Siege! We’re Sieging. Well, you might think we’re Sieging, what with the cover branding. But this actually takes place before the mini despite coming out concurrently. And what else could we start with but the friggin Hood.
We’re still on this! Still explaining the Norn Stones. It’s your friends Bendis, Stuart Immonen, Wade Von Grawbadger and Dave McCaig, as we’ve come to expect in this series. Ok, so, we saw Bucky and Steve Rogers dressed in black shadowing Noh-Varr in the Dark Avengers Annual. We saw Bucky’s house get destroyed and Steve Rogers show up at another safehouse dressed as Captain America. And now…
…Steve looks like it’s the same night they were tailing Noh-Varr. Is it? Who knows?
After my long break from this, it sure is nice to see Immonen doing his thing again. Is that the Living Laser? More like the Living Loser, amiright? But Bucky thinks he can shoot a guy made of light, so you’d think he’s got no room to talk, except the bullets passing through ol’ LL seem to hurt him for some reason. HAMMER agents are on the ground below, and Steve gets to taking them apart like a ninja while Bucky keeps shooting LL, untiiil…
The Corruptor! Last seen in Spider-Man: Breakout #5! I think? I mean, he might’ve been in some crowd scenes in the Hood’s gang, who remembers? There’s so many of them. Here, our regular art team is joined by Daniel Acuña handling the scenes involving our guy.
Oddly divisive, Daniel Acuña, in my recollection. A lot of people just did not like him, but, like… why? Pretty pages! Less stiff than most of the realism guys (But still stiff). I never understood. Anyway, fun scene. Spider-Woman is infodumping her deal from her short-lived post-Secret Invasion solo series by Bendis and Maleev. At the time, Marvel was heave over heel about something called “Motion Comics,” which was taking comics pages, barely animating them, adding voice work, and calling that entertainment. This was also done by the indescribably lazy animation house that did most of the 60s Marvel cartoons, and it sucks just as bad in the 21st Century. But for awhile, everyone was pretending comics you can’t read that move, but not really, were the future! And Spider-Woman was the first comic to be released as a motion comic and a real comic at the same time. Which meant Alex Maleev was doing 3 times the work of a single issue on every issue making sure backgrounds could pan and things could move, and burned out in half a year and the book ended. All so they could hock an inferior novelty version of the same product. 10/10, guys, no notes. Back at the A-plot, Steve Rogers is rooting through the remains of his safehouse and KO’ing HAMMER agents as needed when he finds what he was looking for.
Back in the late 90s, Cap lost his shield for awhile, and Tony Stark replaced it with this energy version. It was fun for awhile, then Cap got his regular one back, and we’ve not seen this gadget since. But with Bucky holding the real one, comes in handy. Meanwhile, the Griffin and Mandrill are out hunting Avengers, with Mandrill really not wanting to, when they happen to spy…
While that’s getting underway, Living Laser catches Corruptor playing with the Captains, rightly telling him this won’t end well, and being ignored. They do the usual “Fight it/I can’t” thing, then Bucky shoots.
Fun idea for a sequence that doesn’t quiiiiite feel like it works for me.
A far cry from the portrayal of Mandrill we saw in Web of Romance, but that’s 2st Century comics for you. You might expect the next post to be the first issue of Siege or something, huh? How silly!