The next book in my Siege bag is an issue of Thor by the aforementioned Kieron Gillen and nobody’s favorite, Billy Tan, which depicts more of what happened to Volstagg, who is inexplicably imprisoned in Broxton despite Bendis going out of his way to say the incident was in Chicago. Broxton would’ve made more sense given the splash of Volstagg in the previous issue, but no one cares, I guess. Even the cops who have him locked up don’t believe he did anything wrong. Loki schemes, Heimdall is brought low by the beginning of the titular siege, Tyr rushes into battle, all that kinda good Asgardian stuff. And Osborn has deployed the insane Thor clone the alleged good guys made in Civil War to kill Volstagg, who now goes by “Ragnarok.” Sheesh. At any rate, on with the show.
Coipel showed a talent back in House of M for abstracting enough to make a big battle scene feel busy without killing himself, and it’s certainly on display here.
“I can’t believe the crazy liar I work for lied to me to get me to do a crazy thing!” Speaking of said crazy liar, and he and Moonstone and, I cannot stress this enough, the U-Foes who participated in the event that justified this invasion, are arresting Thor in front of TV cameras when Osborn gets hit by a whole missile. It’s Maria Hill with a bazooka, being fired form the back of a pickup driven by some kid named Jason. She fires another one before Moonstone is coming for her. She tells Jason to load Thor into the truck and shoots many bullets through Moonstone’s intangible form.
I wonder what Coipel got for this spread. Today it could probably buy him a house. Well, the gang’s all here, but will they be enough? Seems like they would! Back at the fight, Osborn and Moonstone are regrouping when Ares comes flying in to beat on Osborn for a couple panels, reminding him that he promised to behead him if he was lying. But then Osborn siccs the Sentry on Ares, and they get to fight, instead. They get a weird page that’s just the 2 of them squaring off, which feels like wasted real estate, but also probably made Coipel beacup money. Then they fight some more. It’s a real knock down, drag out slugfest until Sentry gets Ares by the throat…
He’s a god, he’ll be fine.
Really taking their time on getting out there. Steve Rogers finally, inevitably, belatedly takes back the suit. Ed Brubaker’s Captain America run was a thrilling spy saga that managed to keep up its momentum for a surprisingly long time, even switching lead characters. But, the story goes, when he learned they were getting Bryan Hitch to draw Cap’s return, he changed his big finale to be more “widescreen” and action-oriented to suit his artist. And, you know, consequently, it was a pretty bad ending to a great sequence of comics, and after that, the book kinda felt adrift. I think that was all he really meant to do, and then he kept on writing Cap for some time. When the book relaunches here in a sec with a new #1 and Steve firmly back in the lead, it just isn’t the same anymore. But, that’s comics, and Brubaker certainly isn’t even the first writer on Cap, specifically, to outstay his welcome. At any rate, Nick Fury tells Phobos he can’t go, because he’s just a kid, despite him being, you know, a Greek god and Nick Fury just being some old man. Phobos tries to use his mind control powers to change Nick’s mind, but it doesn’t work. So everyone gets in the big boat, and it has some kinda “wormhole” tech that’ll get them across the country in no time. Meanwhile, Daken is hunting Maria Hill for Osborn, when Thor electrocutes him so bad he doesn’t have much skin left.
Gotta give the people what they want! We’re at the halfway point now. I haven’t done a personal recollection about a comic in a minute, but I can recall clearly reading this one in the hospital, sitting with my Mom post-knee surgery, a fresh bag of new comics to keep my company while she slept. It wouldn’t be too long after this that I’d quit patronizing my last comic shop, because (they said) Diamond kept shorting them, and I never got all the comics I ordered in a given month. I was ordering half my stuff online, anyway, why not make the switch? Now, Diamond is dead (Finally!) and I don’t buy comics anymore. Uh, spoilers. Haha. As if I’m ever gonna make it to today, as I type this, at the rate I’m going. I used to have a 2+ year lead on these posts, and now it’s about 5 months. Burn out is real, and the steadily declining interest in the material I’m reading doesn’t help, either. But we’re still in it to win it for now…