Daily Breakdowns 046 - Siege: The Cabal

Siege: The Cabal One-Shot
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Pencils by Michael Lark
Inks by Stefano Gaudiano
Published by Marvel Comics. $3.99 USD

I'm not really a comics event guy, but I thought I'd give this a try and see if I want to continue. This is a one-shot that apparently will lead into an actual Siege miniseries as well as affect a lot of the Marvel Universe titles starting in January. I guess the reason for the one-shot is...well, I'm not quite sure. I don't know why the events here wouldn't just comprise the first issue of the miniseries. I'm guessing it might have something to do with the high level art team of Lark and Gaudiano maybe pulling in guys like me who wouldn't necessarily jump into this miniseries if it had art from more typical superhero artists. The events in the story are significant enough, but at the same time it seems like they can be recapped very easily without losing a lot. Norman Osborn, head of H.A.M.M.E.R. and his own team of Avengers, thinks Thor's relocation of fabled Asgard to a few feet above Idaho is a threat he should deal with, so he can give it to his ally Loki, Norse god of Mischief. Nothing actually happens along these lines yet.

It's not that this is a bad comic. I'm not that convinced that Norman Osborn would be able to amass the power he has, and I think it's kind of silly he's ripped off Iron Man's armor and calls himself Iron Patriot. It's an affront to the originality and poetry of the Green Goblin, at least for this old-timer. I hadn't read any Bendis comics for a while. I still find his style charming even when the work lacks any emotional connection. Anyone who's seen Norman Osborn before knows he's nuts, but Bendis gets two pages out of him talking to himself before the unsurprising reveal that his Goblin mask is giving the orders. You just know that as a little kid, Bendis held the shiny red apple behind his back until the teacher practically grabbed it from him, exasperated by the show he was trying to make of something so expected.

Bendis really seems to like scenes where people sit around a table and bust each other's balls. This time it's Norman, Loki, The Hood, and Taskmaster, before Dr. Doom shows up and he and Norman argue about Norman wanting to go after Namor for insulting him. Doom being Doom, he expected retaliation, so he sent a robot version of himself filled with nanotech wasps that appear to destroy Avengers Tower in a very 9/11 type of shot, but later pages contradict this, making for a confusing story. Seeing the (I think) Dark Avengers only in a panel or two, with heavy hitters like Wolverine not even getting a line, while others like The Sentry fly around, eating up panels, gave the feeling that Bendis lost focus on his cast here in favor of too much Norman. Loki also seems way too mellow, and maybe Bendis and Lark could have come up with a less cliched gesture of vanity and condescension than having Loki regard the condition of his fingernails. Do gods really care?

Based on the Siege #1 preview at the back of this issue, Olivier Coipel sees Norman as looking a good deal like Hugo Weaving from The Matrix, except with his left eye about half an inch higher than his right, and Loki looks like Genghis Khan. When you want to show a preview that gives the impression of epic scale and import, maybe you don't feature Volstagg and the U-Foes?