Siiiiiiege! After all this time, it’s really here! And because so many of the tie-ins took place before it, we’re looking at most of the surprisingly short event series uninterrupted. Siege was positioned as “an event 7 years in the making!” in its marketing. Hard to say where that number came from. This series comes out at the tail end of 2009 and early 2010. Avengers Disassembled was 2004. And nothing before that could even loosely be called a precursor to this. And by the time this shakes out, well… It’s more like an event one year in the making, with some items 3 years in the making. But, we’ll get to that. Your all-star team coming into the event consists of Bendis, Olivier Coipel, Mark Morales, and Laura Martin. Gonna be pretty, if nothing else! We open on a splash of Volstagg on a horse, riding away from Asgard, as narration from Loki and Osborn setup that he’s going to be their patsy to get the titular Siege underway. Loki says Volstagg has been going out seeking adventure like Thor, but he is no Thor.
We see that Norman has sicced the U-Foes on Volstagg, as narration reveals Loki suggested they go to the Hood for combatants, and Norman knew they needed someone powerful. The U-Foes blast Volstagg into a crowded football game.
So it really is like Civil War, except with the mastermind behind the scenes like people expected the first time. So, the U-Foes vanish and Volstagg is left to take the blame for blowing up America’s game and the baddies have their opening.
Hand looking rather more like Lucy Liu than any previous appearance would suggest. Norman goes to Ares for battle plans, and he outright refuses to go along with this. Osborn feeds him some lies about Loki having taken over and this being necessary, and Ares threatens to cut his head off if he’s lying. Get in line, buddy!
I’m no strategic genius, but if the eyes of the world will be upon them, maybe don’t prominently send in the U-Foes??? Seems sloppy and silly! Meanwhile, Victoria Hand apparently tells the President Osborn is invading Asgard over his loud protests (We hear the phone call purely from the President’s side), while Loki gets to work telling Baldur, king of Asgard this week, the humans are coming and he tried to talk Norman out of it, but they’re coming, anyway. Baldur is voicing his disbelief that any mortal force could threaten Asgard when the Sentry flies through the entire floating city, from one side to the other, leaving a sonic boom in his wake.
I really can’t help but compare a page like this to when Deodato does the same general “hero shot” with his lil models. That crap just pales in comparison to this. Thor, the comic book, has been in disarray recently. J. Michael Straczynski, having revitalized the title and made it a hit, just up and quit, as he is wont to do, leaving Kieron Gillen to try to land the plane and tee Thor’s world up for this event. Olivier Coipel had been the artist on Thor, but he moved over to this. Things could be cleaner going into a big Asgardian event.
Meanwhile, Tony Stark… is asleep. Tony has been on a truly wild ride since last we saw him, essentially giving himself a digital lobotomy so Osborn couldn’t get at his secrets, then trying to reboot himself with a sort of back up of his own consciousness. Hey, comics! His surgeon for this is Dr. Don Blake, Thor’s long-abandoned alter ego that JMS brought back. Straczynski continued to paint Stark as a mustache-twirling villain in Thor after Civil War, so maybe this made him walk, I dunno. At any rate, since Blake is his surgeon, Tony’s hiding out in Broxton, Oklahoma, and the invasion is happening right down the street. Maria Hill has wound up Tony’s partner on the run, and when Dr. Blake sees the explosions outside, he orders Hill to take Tony and run, before heading outside to become Thor. The big lightning strike alerts the baddies to his arrival.
The U-Foes! Just front and center! It’s really stupid.
And now we get a 2nd, competing version of Steve Rogers finding out this is happening. It boggles the mind, truly. So, yeah, this is the thing, this is the Siege. Osborn invades Asgard out of nowhere. It’s no grand culmination to whatever his plans were, or whatever. It’s just Loki conning him. All of Dark Reign has amounted to just Loki popping up to con Osborn in the last 20 minutes. It’s not too satisfying. But if you think that’s not satisfying, try reading the 4-page text piece that follows, a transcript of Ares trying to explain his battle plan to his typically unruly teammates, wherein page 3 has accidentally been printed with all the text from page 1 and some of page 2. With different images on the page and all, it looks like the transcripts from the back of the Secret War series. So I don’t really know what Ares’ plan is. That’s unfortunate!