Daily Breakdowns 053 - Siege Perilous

Siege #1 (of 4)
Writer - Brian Michael Bendis
Penciler - Olivier Coipel
Inker - Mark Morales
Published by Marvel Comics. $3.99 USD

So it's finally here, an event "seven years in the making." Not so sure about that, really, although I suppose Bendis may have had the broad strokes in mind as far back as then.

The problem with this issue is it's now, and there doesn't seem to be much beyond the broad strokes. Actually, it's not so much that the story is vague as that it's pretty dumb in spots, but not in the fun way. So here's what we've got: conniving Norse god of mischief, Loki, convinces an unstable Norman Osborn to invade Asgard, currently suspended over Oklahoma. After his victory in the Skrull Secret Invasion, this will further solidify Osborn's power and (false) reputation as a hero and leader. But even an unstable Osborn is a brilliant Osborn, so why doesn't he think any further about the ramifications of ousting the good guys of Asgard and putting it in Loki's hands? Is the God of Mischief going to be happy with an empty kingdom and no one to screw with?

As for the staged event to get the American people, and their President, to buy into the invasion, this is problematic as well. Why Asgardian hero Volstagg is in Chicago (not all that close to Oklahoma), who knows, but somehow he's in the perfect spot to not only take out a runaway criminal in a truck, causing a fire, but he's close enough to football stadium Soldier Field that the U-Foes can blow up the field and this will somehow be blamed on Volstagg? Coincidences and contrivances I can take up to a point, but this passed that point. I also question Osborn's arrogance in basically blowing off the President and going forward with the invasion without government approval. I get that he feels that if he wins, he'll be so beloved that he'll kick the Prez out in the next election, but it's still a needlessly reckless act, and come to think of it, just sending in a bunch of heroes who've never fought Asgardians and only know one, Thor, who's really powerful, seems pretty foolish, especially as, from what I'm guessing, Bendis and other writers have now spent several years building up how shrewd Osborn is. Maybe it's another example of him going nuts, but if so, well, is that going to be a very dramatic end to this saga? The mastermind losing it?

Coipel does a decent enough job. He's never delivered any "wow" moments for me, and one that I think was intended as such, the heroes all flying in on Goblin-style gliders, flanked by unspecific fighter jets, looked kind of silly to me. His Thor scene is particularly poorly staged, the character having no majesty and posed in such a way that you can barely see any of his torso. This is a massive, impressive hero. We should see this. The cover also is as stiff and carelessly planned as it gets, though I have to give Coipel some slack in that he and every other cover artist working on related books is saddled with the dull, purply trade dress taking up about 45% of the cover. Whoever designed this, and whoever approved it: you blew it. You have effectively killed every opportunity for drama and creativity on these covers. The other problem is that by limiting the space for actual art on the cover (the purple area has a dull silhouette of Asgard that may as well be Baltimore--"This is a tenement fit for the gods!"), you're going to have readers confused with other Siege tie-ins. I actually held up the line at the shop yesterday when the cashier asked me if I really wanted Siege: Embedded, the spinoff mini that also started this week, which he told me was about reporters. No, thanks.

Anyway, I wasn't happy with the rest of the issue, either. The fight against Thor is intentionally distant and obscured, as Thor is taken down and possibly even killed, and while I get the intention is to create a cliffhanger, the result is that you're robbed of what might have been a fairly exciting fight, which Bendis chooses to forego for a well-drawn if not particularly interesting full page shot of Steve Rogers in classic Captain America attire. It's just a sloppy and oddly executed start all around.



Marvel Boy: The Uranian #1 (of 3)
Writer - Jeff Parker
Artist - Felix Ruiz
Published by Marvel Comics. $3.99 USD

I've written here and there about how I'm enjoying catching up with the Parker-written Agents of Atlas, the parent title that reintroduced the Golden Age Marvel Boy as the weirdly cool Uranian. Not knowing if or when the struggling series will find a way to fold a three issue miniseries into a future Agents trade, I figured it was floppy time for me. This begins what's so far an enjoyably updated origin story, the corny, flat Golden Age stuff made goofier and more interesting by Parker, with little touches like "The Aboriginoids," which is just fun to say, and I like how he works in the idea that the sun symbol on his costume was due to a miscalculation on the Uranian elders' part where they believed Earthlings still worshipped Apollo. Parker also gets into some amusing territory when The Uranian meets a writer for Timely Comics, who then starts writing sanitized versions of his adventures, and who gives him the name Marvel Boy when it hadn't worked for a prior Timely character.

The drawback is that if you're going to focus on a weird alien hero, you have to work extra hard to make him accessible to the reader. Parker does an adequate job, mainly just deriving humor from the fish out of water situation, but we don't get much of a window into The Uranian's head and heart, or what makes him special. Ruiz doesn't help much, either, with a scratchy, Sienkiewicz-like style that's promising but right now lacking in depth. He could take a heavier line or darken more of the page rather than be content with a few gentle spatters of ink.

I suppose it's a value-add, but I just don't like the Golden or Silver Age reprint stories Marvel puts in a lot of their comics these days. It's not so much the stories themselves but just the dramatic tonal shift from the modern storytelling and art to the old stuff. I almost need to have a break between the two, or maybe I should start with the reprints. It's like watching The Wire, followed immediately by Dragnet. It's hard to appreciate the charm of the latter that way. But that's my problem. This issue has a Russ Heath-drawn story from 1950 with pirates and aliens and a big chunk of it devoted to Marvel Boy's origin. A day after reading the main story, this wasn't bad at all, nor was the 1951 Bill Everett tale following it. Maybe it's time once again for our superheroes to wink at us in the last panel of a story.

Daily Breakdowns 046 - Siege: The Cabal

Siege: The Cabal One-Shot
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Pencils by Michael Lark
Inks by Stefano Gaudiano
Published by Marvel Comics. $3.99 USD

I'm not really a comics event guy, but I thought I'd give this a try and see if I want to continue. This is a one-shot that apparently will lead into an actual Siege miniseries as well as affect a lot of the Marvel Universe titles starting in January. I guess the reason for the one-shot is...well, I'm not quite sure. I don't know why the events here wouldn't just comprise the first issue of the miniseries. I'm guessing it might have something to do with the high level art team of Lark and Gaudiano maybe pulling in guys like me who wouldn't necessarily jump into this miniseries if it had art from more typical superhero artists. The events in the story are significant enough, but at the same time it seems like they can be recapped very easily without losing a lot. Norman Osborn, head of H.A.M.M.E.R. and his own team of Avengers, thinks Thor's relocation of fabled Asgard to a few feet above Idaho is a threat he should deal with, so he can give it to his ally Loki, Norse god of Mischief. Nothing actually happens along these lines yet.

It's not that this is a bad comic. I'm not that convinced that Norman Osborn would be able to amass the power he has, and I think it's kind of silly he's ripped off Iron Man's armor and calls himself Iron Patriot. It's an affront to the originality and poetry of the Green Goblin, at least for this old-timer. I hadn't read any Bendis comics for a while. I still find his style charming even when the work lacks any emotional connection. Anyone who's seen Norman Osborn before knows he's nuts, but Bendis gets two pages out of him talking to himself before the unsurprising reveal that his Goblin mask is giving the orders. You just know that as a little kid, Bendis held the shiny red apple behind his back until the teacher practically grabbed it from him, exasperated by the show he was trying to make of something so expected.

Bendis really seems to like scenes where people sit around a table and bust each other's balls. This time it's Norman, Loki, The Hood, and Taskmaster, before Dr. Doom shows up and he and Norman argue about Norman wanting to go after Namor for insulting him. Doom being Doom, he expected retaliation, so he sent a robot version of himself filled with nanotech wasps that appear to destroy Avengers Tower in a very 9/11 type of shot, but later pages contradict this, making for a confusing story. Seeing the (I think) Dark Avengers only in a panel or two, with heavy hitters like Wolverine not even getting a line, while others like The Sentry fly around, eating up panels, gave the feeling that Bendis lost focus on his cast here in favor of too much Norman. Loki also seems way too mellow, and maybe Bendis and Lark could have come up with a less cliched gesture of vanity and condescension than having Loki regard the condition of his fingernails. Do gods really care?

Based on the Siege #1 preview at the back of this issue, Olivier Coipel sees Norman as looking a good deal like Hugo Weaving from The Matrix, except with his left eye about half an inch higher than his right, and Loki looks like Genghis Khan. When you want to show a preview that gives the impression of epic scale and import, maybe you don't feature Volstagg and the U-Foes?