SIEGE SECRET WARRIORS #1

Review by: dharmabum

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dharmabum

WRITER: Jonathan Hickman
PENCILS: Alessandro Vitti

Size: pages
Price: 2.99

This review contains spoilers, click here to read

This book wins my "Worst Book of the Week" award. I was going to give it to Mighty Avengers, but this book was actually worse.
As a general rule, I don't like being clubbed over the head with anybody's political agenda, from either side of the aisle. This is an example of why it makes for poor writing.

What started out with potential for an interesting story of a boy coming of age and revenging his father, took a turn into far-right field and ended up as some kind of "kill President Obama" fantasy that went completely unexplained. Bendis already established in Siege that Norman Osborn was the one who manipulated Sentry into killing Ares, lied to Ares to get him to help invade Asgard and violated direct orders from the President, thus going rouge. President Obama even very dramatically gave the order to take him down in the last issue of Siege.

Here however, Hickman has Phobos inexplicably blaming President Obama for the death of Ares. Why? We never find out. Phobos decides he wants to talk to the President and instead of using his god powers to get escorted in, he just starts killing Secret Service Agents with a sword.

When Phobos finally gets to the President, we see him sitting at the center of a shadowy group of six military men (most of whom appear to be African-American... just saying...) looking for all the world like Dr. Doom. Obama never says a word and never actually talks to Phobos. For a split second I thought it was going to turn out to be Dr. Doom or a shape shifter or something that would make the plot of this comic make some sense.

Phobos murders scores of Secret Service Agents, for no apparent reason, and when he finally catches up to the helicopter as it takes off, he only points his gun at the President and says "Bang."

Then Phobos leaves a note for the President that essentially says "you know what you did".
His only explanation, to one of the Secret Service agents he is about to murder, is "I came to deliver a message". Hmmm... killing innocent people in order to send a message... what is the name of that tactic again? Oh yeah... terrorism. Yup, you read that correctly... the God of Fear is a terrorist.

Also, the art is not bad, some individual panels are quite good but in many places it just looked unfinished. Its as if Vitti spent a lot of time on some pages and had to rush on others.

Ugh.
I want my $2.99 and the 20 minutes it took me to read it back please.

Story: 1 - Poor
Art: 2 - Average

Comments

spiderphilman says:

April 28, 2010 at 10:55 pm

Wow he tries to kill the President and slaughters his security? That sounds a bit over the top.

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Toadmeister says:

April 29, 2010 at 7:46 am

Dharmabum- Your review is spot on. I’m no fan of Obama but killing Secret Service guys (who are real-life heroes) was just over-the-top rediculous.

The only real good thing in this book was 2-3 pages of Fury and Cap fighting alongside together, this had the issue starting out really well….than things went dark and downhill.

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AmirCat says:

April 29, 2010 at 2:45 pm

Cool review.

Jonathan Hickman, how do you REALLY feel? **sarcasm**

It’s safe for me to say that I don’t have the same political beliefs as Hickman, but I will admit that the writing was good in this book. What happened sucked, and who knows maybe Phobos will be a villain.

I agree with you that there is no excuse for a hero to murder secert service agents. Having said that I really think Phobos is set up to be a villain. You can’t kill good guys and still call yourself good. In the past Hickman has hinted that great powers trusted to children is very dangerous because they are not mature enought to understand the imlplications.

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neums says:

April 29, 2010 at 9:56 pm

While I can’t get behind Alex killing the Secret Service agents and going after the president, I understand where it’s coming from. The government put all their eggs in Norman Osborn’s basket alone on the fact that he’s the one seen killing the Skrull Queen. So, when this all comes to a head at Asgard and this 11-year-old kid (albeit a god) sees his father brutally killed by the Sentry/Void all because of what the government did, he’s gonna snap.

That said, he wasn’t going after the president to kill him. He was doing it to put the fear of God into the man. That much is obvious in the letter that he left in the Oval Office. Basically what he’s saying is, "Do this again and you will suffer the consequences yourself. You saw what I can do to your security. Imagine if you piss off the wrong god or gods again with your foolish actions."

I’m betting this is probably one of things that prompted the president to finally turn to the side of the real Avengers.

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neums says:

April 29, 2010 at 10:02 pm

Also, didn’t it seem a bit too "Hit Girl takes on the gangsters" for its own good?

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SIEGE SECRET WARRIORS #1

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