Posts Tagged ‘ Siege ’

Look, you know me. I’m a sucker for a good crossover and all that it entails including tie-ins. Tie-in issues that happen between the panels of the ‘main event’, or tie-ins that barely qualify to have the trade dress on the cover (AKA red sky tie-ins) – they’re all okay by me. Hell, the much-reviled Secret Wars II got me into Marvel Comics, and I’ve picked up the Inferno Omnibus and the Inferno Crossovers Omnibus in spite of having all the original issues because I love the story so much, and the fact that it reached out and touched so much of the Marvel Universe.

So picking up this was a no-brainer, wasn’t it? I hadn’t picked up the original Dark Wolverine tie-in issues and despite being irritated at Marvel’s shrinking trade sizes, I decided to pick this up – especially as I got it 50% off through Midtown Comics.

Collecting Dark Wolverine #82-84 (a whole three issues!), New Mutants #11 (also collected in the Siege: Thor trade, and New Mutants Vol 2) and the Siege: Storming Asgard – Heroes and Villains one-shot (which I’ll get to later), the book clocks in at a lightweight 128 pages.

Even so, 128 pages of good comics is 128 pages of good comics so for $10 I was willing to give it a shot.

Unfortunately, the main event here – the Dark Wolverine issues – can’t remotely be described as ‘good comics’. Daken – the son of Wolverine, for those not in the know – was introduced in Daniel Way’s Wolverine: Origins series before graduating to a starring role in the Dark Avengers and taking over one of his father’s other ongoing series. A bisexual, amoral, scheming, pheromone-emitting killer, Daken attracts the attention of virtually everyone he comes into contact with and always has a hidden agenda – even while he’s working alongside Norman Osborn’s Avengers.

In the three issues presented here, he heads to Asgard along with the rest of the team as Osborn – falling apart – has decided to take the battle to the Norse gods at Loki’s urging. Once there, Daken attracts the attentions of the Fates who consider him vitally important and go about showing him what consequences his decisions have.

You realize at the end of the first issue when Daken kills Norman Osborn what consequences these decisions will have for the reader: none. Everything that Daken does ends badly when he chooses to follow his instincts, so the Fates keep rewinding and giving him the opportunity to make different choices.

That’s right, it’s the comic-book equivalent of ‘and it was all a dream!‘.

Not only that, but this happens in every single issue. I counted three resets at the hands of the Fates, and each time Daken snarls a bit and begrudgingly chooses another path. The art is passable, the dialog readable, but the story here is so repetitive and pointless that it gives crossovers a bad name, because quite simply: nothing happens.

At the end of the three issues, we’re not far off where we started: Daken is in Asgard doing Osborn’s dirty work. I’ll say it again: nothing of note has really happened and – worse – it’s been boring while that nothing has not been happening. These are three dull, dull, dull issues.

Now I grant you, it’s possible – possible – that if I were a regular reader of Daken’s own book I might find the issues enjoyable, and see that he’s a changed man following the Fates’ intervention but – and this is crucial – I’m not a regular reader. And if these are any example of what I can expect when I pick it up, I never will be.

Unforgivably bad.

As far as the additional material goes, New Mutants #11 is good enough but available elsewhere, and the handbook-style issue makes the tragic error of not containing any handbook-style information. Call me old-fashioned, but when I read a handbook I like to read up on the past of a character or team, not get fictional characters’ opinions of them.

Avoid this trade. Avoid it like the plague.

Siege: X-Men is available on Amazon and elsewhere but I wouldn’t get it if I were you…

…please be Sentry, please be Sentry…

FALLEN (Not Final Title)
Written by To Be Announced
Art by Tom Raney
Cover by Leinil Yu
The SIEGE has ended and taken its toll on both sides of the battle field. The event seven years in the making has claimed many lives, and in this, its final chapter, a universe comes together to mourn (CLASSIFIED). The shocking death that ended the fight and gave birth to a new Heroic Age is remembered as a writer (CLASSIFIED) returns to lead the farewells.
32 PGS./One-Shot/Rated T+…$3.99

..because honestly if its not the Sentry (and writer Paul Jenkins) then there’s no justice in the world.

Never have I seen a character with some potential screwed over so badly. Written out of every fight by silly plot devices as he’s too powerful, a poorly defined power set, saddled with a ridiculous, mutable origin and a villainous alter-ego who appears to have biblical connections – there’s just no salvaging this character.

What I don’t understand is why any of the heroes that you see there (Spidey, Thor, Black Widow, Iron Man, maybe Spider-Woman…, Mr Fantastic) would even bother mourning this waste of narrative.

No real surprise there – but I’m still glad that Bucky’s appears to be the one who’s carrying the shield post-Siege (eye color notwithstanding). I can only assume that Steve will be running an entirely different kind of SHIELD…