{"id":5185,"date":"2010-07-05T06:00:59","date_gmt":"2010-07-05T06:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=5185"},"modified":"2010-07-04T18:36:43","modified_gmt":"2010-07-04T18:36:43","slug":"siege","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2010\/07\/05\/siege\/","title":{"rendered":"Siege"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nBy Brian Michael Bendis<\/strong>, Olivier Coipel,<\/strong> Michael Lark<\/strong> & others (Marvel\/Panini UK)
\nISBN: 978-1-84653-452-2<\/p>\n

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<\/strong> one-shot and the four-issue Siege<\/strong> miniseries it led to (selected portions of the vast 2010 publishing event that partially re-set and restored the traditional \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Stan & Jack\u00e2\u20ac\u009d 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\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Norman Osborn, one-time Green Goblin, has through various machinations become America’s Security Czar: the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153top-cop\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in sole charge of the beleaguered nation’s defence and freedom. Under his meteoric rise the Superhuman Registration Act led to the Civil War<\/a><\/strong>, Captain America was arrested, murdered and resurrected (see Captain America Reborn<\/a><\/strong>), and numerous horrific assaults on mankind occurred: including the Secret Invasion<\/a><\/strong> and the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Dark Reign\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which led up to the graphic novel under review here<\/p>\n

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<\/strong> (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.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Asgard is currently displaced and floating scant metres above the soil of Oklahoma. Using his position as Chief of Homeland Security Osborn manufactures an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Asgardian incident\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and launches an all-out invasion on the Gleaming City, overruling the new American President to do so.<\/p>\n

And so begins Siege<\/strong> (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\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

However Osborn has gone too far and the President fires him.<\/p>\n

So What?<\/p>\n

Well, now the scattered and fugitive \u00e2\u20ac\u0153real\u00e2\u20ac\u009d 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\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

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<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6
\n\u00c2\u00a9 2010 Marvel Entertainment LCC and its subsidiaries. All Rights Reserved. A British edition released by Panini UK Ltd.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Siege”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[94,79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-avengers","category-marvel-superheroes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s4AFj-siege","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5185\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}