Ooops, sorry. I forgot a few letters there. Let's try that again.
I am underwhelmed by Siege #1.
I was really excited for Marvel's new event series, too. If you read my 2009 wrap-up blog, you know that Brian Michael Bendis is one of my favorite superhero writers, and Dark Avengers one of my favorite books. How, then, could Siege not be good? And yet here is evidence to the contrary staring me in the face.
It's not that I hated Siege #1, either. I just thought it was weak. For starters, less than half the book was actually new comic story. When you take out the ads, the promotional letter from Joe Quesada, the preview of that one Hulk book, and the 7-page preview story seen in tons of other Marvel books before, you have 16 new pages of story and 23 pages of basically junk. For $3.99. So that's not cool.
Second, and most importantly, the story itself: what do we get in Siege #1? Well, the set-up for the whole event is directly taken from Civil War #1 (and the fact that the narration admits of this doesn't make it any better). Then we have Norman talking to his team for a few pages, which is fine I guess but a little stilted, and then the very beginning of the siege of Asgard, in which almost nothing happens except for people looking at each other menacingly.
I was not a fan of Marvel's last event comic, Secret Invasion, in large part because I thought the pacing was awful -- eight issues basically took place over the span of what, a day or less? Siege #1 seems to be setting up the same kind of thing. We only have four issues in this series, guys -- it seems like a mistake to waste a whole issue on set-up. It also seems like kind of a rip-off.
Secret Invasion, too, was written by Brian Michael Bendis. That seems to beg the question of why I like so many of his comics so much, and his event comics almost not at all (I have to exclude House of M from this discussion, as I haven't read it in five years). I think it's because -- and this is truly just a guess -- that when Bendis writes an event book, it's totally perfunctory. It seems like he has a story outline in front of him (possibly not even his, but editorial's) giving him the bullet points of where the script needs to go, and then he just takes the story from A to B to C with little to none of the excellent dialog and superb development we might expect from Bendis given his other works, most notably Ultimate Spider-Man, which I contend is a masterpiece. A great example from Ultimate Spider-Man that we talk about at the shop sometimes -- there was an issue (in the mid 110s) which was almost nothing but the main cast spending a day at the beach. And it was AWESOME. The story flowed so well that you didn't realize almost nothing was going on in that issue plot-wise. Those kind of issues are a chance for his characters to shine. But in Siege, which I feel is oddly self-conscious of plot despite having very little of it--nothing really shines at all.
I'm hopeful that the rest of this series lives up to the standards of other Bendis work (I'm still loving Dark Avengers), but for now, well, I just kind of want it to be over.
Grade: D
Comments
UnshavenMarc Thu, Jan 14th, 2010 at 1:28 PM See, this shows to go ya'... Event books, even the illustrious Blackest Night, really have taken the industry to a level of frustration for me as a fan. When we're not preparing for the next big event, we're actually in it, or in a mini series about it, or the aftermath of it. I mean here we are a year out from Final Crisis, with books like "Run" and "Dance" still finishing up. And as a fan? I stopped caring eons ago. And the same goes for the house of ideas.
I admittedly do not follow Marvel event books, and even dropped my subscription to Dark Avengers solely because of how poor I found civil war, etc. to be. Bendis shines when he's dealing with character driven issues. He writes for the arc as good as anyone else in the top tier of the big two... But I whole heartedly agree... These events are just getting from A to B to C to set up the editorial calender of non-series books for the next 6 months. I'd be curious if Marvel and DC could even attempt to do 1 full year without a crossover. Without an event. Just separate titles that require no perfunctory reads from other ends of the respective universe.
That'd be one "What If" event I could get into.
bsokol Thu, Jan 14th, 2010 at 1:56 PM
I found almost nothing enjoyable about Siege #1. The fact that the characters seem to be aware of the bad writing and plot, for me, leads to the best part and the worst part of the issue.
In my opinion, the best part was Loki having to explain Asgard in more and more depth simply because Norman doesn't know anything about it. I get the feeling while reading many big events that some arcane information is assumed to be common knowledge or is explained using a very contrived method. But here we have Norman doing exactly what new readers would be doing. That served to keep me interested, like they were going to answer my questions as I thought of them.
The worst part for me, as Eric mentions, is the fact that the setup is the same as Civil War. It's one thing to hang a lantern on a little bit of dialogue, but to base your entire plot on something you just did a few years ago really seems like lazy writing, given that Loki should be the master of mischief. I would think he'd want to come up with something unique. Then again, Loki wasn't "alive" during Civil War, so maybe it's new to him.
Anyway, Siege #1 was terrible.
colby Thu, Jan 14th, 2010 at 2:41 PM
I feel this way about Bendis' Avengers work, too. I think it's just his straight-up super hero work, something just doesn't click. At first, I thought he was just losing his touch- but USM is still pretty good, and Spider-Woman actually impressed me. So I think it's just when he has to lose the veneer of noir/crime or teen angst.
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