I’m reading Siege and enjoying it. I like the art, I like the story, and I especially like the pace. At four issues, things are moving along nicely. With the Heroic Age set to begin in May, I was a little surprised that Siege #4 was not on the schedule for April (it’s been pushed back to May 12). Instead, Marvel is giving us a series of 5 Siege one-shots focusing on Captain America, Spider-Man, Loki, the Young Avengers and Secret Warriors. The first of these shipped last week and I really wanted to give them a chance, but I’m sorry Marvel, I’m not buying into this. I didn’t read any of these books but it’s pretty clear that at least the Captain America and Spider-Man issues are extended fight scenes and essentially filler. The Loki issue might be great since he’s the mastermind behind what’s happening in Siege and this should give some insight. I didn’t buy it on principle alone. This is not Marvel’s fault, but I know myself. If I buy one of these, I’m going to want them all. They even have interlocking covers. No, I’m out for this.

This snow is really starting to cause problems. Apparently Diamond Comic Distributors, who ship the majority of new books on Wednesdays, had no power and no phone as of Monday due to the weekend storm. A recent update says that this outage shouldn’t cause any shipping delays. However, considering the new storm that’s crushing us today, there’s a good chance we won’t see books before next week at this point. Without any books hot off the presses, it’s nice that Marvel has given us some teasers of what’s coming a few months down the line to focus on.
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Yesterday saw the much anticipated release of Marvel’s Siege #1.  Advertised as “seven years in the making” (some of which is quickly recapped here), Siege promises to be the culmination of a large portion of Marvel history from 2004’s Avengers Disassembled through the current Dark Reign of Norman Osborn. All of the major series published over that time including House of M, Civil War, and Secret Invasion are touched on and a special edition of Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada’s Cup o’ Joe column is even included in the book to get everyone up to speed on the groundwork that’s been laid for this story.

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Three great special issues were released by Marvel in the past two weeks, unfortunately they shipped (and I subsequently read) in perhaps the exact reverse order they were intended.  All three books are written by Brian Bendis, the architect of the upcoming Siege event and writer of the Avengers titles for several years.  The books in questions are New Avengers Annual #3, Dark Avengers Annual #1 and Siege: The Cabal.  Read them in that order, but don’t read on unless you want to know why (consider that a SPOILER warning).

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