he’s not a global or even national threat anymore. He can’t do what Doom does all on his own, or what his other co-conspirators do. More than most villains, Norman needs the keys to the kingdom handed to him; he’s certainly never managed to take them by force of will or sheer ability. Bendis has had innumerable characters note that Norman lucked into his position rather than planning his way into it. He’s an opportunist, and the A-List of villainy is about people who are more than just opportunists.

I’m arguing that the fan resposne “Norman is an A-lister and bigger than Spider-Man” isn’t supported much by the story itself, which seems to be taking pains to set Norman up to fall back to midcard evil after the arc finishes.

I’d just like to point out that “midcard evil” has got to be one of the greatest phrases ever concocted. If I ever write my memoirs, that’s what I’m calling it.

And Midgard midcard evil at that.

[...] I do for nearly every Marvel event comic – to skip it. Chad Nevitt at Comics Should Be Good sums it up pretty well: The “Dark Avengers” (villains acting as the Avengers since the real Avengers have been [...]