Siege


By Brian Michael Bendis, Olivier Coipel, Michael Lark & others (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-452-2

The things that superhero comic-books do best are Spectacle and Cosmic Retribution: the cathartic comeuppance of someone who truly deserves it. So this collection, reprinting the Siege: Cabal one-shot and the four-issue Siege miniseries it led to (selected portions of the vast 2010 publishing event that partially re-set and restored the traditional “Stan & Jack” Marvel Universe) is an effective and welcome hint of a new dawn in the recently bleak and unfriendly world of Captain America and his costumed cohorts…

Norman Osborn, one-time Green Goblin, has through various machinations become America’s Security Czar: the “top-cop” in sole charge of the beleaguered nation’s defence and freedom. Under his meteoric rise the Superhuman Registration Act led to the Civil War, Captain America was arrested, murdered and resurrected (see Captain America Reborn), and numerous horrific assaults on mankind occurred: including the Secret Invasion and the “Dark Reign” which led up to the graphic novel under review here

As well as commanding all the covert and military resources of the USA, Osborn now has his own suit of Iron Man armour and as Iron Patriot leads a hand-picked team of ersatz Avengers. The country should by rights be beyond any possibility of threat or harm. However as the events of Siege: The Cabal (Bendis, Lark & Stefano Gaudiano) graphically depict, Osborn is playing a deadly double game. The Cabal is a Star Chamber of super-villains comprising Osborn, Asgardian God Loki, gang-boss The Hood, mutant telepath Emma Frost, Taskmaster, Sub-Mariner and Doctor Doom.

But cracks are beginning to show, both in the criminal conspiracy and Osborn himself. When Iron Patriot promises to conquer Asgard for Loki, Doom secedes from the group, prompting a disastrous battle between the Masters of Evil…

Asgard is currently displaced and floating scant metres above the soil of Oklahoma. Using his position as Chief of Homeland Security Osborn manufactures an “Asgardian incident” and launches an all-out invasion on the Gleaming City, overruling the new American President to do so.

And so begins Siege (by Bendis, Coipel & Mark Morales) a knock-down, drag-out fight pitting all the long-cultivated metahuman resources of Osborn – paramilitary strike force H.A.M.ME.R., the Dark Avengers and the villainous penal battalion of The Initiative – against the sorely pressed and time-lost Asgardians…

However Osborn has gone too far and the President fires him.

So What?

Well, now the scattered and fugitive “real” superheroes such as Captain America, Nick Fury, the original Iron Man, Spider-Man, the Vision and all the other underground and Secret Avengers are safe to act, but they had better hurry because Thor’s hard pressed people cannot stand against Osborn’s god-killing ultimate weapon…

Despite feeling a little rushed in places, this is a grand, old-fashioned Fights ‘n’ Tights cataclysmic clash of good guys and bad guys, magnificently illustrated and astonishingly compelling. After years of dark and dangerous anti-heroics it’s a splendid palate-cleanser for what Marvel promises to be a new Heroic Age…
© 2010 Marvel Entertainment LCC and its subsidiaries. All Rights Reserved. A British edition released by Panini UK Ltd.