My relationship with Brian Michael Bendis is much like the one I have with Marvel. When I love Bendis’ work (Avengers Disassembled, New Avengers) I truly love it and when I hate it (Secret Invasion, House Of M) I really, really hate it. With that kind of trepidation, plus my constant dislike of how Marvel handles “event” comics, I met Siege with an alarming amount of indifference. Happily, my worries have been proven wrong thus far and nothing shows that like the second issue of this four part series.
Siege is Marvel doing what they do at top form. A solid story, great dialog, action and also that bigger than life idea that these are comic books, these are stories of modern folklore. Marvel becomes so bogged down in keeping their books “gritty” that often they lose the idea that this make believe, it doesn’t need to be so real. Siege #2 is Norman Osbourne and his Dark Avengers attacking Asgard and Thor; it doesn’t get much more epic than that. The tone of Siege #2 is also spot on as Bendis makes this feel like an end of the world scenario. If the heroes don’t prevail, all could really be lost.
Siege #2 works on a few levels for me, the first being that it’s violent. Really violent. This is an attack on Asgard and Bendis doesn’t let you forget that. People get hurt, people die, especially one particular Avenger who bites it in a most horrific way. I also liked that Bendis is making the Sentry a crushing force to be dealt with. Too often Sentry is written as hokey or lame; here he’s a monster or at least a super powered guy with lots of issues. Thirdly, Bendis keeps you guessing, each page turn reveals something cool whether major or minor and that pushes you to keep reading.
Bendis also manages to keep the dialog economical and flowing, no six word balloon speeches or endless back tracking, he gets the point across quick and succinct. I was especially impressed with how Siege brings in Steve Rogers because in lesser hands, it could have been dragged down with bravado or useless idol worship. Instead Steve steps up as a leader of a small band of heroes looking to bring the pain to Osbourne and his cronies. It’s classic Captain America-takes-charge type stuff.
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Oliver Coipel follows Bendis’ lead art wise by bringing the epic scale of this battle to life. There are pages in here that just take your breath away, especially the death of an Avenger and the last page which will bring some goose bumps to you even if you’re not a Marvel fan. Coipel allows the action to be huge and relentless, using some great panel layouts to give a multiple camera angle shot of what’s going on. He also manages to straddle that line where there’s detail to what he’s doing but not so much it takes away from the movement of the characters.
Siege #2 is a great example of what Marvel should be striving to do all the time. So much of their recent stuff has been, well, boring. Either too convoluted or mired in political intrigue and it seemed as though Marvel was done telling superhero stories. Siege returns them to that form, something I hope they continue with. Granted Marvel is kings of blowing the end of their series (Civil War anyone?) but if they can avoid that with Siege, Marvel will have a classic story for the ages.
