By this time, you start to be able to tell when a volume of a Marvel Comic is ending because its artist vanishes. Granted, this book has had a hard time keeping a regular team, but it becomes pretty grating to me. When a book has been all or mostly produced by the same writer and artist, but the artist is deemed to valuable to have time off the stands or whatever, they get shifted off the book to start another one and someone else finishes their story, and that sucks. Anyway, Stuart Immonen and Wade Von Grawbadger are replaced by Mike McKone for the remainder of this title. As Bendis has been marking the parts of Siege as “Phase One” and such, this handily tells us it takes place during Phase One, despite being published alongside the 3rd, “interrupted” phase. Except it’s the New Avengers entering the fight, which signaled the beginning of the “interrupted” part. Bendis is like 3 people not talking to each other during this event, it’s insane.
Fighty fight fight. We then flashback to a sequence from “yesterday” with the Cage family enjoying some time together, in a series of pages that very intentionally look like Michael Gaydos layouts, a slick move on McKone’s part. Dave McCaig even randomly colors Jessica’s hair darker and more correctly for the occasion, it’s quasi-Alias time. Incredibly, this conversation is largely about Luke feeling like these dark times will end now that Captain America is back Yesterday. According to some of Bendis’ versions of this story, Luke saw Cap and then the Siege news hit the TV 2 seconds later, how is this “yesterday?” Man oh man! But that’s not all they talk about. Luke asks if Jess is going to be a superhero again.
This segues back to the present, with Luke beating up Venom just as the Hood and his Legion of Losers show up. Then we focus on Mockingbird flipping through the conflict with visual ease, taking down baddies and helping her teammates as Hawkeye watches in awe, which is a fun moment. And that gets us a flashback to their yesterday.
They end up tangling with our old pal Carolyn Trainer, now going by “Lady Octopus,” doing some kinda B&E that is quickly subdued.
That brings us back to the present, with the 2 of them socking it to baddies, and Bobbi taking a sec to smile at Clint. Bendis’ take on her as a sort of thrill seeker is fun. But then, of course…
Well, she’s probably dead, for sure. Yup. Too bad!