Customer Reviews

Siege: Avengers - The Initiative

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

Buying all the Marvel Siege books means you will turn a gem eventually. What a surprise this volume was, surpassing even the main Siege book. Norman Osborn's Avengers are conducting all-out war on Thor's city of Asgard. That's where the big boys play. But what of the little people, the foot soldiers working for Osborn's 'Hammer' organization? That's what this volume explores, the efforts of the minor villain Taskmaster to come out of the whole thing with his neck intact. It's not easy, and his predicaments are truly sympathetic as he faces down Doctor Doom and various heroes. Can a small-time criminal survive the God of Thunder? Are you kidding? The shot of him looking up and seeing Thor twirling thunderbolts around with his hammer is truly frightening. No way he survives the battles of the Gods, the guy's thinking. A refreshing effort from the Marvel team, proving that not all stories have to be about their big heroes to be interesting.

Avengers: The Initiative was a ongoing series that I collected the first three volumes of, but I got lazy and stopped. But the book hasn't changed too much and still has the strong writing it had before. I have to agree with the other poster though this is one of the better Siege tie ins. The writing and the art are both consistently solid and even though its not relevant its fun enough to still collect. In fact I would really only collect this and the actual Siege book because they are the only ones worth getting.

This isn't to say that the book is completely flawless though. The book tries way too hard to tie into Siege and has plenty of laughable moments throughout it. But it just adds to the fun of the book. I don't think this book is continuing anymore but from what I read of it, it had a very nice solid run and it's underrated in comparison to the other Avengers books.

The thing that makes Avengers: The Initiative series great aside from its art and writing is the fact that they introduce new characters and highlight old or obscure ones. Such as Diamondback and Tigra among others.

Avengers: The Initiative (Siege)
(Marvel Comics, 2010)
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This book is a tie-in with the main "Siege" title, in which several years of high-concept Marvel Comics mega-crossovers (House Of M, Civil War, Secret Invasion, etc.) finally comes to a close... This volume was a surprisingly strong entry, especially since it centers on numerous B- and C- and D-list characters (and man, Marvel sure has a lot of those lately!). The man focus is on a bad-guy named the Taskmaster, who has a super-dorky skull-face costume, and the power to instantly imitate any physical feat he sees, so he is presumably as gnarly a fighter as anyone he has ever watched. Anyhoo, Taskmaster is a stupid character, but the writing in this series is often from his POV and it's a lot more interesting than you might imagine.

Also, here we get to see some of the hand-to-hand fighting in the invasion of Asgard that was conspicuously absent from the main "Siege" book. The rest of the stuff, with the good-guy side of the story, was incredibly boring and uninvolving: other than Tigra, who the heck are any of these other super-losers? Night Thrasher? Trauma? Bengal? Give me a break. This was worth reading as a tie-in to the main event, but I can't imagine many readers would want to continue with this series after this is all over. I sure don't. (Axton)