The X-Axis: 21 March 2010
Let’s start with the bad news. We’re due for another podcast next weekend, and I do believe we plugged it at the end of the last show. But, um, I’m actually not in town that weekend, so it’s going to be a bit later than that. Probably the weekend after. Hopefully. We’ll let you know.
With that out of the way, let’s talk reviews! A scattering of X-books this week, plus a few other interesting releases…
Amazing Spider-Man #625 – We’re back to Joe Kelly and Max Fiumara, picking up their Rhino storyline. With most books, this would have been a straightforward two-parter. And effectively, it still is a two-parter. But the nature of the story means that it actually benefits from having something unrelated in the middle, to space it out. The new Rhino remains a cipher (though that’s kind of the point), and the heart of this is the previous Rhino stubbornly trying not to get drawn into a pointless fight over the name. Yes, the pay-off is kind of hokey, but it’s well executed. And Fiumara’s art is great stuff; the Spider-Man books have some of the best art in superhero comics right now.
American Vampire #1 – We might well be talking about this on the next podcast, but for now, some initial thoughts. This is the new Vertigo series by Scott Snyder and Rafael Albuquerque which has managed to get Stephen King to co-write the first few issues. Basically there’s a lead story by the regular team (setting up the origin of one of the lead characters) and a back-up strip by King (a few decades earlier, and setting up the other). The high concept here is that a couple of Americans are turned into vampires near the start of the 20th century and become the first distinctively American vampires. As opposed, presumably, to vampires following in the traditions of the old country. It could be a B-movie story, or it could be a somewhat warped take on America’s developing sense of uniqueness and relationship with its cultural heritage(s). For the moment, wisely, it seems mainly concerned about setting up the two leads, and it does that very well. The lead story doesn’t quite convince me as the mid-1920s, but I like the characters. And the art is strong, with Albuquerque shifting easily between two entirely different settings. It’s not really horror, at this stage, but there’s something interesting about it.
Battlefields #4 – Unusually, instead of going for three miniseries (and thus three issue #1s), Dynamite have chosen to publish this run of Garth Ennis war stories as a nine-issue miniseries, even though the three stories are unrelated. So, this is the first part of “The Firefly and his Majesty”, a sequel to the “Tankies” story from the first run. For my money, “Tankies” was the weakest of the previous three (though it was up against extremely stiff competition), a bit heavy on the comedy and a bit light on the drama. But this time the balance seems to have been struck better. The issue does a great job with the apparent pointlessness of people continuing to fight in early 1945, when everyone knows the Germans can’t win; naturally, the machine just keeps grinding on, and in the short term at least, the Germans still have better tanks… I wasn’t especially looking forward to a second “Tankies” arc, but this is more interesting than I’d expected.
Joe the Barbarian #3 – By this point we’ve got the idea: Joe is dying, he needs to get to his insulin, and he’s hallucinating the whole experience of getting downstairs as an epic fantasy quest. It’s so simple, but it’s brilliantly done. Morrison gives the whole thing a woozy feel that never loses sight of the fact that it’s a hallucination, but also makes it abundantly clear that if the story doesn’t play out properly then Bad Things Will Happen. And Sean Murphy’s art gives Joe’s world a sense of reality even though we all know it’s in his mind. As with some other Morrison stories, there’s almost a sense here that just because the characters are plainly fictitious that doesn’t mean they aren’t real – after all, if Joe is hallucinating them, then in some sense they exist…
Nation X #4 – The last X-Men anthology of the current batch. Peter Milligan and Mike Allred reunite for a Doop story, loosely based on the idea that everyone is potentially the snake who’ll destroy Utopia. It’s a bit lightweight but it’s quite good fun. Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Harvey Tolibao’s story with Emma Frost and the Stepford Cuckoos is a bit wonky; the girls are tormenting the other kids out of boredom, and Emma tries to put them back on track. Everyone’s a little bit out of character, and the Cuckoos seem to be such dreadful teachers (are they really teaching a class of teenagers the alphabet?) that the ending falls flat. Ivan Brandon and Rael Lyra’s “Ice Cream Alamo” is a throwaway piece with some of the background kids trying to raid the fridge at night – there’s not much more to it than that, but it’s pretty good fun. Finally, Joe Caramagna and Niko Henrichon give us Namor bitching to Ororo about how the whole project is doomed; it’s really a conversation rather than a story, but at least it’s got beautiful artwork, and probably the best establishing shot of the island that I’ve seen.
Siege #3 – In this issue: fighting! Now that we’ve got past the initial awkwardness of “sorry, why is Norman doing this again?”, the story is actually starting to get a bit of momentum. It does feel like it’s building to a climax, even if only because everyone’s calling in their favours, and everyone’s converging on the same place. That doesn’t quite get round the problem that the siege of Asgard itself appears to have been selected more or less at random to provide that climax – the bits of this story that work could have been bolted on to basically any story where Osborn overreaches himself. But it does have the long-awaited scenes where the good guys get their act together and finally get the upper hand, and Olivier Coipel’s art is good, bright, energetic stuff.
Wolverine: Origins #45 – That’s the explanation for why we’ve spent a storyline messing around with obscure Defenders villain Ruby Thursday? Really? I mean… yes, to be fair, Daniel Way did spend some time setting up the idea that Wolverine’s trying to think outside the box in order to confuse Romulus and throw him off the scent. So the basic idea that it’s a red herring… fine. But the story overreaches itself by suddenly hauling in a dangling subplot about the Answer, a character who I don’t think has even been mentioned before in this series, and who doesn’t get a proper introduction. If you’re wondering where on earth the Answer’s relationship with Ruby Thursday was established, well, it comes from the 2006 one-shot I ♥ Marvel: Outlaw Love. Besides which, spending several issues just to declare that it’s all a tactical swerve – one with no particular dramatic ramifications other than to wrongfoot the baddie – seems excessive. There’s a good idea in here somewhere, but it needs refining.
X-23 #1 – One of many “Women of Marvel” one-shots which are coming out over the course of 2010, as part of Marvel’s rather vague celebration of its female intellectual property. Come to think of it, if you really want to do stories with gender as a linking theme, X-23’s not a bad choice of character, since she’s supposed to be literally a female version of Wolverine. But in fact, Marjorie Liu takes the story as an opportunity to reunite X-23 with the cast of NYX. That’s fair enough – it’s the book where X-23 first appeared in comics, and Liu wrote it. In its favour, the issue also has some excellent artwork, with some incredibly striking “astral plane” scenes. And Liu does understand the character of X-23, particularly the central idea that she’s been manipulated to such an extent that she’s never sure how much of what she thinks is programming and how much is truly her, something which she plays as an exaggerated nature/nurture metaphor. The downside is that the plot is all over the place. A set-up about ex-mutants being targetted never really goes anywhere; the Gamesmaster is used in an interesting way but isn’t very clearly explained; and for some reason, nobody thinks of asking the NYX cast whether they might care to come to Utopia and get a good night’s sleep. So it’s flawed, but there are definitely plenty of positives here.
X-Factor Forever #1 – Louise Simonson picks up X-Factor where she left off in 1991, which more or less means progressing with the subplots in progress, and going back to Apocalypse as the arch-enemy. The first issue seems largely concerned with setting up the status quo, but that’s logical enough, even if some of the infodump exposition stands out like a sore thumb. To give Marvel credit, they’ve learned from their mistakes with X-Men Forever, and so this issue also includes an introduction by Louise Simonson explaining the idea, and a back-up feature recapping the series. Like Chris Claremont, Simonson doesn’t seem too concerned about doing stories that she would have written in 1991; instead, her editorial suggests that she’s taking the opportunity to do a story that follows her take on Apocalypse through to its logical conclusion, freed from the need to worry about any wider continuity issues. In practice, the first issue is still largely introduction, but it bounces along at a fair speed, and I’m quite looking forward to seeing where this is going. Dan Panosian is an intriguing choice of artist – most of his Marvel work has been as an inker, but he’s actually got a very distinctive style, spiky and angular, and willing to let characters like Archangel look ugly. At the same time, there are some wonderful backgrounds, and his Apocalypse clearly harks back to Walt Simonson’s definitive take. It’s not always pretty, but it’s certainly interesting to look at, helped by nicely subdued colouring from Jim Charlampidis. It won’t be to all tastes, but I like the way this book looks.
X-Men Legacy #234 – Sandwiched between two crossovers, a story where Rogue gets telepathy for an issue and has trouble with it. This is one of the best issues in quite a while, freed as it is from any wider agenda beyond doing an interesting story with the lead character. Mike Carey’s created an unusual format here – effectively this is a Rogue solo title, but instead of using it to tell stories of Rogue’s solo adventures, it’s an X-Men book done from Rogue’s perspective. As for the art, Yanick Paquette may have unfortunate tendencies towards out-of-place cheesecake, but he does know his body language, and he actually does a very good Rogue. The current direction on this series is probably the best use of the character in years.
maybe they’re teaching a foreign language alphabet. Got to learn the before you can get to the words.
Thanks for the kind words, brother – excited to hear what you think of 2, when the new species makes its first appearance… S
Wait, that‘s what Albuquerque is doing now that Blue Beetle has ended ?
His style is such a disconnect from what I traditionally associate with vampire stories that his involvement has suddenly made me interested in this project.
the cover and previews of X-Factor Forever look great to me, cant wait till my copy makes it home. and issues like these are why i signed on for X Legacy. that said, i liked the last roster. lulz @ the NYX kiddies.. maybe they have aversions to floating death traps.
I don’t understand why these X-Books Forever go and change the costumes. It sounds like a minor little nit, but surely – in a visual medium like this – part of the appeal is in seeing those old designs dusted off once again.
The further away from X-Men Forever 1 we go, the more it becomes just an alternate universe Claremont title. You keep the old outfits, at least it’d retain a bit of the original charm that had you reading to begin with. Maybe.
I don’t know, man. That Rhino story ended very badl – well, if not badly, then with a cliché you could see from space. I mean, that’s like the most refridgeratory thing goddamn ever. aBOO. aBOOO-OO.
I’m still enjoying Spidey – the art is awesome (hell, even Azaceta’s Fat Spidey is awesome!) – but I think the key flaw in the weekly approach is revealed in this last month’s worth of books – too much space x too many hands / relay approach = dilute characterisation. I mean, why does Carlie give Peter another chance? Because the story/creators demands that she end up with him, or because they ran out of pages for that arc, or characters have earned it, or found that place naturally, or what? Where’s the arc, there? Or with The Rhino?
Or something. I dunno.
(And isn’t it ironic, don’cha think, it’s like Mary Jane is the only well-rounded female in the book.)
(And oh my god, do I even not want to be reminded of either Spider-Man 3 or J. Michael Straczynski. I found an eyeball joke the other day. And Harry cooking breakfast? GET OYT.)
(Note to self: no more saving up two months worth of Spidey to read in one go.)
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I’m really of two mind son Siege #3. On the one hand, Paul’s right, and the momentum is cranking up nicely at this point. I’ll be damned if the Sentry attacking Asgard and Iron Man taking on Osborn don’t make for some nice visuals. (The bit with Osborn having painted the Goblin mask onto his face, on the other hand, wasn’t entirely clear at first when I read the issue.)
On the other hand, the plotting remains, well, perfunctory. Th President flips on Osborn and gives authorization to the formerly outlaw superheroes on the grounds that…uhm…they’re attacking Osborn. And some of this can’t even be fit into the story proper, but plays out in another of those back-pages transcript pieces. Apparently Civil War through Dark Reign are all swept away because Norman Osborn predictably went mad in public.
Big plot moments also keep being undersold. In issue #1, it was Thor being downed; here, Osborn’s defeat seems, well, too easy. Granted that we’ve been building to Osborn losing control, but an out-of-control Osborn is still a lunatic killer with super-powers. Here, he folds almost instantly and the heroes exert virtually no effort to stop him, all so he can be cleared aside and the story can move to the far less compelling Sentry/Void stuff.
That element hasn’t seen Bendis telling the readers anything not already covered in the two Jenkins minis with the character, and frankly, seeing the heroes once again pull out whatever gimmick will stop the nebulously defined uber-powers the Sentry/Void possesses pays to Bendis’s weakness for ludicrous deus ex machina plot solutions.
Too many of his Avengers and crossover stories have been resolved with Wanda, the Sentry, or Dr. Strange simply showing up to wave their hands and end the plot problem. And the Sentry gone bad always seems to end with a deus ex machina from someone for obvious reasons.
It’s moving faster, but it’s still moving erratically.
I don’t know how you let off Nation X so easily. The fact that the Doop story was one of the best of the bunch is shameful. The rest of the stories were rubbish. Emma’s character was reduced to some horrible pre-Morrison superficiality, and that Storm story was blatant hypocrisy, as she’s barely spent more than 7 panels on Utopia. What a waste.
I thought the whole Nation X issue was lousy, with the Doop story possibly the worst of the bunch.
Although the food raid story at least had the amusing visual of Rockslide (the giant dude made out of jagged rock) hiding his identity behind a ski mask for the raid on the kitchen.
X-Factor Forever, eh? just keep Louise Simonson away from the New Mutants as far as possible.
Genuine question: have any of the stories or the main books addressed why the X-Men seem to keep running desperately short of supplies and are trying to sustenance farm on a rock when they have two long-distance teleporters and several extremely wealthy individuals on roster?
X-Factor Forever? Yipee!!
@Suzene, no they have not.
Siege #3 definitely seemed forced as far as the president turning on Norman Osborn goes. Surely, in a world after 9/11, a liberal (by American standards) president turning his back on someone “avenging” what, for appearances sake, seems to be an attack that kills more people than that aforementioned event would be functionally an act of career suicide. If you allowed this attack to go on up until this particular point; and, at least tacitly, he has; I don’t by “our side” all of a sudden meaning “Against that guy to whom we gave sole superhuman discretionary powers.”
I like the rest of that issue just fine, but that stretches disbelief to an absurd level.
The Sentry/Void and Norman will both die in Siege 4 surely?
What is the thought on this new “heroic age” thing? DC tried the light and happy back to basics look in 2006-2007 and that went straight into Final Crisis, which would somewhat suggest they both missed the point. Then again, that’s not really that out of the ordinary. Green Lantern seems to be one of the few books other than Batman and Robin to really be hitting on all cylinders.
So far as deputising the Avengers, SIEGE has the passable excuse that they’re attempting a citizen’s arrest and there’s nobody else in the area. That said, it strains credibility that there isn’t an established back-up plan for what to do when the Avengers aren’t available – in fairness, that back-up plan might well involve calling the nearest Initiative team, but nobody actually mentions that. Equally, when the President is asking for suggestions, it’s astonishing that none of his aides think of contacting the Fantastic Four, who are in the phone book, or the massed hordes of the X-Men, who might as well be. (Maria Hill raises it in the back-matter text, but she shouldn’t have to.)
But this is a common problem with Bendis’ superhero stories; he’s not really interested in the plot mechanics and so he tends to gloss over them.
X-Factor Forever? You´re kidding me. If there ever was a mediocre to unreadable spin-off back then …
On the other hand, this Forever concept has potential. If you take every Marvel book where a creator “moved on” or was fired, you could do a whole new line.
Dracula Forever by Wolfman
Master of Kung Fu Forever by Moench
and
Daredevil Forever by Miller …
The way I read it, Norman Osborn was appointed by the president’s predecessor. He has plenty of public approval and a good amount of power. The current president has been shown not to trust Osborn so much, and to try and cap his authority. In this situation, he specifically says no, and Osborn ignores him, does it anyway, and recruits sympathetic media to spin the thing. He’s acting without authority, he’s specifically avoiding the president, and he’s endangering plenty of people.
At this point, the president is viewing Osborn as a traitor, and he’s willing to do whatever it takes to contain the situation. It probably doesn’t hurt that opposing Norman Osborn is the recently-resurrected physical embodiment of the American Dream.
I thought this issue worked, and beyond that, it definitely had a lot going for it.
Also, I was pretty crazy about the X-23 one-shot. Definitely not perfect at all, but I thought it did really nice work with the character. I wish Marjorie Liu was actually in charge of the character in some way, because this issue made for a great beginning to a story I’d like to read. As it is, I’m generally pretty disturbed and confused by X-23’s inclusion in X-Force, and by her treatment generally.
You are correct that The Answer has never been mentioned before in Origins.
The whole arc was a typical Daniel Way story stretched out unnecessarily and thinking it was cleverer than it actually was.
The art still remains the saving grace on the book.
I have in my mind a nice idea of what I’d LIKE the “Heroic Age” to be (kinda like the good, old-school superhero books we got coming out of Heroes Reborn), but given that the creative teams aren’t really changing (Bendis still writing everything) and Wolverine’s still an Avenger, I think it’s going to end up being more of a tag on the cover than anything else.
the Spider-Man books have some of the best art in superhero comics right now.
Seconded. Even the stuff that I didn’t like at first (like the guy on the Electro story) really grew on me pretty quickly. I like how they’re really focusing on artists who have solid storytelling skills, and aren’t too concerned with enforcing a “house style.”
I know a lot of people are still ticked over One More Day, but I’m a long-time fanboy, and I am very pleased with the state of Spider-Man right now.
Siege #3 definitely seemed forced as far as the president turning on Norman Osborn goes.
Um, the Prez didn’t turn on Osborn; Osborn turned on him by explicitly defying a direct order. I don’t know of any president who would sit still and let a subordinate usurp power like that.
To Paul: I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect Siege to follow every piece of conversation among the President’s staff. A) It would bog down the book with tons of dialogue that B) wasn’t the main focus of the book. Most of that dialogue was there simply to narrate what was happening on the page. And as you say, it was mentioned in the back-up, and even then that was only a transcript between two people. I’m sure someone mentioned the FF before Maria Hill.
Besides, not worrying about other teams is a fairly common trope in comics. Where were the Avengers when Galactus came? Dunno, it wasn’t their story. Why wasn’t Spider-Man involved when Magneto conquered New York? Who cares.
Anyway, say what you will about Siege, but at least it has a brisk pace. If this were any of Bendis’ other mega-stories, we wouldn’t even be half-way done by now. I think the pace really helps out.
I agree; the pace has been excellent and refreshing. And as I recall, Morrison actually did show other heroes (i.e. the Avengers) trapped outside New York City by an electromagnetic field during that particular story.
Didn’t the avengers show up for the Galactus story too? I seem to recall Thor holding back the water as Iron Man flew cars out of Holland Tunnel. Oh wait, that was during the Terrax prelude to the Trial of Galactus, not the original Galactus trilogy.
I wasn’t really thinking “why aren’t the FF and the X-Men fighting at Asgard” until Bendis felt the need to include two panels of them standing around at home watching the whole thing on TV for the sake of a lame gag. It kind of took me out of the story, because then I was thinking “why are they watching all of this on TV instead of hustling their butts down there to fight?”
a [Spider-Man] “house style.”
Funny thing: reading the Essentials books, I finally noticed that for the longest time, no matter who was drawing the book, they always had John Romita draw the covers.
There are a couple of issues in one of the later books that have art that is, how shallI put it, “not ready for prime-time.” But with a Romita cover on there, on the stands as the public face of Spider-Man to the world, you get a certain…glamour being reinforced, month-on-month.
There’s a great letter in one of the recent Spideys where this lad is ranting on and on about how the art sucks and why can’t they get JRjr on every comic, and it both bemused and amused me. Seriously, god love John Romita jr., but Paolo Rivera? Marcos Martin? Mike McKone? Michael Lark?
Hell, Eric Canete’s Lady Stilt-Man story looked like it was done by hand in acryllics, and it was awesome on rye.
“Morrison actually did show other heroes…trapped outside New York City…”
Ah, but that was a single line of dialogue in a squidgy wee panel on one page (and more than it deserved; nothing I hate more than the need to explain what other heroes are doing when they ain’t relevant to the story. “Batman on a case, humperdoo!” GET OUT. “Oh, where’s Curly Watts when Cracker’s talking down a beastialitist? Behind the till at Freshco’s!”).
//\Oo/\\
Re Siege, the issue of calling in the other heroes wouldn’t bother me so much if the topic hadn’t actually been raised in dialogue. And of course, it’s a line-wide crossover; you can’t disregard the existence of other superheroes quite so easily in that context. What this scene really calls for is the old “We’ve tried calling the Fantastic Four but they’re off exploring Omnidimension Q and they won’t be back until Thursday” approach.
Gamesmaster has always been a lot more interesting in theory than anyone’s ever used him in practice. I always thought he would work better in a weirder, spacier, more idea-driven book – instead of just being the guy being driven crazy by the billions of voices in his head, he could be a sort of hub for an emerging, species-wide consciousness… the kind of trippy “future-human” idea that would pop up in Morrison’s run, for instance.
The X-Men will look like a real bunch of ingrates if they don’t show up to fight the Void next issue. After all, they’ve already neutralised Sentry/Void in a previous battle and either Pixie or Illyana could get them there in the blink of an eye.
Solicitations for June are out!
X-Necrosha Hardback, Buy or Pass??
Any comment appreciated, don’t want to waste 40 dollars on something that isn’t worth it.
Paaaaass! Admittedly, I stopped reading it really quickly. (I did kind of enjoy the crossover issues in X-Men Legacy and New Mutants, I guess, but I think both those books might have been better off without them.)
X-Necrosha was a monstrosity. The art was even murkier than usual for X-Force and the story bounced between stupid and moronic. Blink was in it though…
Arseface:
Why would the X-Men be ingrates? In recent history the US government quarantined them to the mansion with sentinels and they had to flee the US due to HAMMER. Even if they are announcing on television that the President has ordered Osborn’s arrest (and they might not be) the mutants coming in and attacking US forces could well make things a lot worse.
They may decide they have to step in if the planet is threatened, but up until now they are smarter to be staying out.
The X-Men Legacy and New Mutants tie-in issues aren’t bad (though they’re not the best thing that either book has done), but the core story in X-Force is nothing you need go out of your way to read.
Regarding Necrosha, I liked the New Mutants arc pretty well due to nostalgia (cool to see the Hellions again), and the Legacy arc was alright, though the Necrosha aspect seemed a little tacked-on.
The crossover itself? Bleh. The art’s murky and impenetrable, Rahne continues to be abused in really stupid plots, there’s barely any STORY to the story, and most of the characters don’t really DO anything. It’s a bust, IMHO.
I’m not really going to work up much of a lather over “why doesn’t X show up to fight Y’s villains in Y-related event Z” -style questions. “Siege” is an Avengers story, starring the Avengers, involving Avengers villains. It’d be pretty lame to have the X-Men show up and beat the bad guy at the end. Yes, they occupy the same universe; that doesn’t mean we still can’t have separate stories with separate characters. For the same reason I was perfectly happy to have an Avenger-less Planet X in Morrison’s X-Men run. Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s.
I’m not saying that I want or need the X-Men or the FF to show up and save the day, but it seems better to either give a reason why they aren’t there, or just not mention them at all, than it does to show them standing around watching the whole mess on TV and cracking Bendis-jokes while people are dying left and right.
The problem with declaring Siege an Avengers-only story is that it’s meant to wrap up Dark Reign, which has had tons of Norman interacting with the X-Men and everybody else.
The specific problem of Siege #3, as everyone keeps pointing out, is that it pointlessly reminds us that other heroes have a stake in the plot, and then shows them all standing around watching television while people die.
It’s sort of hard not to think of the X-Men and FF as a bunch of heartless bastards when they seem to think the deaths of loads of Oklahomans and Asgardians are just prime-time entertainment. Either leave ’em out entirely, or pay some sort of lip service to their being busy with other things. Siege #3 tries to do something that simply doesn’t work at all.
Siege could make sense with regards to the other heroes within the context of just the miniseries, because if you just read it straight through – at least the three issues that have come out so far – it’s written as one continuous fight that may well have only been going on for 20 minutes or less (since they attacked Asgard, which would be the first point at which the X-Men or FF could have known anything was going on) by the end of issue 3. So it’s possible that the shots of the other teams watching on TV represent them having only just found out something was up, with the knowledge that if they piled into their jets just then, they’d probably only be half way to Oklahoma when the battle ended.
The problem is that every other book that ties into Siege is written as if the battle’s been going on for hours (in which case you’d think at least Taskmaster and Bullseye would be getting kind of tired by now). The Frontline issues even suggest that Ben Urich had enough time to drive most of the way from Chicago to Broxton from the point that the media knew something was up to the point where the Sentry went off the deep end. (For the record, Chicago, Illinois, to Broxton, Oklahoma, is 750 miles. Urich didn’t make it all the way there, but he got stopped by a H.A.M.M.E.R. roadblock, so he had to have been reasonably close.)
Accepting that the X-Men would want to sit back and see how the battle develops, the appearance of the Void at the end is a game-changer.
Emma Frost has essentially stopped the Void twice already. If Cyclops doesn’t at least try to help in this situation, it is negligent at best. The distance from Utopia to Broxton is irrelevant when you can be teleported there in the blink of an eye.
Plus wouldn’t Wolverine want to help out his fellow New Avengers?
Siege could make sense with regards to the other heroes within the context of just the miniseries, because if you just read it straight through – at least the three issues that have come out so far – it’s written as one continuous fight that may well have only been going on for 20 minutes or less…
Except that Siege #1 has Captain America seeing the opening stages of the battle on TV, and #2 has him taking the time to meet with Nick Fury, the Secret Warriors, the Young Avengers, and the New Avengers and give speeches before everyone teleports to the battlefield. Even within the mini, “20 minutes or less” is pushing it and the TV coverage started quite a while before Siege #3.
The other tie-ins have further expanded the timeframe, yes, but the problem is still in the mini itself. But more to the point, the FF and X-Men don’t need hours to get to Broxton; the moment they see things going down, they can be there in short order.
Bendis would have been better off just quietly ignoring the other heroes, really.
I’m so glad I’ve quit reading Bendis books. I’ll always admire his work on Daredevil but he is not a very good “event” writer.
I was thinking about Bendis’ “event” books this morning on my drive to work, and you’re right – he’s proven again and again that he’s just not that good handling big teams and large events. Daredevil, Alias, Ult. Spidey – all of those are generally fine.
But House of M, Secret Invasion, Siege, and even his month-to-month handling of Avengers have left a lot to be desired. It’s like there’s a core idea or through-line that kind of makes sense, but it doesn’t hold up to close scrutiny and doesn’t really stand up when you try to hang a bunch of spin-offs and side projects on it. Not to mention that it often seems like the ideas in his brain (based on what he says in interviews) don’t make it to the page and don’t get fully realized.
Like, what’s really the POINT of Osborn’s Cabal? I guess it seemed really kewl to have freakin’ Doom and Loki team up with Osborn, but to what end? Have they really done anything but meet in a conference room a couple of times? It’s not like Osborn’s led some kind of “take over the world” plot – he’s basically been a corrupt mid-level government official. Why does he need to put together a group featuring kings and gods (and then threaten them to keep them in line) when all he’s really doing is making life unpleasant for traditional superheros and turning a blind eye to the criminal activities of the Hood and his gang of losers?
arseface:
I suppose we’ll have to see how the other heroes react to the Void now showing up in issue 4. If they do it may actually make some sense to show the other teams watching developments on TV. If it was just a throw away gag then – as many others have said – it does detract from the story.
Oh, and I agree that Wolverine should probably be in Broxton. In fact, I kind of assumed he was. It would have been bettter to have him at the battle and let the “Tolja” joke have a different X-person.
“Siege” is an Avengers story, starring the Avengers, involving Avengers villains.
The Green Goblin is an Avengers villain? 😉
I assume all this will end with the Sentry sacrificing himself to contain the Void once and for all (or until the next time Bendis has a “great” idea for a Sentry story), and his heroic, golden age essence floating out and making the world a more heroic, golden agey type place, hence the “heroic age”.
But, as someone above mentioned, it’s all still going to be written by Bendis, so I’ll pass.
I haven’t had a chance to read seige 3 yet (but I’ve read 1,2 and spoilers for 3) and I’m less concerned about why the X-Chaps aren’t in it as I am that Nick Fury’s Secret Warriors ARE in it. Does anyone care about them?
At least Deadpool’s not in it I guess.
@thekelvingreen: Yeah, an Avengers villain, like Bullseye, Venom, Dakken…
I completely forgot about Pixie’s power up – there really is no excuse for at least a token group of X-Men (they wouldn’t want to leaveu Utopia undefended but considering how many people they have it’s easy not to) not showing up in Broxton unless there’s some limit to her teleportation powers that I’m also fogetting (Nightcrawler has a limit of a few miles per teleport and it wipes him out to carry multiple people, so he couldn’t get the team there but if I remember correctly, Pixie can carry groups without a problem).
There was a point in the 80s when there were something like four seperate X-teams, and each had their own long-range group teleporter – I always thought that was a mistake because it’s much easier to make up a reason for the team to be where they need to be than to come up with an excuse why they aren’t where they should be once you’ve established that they can go anywhere immediately.
So yeah, the X-Men are slacking off. I don’t know what the FF’s top airspeed is (at Mach 1 it would take almost two hours to get from New York to Broxton) but I don’t think they have a teleporter.
I think it is safe to say, though, that the Dark Avengers are Avengers Villains, even if only of recent vintage (although if Spider-Man and Wolverine are Avengers, then Osborn, Venom, and Daken ARE Avengers’ villains).
One thing that bothered me that I haven’t seen anyone mention yet (someone may have, but I haven’t seen it): Once Cap’s Avengers show up and wade into the fight, how does the average Asgardian know which mortals in tights are on their side? “Don’t shoot arrows at anyone until they’ve attacked you first” seems like a losing tactic.
“There was a point in the 80s when there were something like four seperate X-teams, and each had their own long-range group teleporter”
When was this? The only long range teleporters I can recall from the 80s were Lila Cheney & Gateway and they weren’t exactly team members.
There was also Magik, and Gateway was always sitting outside the X-Men’s base, but those situations actually didn’t have any overlap (since Fall of the Mutants was the end of Magik’s membership and also the point where the X-Men moved to the outback). Lila Cheney was barely around though, so I wouldn’t include her.
“One thing that bothered me that I haven’t seen anyone mention yet (someone may have, but I haven’t seen it): Once Cap’s Avengers show up and wade into the fight, how does the average Asgardian know which mortals in tights are on their side?”
That is a really good point. I’m sort of wondering when else that has been overlooked. The big fight at the end of Civil War, probably. “Hey, did you sign up?”
@Valhallan: Nick Fury is there because he’s one of the major characters exiled by the new regime, and who’s presumably going to be restored to his old job in a month’s time. He needs to be there to help bring Osborn down. The Secret Warriors are there because it makes no sense for Fury not to bring them. They aren’t actually doing much, they’re just faces in the crowd.