{"id":32144,"date":"2026-05-31T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-31T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=32144"},"modified":"2024-07-09T10:00:54","modified_gmt":"2024-07-09T14:00:54","slug":"si-the-cabal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2026\/05\/31\/si-the-cabal\/","title":{"rendered":"SI: The Cabal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A lot of this stuff has well & truly strayed from the Spider-Man mandate of this blog, but at least I can justify stuff like this because Norman Osborn is in it. Also, it\u2019s sort of setting the table for the new status quo, which will certainly be impacting Spider-Man, if not necessarily in his own title. Funny how that works. Well, Civil War started with a Bendis\/Maleev Illuminati one-shot, so why not close Secret Invasion with a Bendis\/Maleev Cabal one-shot? And how funny that Namor was in both groups? Complicated figure. Dean White colors, and while I have a soft spot for the Bendis\/Maleev\/Hollinsworth team, you can\u2019t ask for better than Dean White. We begin with Emma Frost having a nightmare about not saving Kitty Pryde in GSAXM. Hey, we looked at that! Then she wakes up to a Thunderbolts lackey delivering her a package from Norman Osborn. And so, she travels from the X-Men\u2019s current homebase of San Francisco to Avengers Tower in New York for the meeting at the end of SI 8, but she\u2019s early. Not as early as\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bendis still can\u2019t write Emma. It\u2019s funny how something as simple as \u201cYeah, ok,\u201d can be wildly out of character, but it sure is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Maleev\u2019s Namor is so weird. Also all of Alex\u2019s Dooms are really transparently based on this one statue that came out around this time, it\u2019s pretty lazy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Genuinely hilarious reaction from Namor to Loki there. Well, Norman walks in, and says what he said at the end of SI 8, and then goes on to explain his brand-new status quo, I guess in case you didn\u2019t read SI 8, which\u2026 I mean, who is that person, hypothetically? What a madman. Norman says, as far as he\u2019s concerned, his new position is good news for the people in this room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We do not get to see who Norman\u2019s friend is, but it sufficiently gives everyone pause. Emma wants to know why she\u2019s there, as she\u2019s not really a villain anymore, and Norman\/Bendis try to sell the idea that, being a leader of the X-Men, she\u2019s in a desperate position right now and should resort to her more traditional instincts, but it doesn\u2019t really fly. A whole lotta work went into making Emma turn hero, it\u2019ll take more than this to get her to switch back (When she inevitably does like a decade from this). Anyway, Norman\u2019s still in sales mode:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Two years??? Man, the sliding timeline is such a mess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Oh, I guess I haven\u2019t addressed Loki. Briefly a woman. When the gods started coming back from Ragnarok, Loki showed up like this. We would eventually learn he\u2019d stolen Sif\u2019s body. But then, later, people got way into the idea that Loki is genderfluid and kinda retconned things around the idea. But, who cares, really. Well, one by one, the Hood, then Loki, then Emma leave. Then Namor and Doom discuss what to do. Doom says they should play along, and when Osborn inevitably implodes, they\u2019ll carve up the world. Which, again, pretty weird for Namor in this moment. This Cabal doesn\u2019t really make any sense. But, hey, nothing about this makes sense, so I guess in a way, it makes sense. I mean, none of it. Norman Osborn casually talking to the others like this? The Hood is the only person in the room below Norman\u2019s usual paygrade. Norman was a wannabe mobster who they brought back as a calculating businessman, none of this makes him a guy who can stare down Dr. Doom. Warren Ellis\u2019 Norman was closer to this, and directly responsible for inspiring this, but even so, he was a petty little man with his petty little control schemes, not this. He\u2019s a weird little guy who flies around giggling while trying to kill Spider-Man. Suddenly he became Lex Luthor upon his resurrection, and now he\u2019s, like Hannibal Lecter or something. It only works if Norman Osborn isn\u2019t the guy who appeared in all those comics going back to the 60s. It sucks. But it\u2019s the law of the land for the next year and a half or so, absurdly, so we must get used to it. Norman returns to Thunderbolts Mountain and orders all his stuff moved to the Tower. But then Swordsman is in his face about his big promotion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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They really picked the right guy for this job! That\u2019s the other half of our status quo for ol\u2019 Normie now: He\u2019s never been crazier. And somehow, these geniuses, what, didn\u2019t check his record? Didn\u2019t read his file? Before making him top cop. It\u2019s SUCH a ludicrous premise. This era was a long slog for me. And it\u2019s only beginning. But we got one more stop before the end of this block.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A lot of this stuff has well & truly strayed from the Spider-Man mandate of this blog, but at least I can justify stuff like this because Norman Osborn is in it….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32137,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1864],"tags":[2006,1922,2300,106,2127,877,240,39,2405,2423,2359],"class_list":["post-32144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2000s","tag-alex-maleev","tag-brian-michael-bendis","tag-dean-white","tag-dr-doom","tag-emma-frost","tag-loki","tag-namor","tag-norman-osborn","tag-swordsman","tag-the-cabal","tag-the-hood"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32144"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32159,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32144\/revisions\/32159"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}