Review: Siege

Siege by Brian Michael Bendis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I buy most of my books from charity shops. In general, this is not a problem but it is trickier with graphic novels where I usually struggle to get the whole story. With Siege, I am coming in at the end of a story and knew nothing about the build up and crossover elements. It took me a while to work out what was going on. For example, what was with the Avengers? Who were these people that were not the people they said they were? I didn't realise at first that Osborne's Avengers were not the Avengers I knew and loved.

Anyway, I got there eventually and mostly enjoyed the story. Some of the artwork was a bit scrappy but there was enough that was good to keep me on board I especially like the sequence of panels that work down the page where you see, from above, the Iron Patriot looking up. As the panels progress, you notice that a spot in the first panel is a reflection of something getting closer and closer until in the final panel, it is clearly about to smack hm on the head. (I won't spoil it completely by saying what was getting closer, but it made me smile when I recognised it.) No dialogue, just a great idea well rendered.

My main concern with it was the "too many heroes" problem. The thinking seems to be: if less is more, just think how much more "more" will be! You like one hero? You'll like two heroes twice as much. And if you like two heroes, get a load of this story with two-hundred and two! My problem is that it is impossible to do justice to everyone involved so, inevitably, some of my favourite characters just get lost in the background.

That said, I enjoyed the story: Osborne was suitably unhinged; Loki was deliciously malicious and some of Earth's (and Asgard's) mightiest heroes were well and truly slapped!

View all my reviews