Siege: Battlefield

This somewhat belatedly-commissioned series of tie-in issues to Marvel's big "Siege" event, the finale to a fairly long story within the wider Marvel Universe, is amusingly a bit longer than the event that it's tying into. It is somewhat difficult to judge as a package, containing five different issues by five different creative times focussing on different characters, with variable degrees of relevance to the ongoing series. As such, I will talk about each issue on its own merits and assign it a rating. Some spoilers follow, obviously (including some for "Siege itself), so be warned. 1. "Siege: Captain America" by Christos Gage and Federico Dallochio, is easily the least-compelling of the collection, both on its own and in terms of wider relevance. Like all of the issues, it is set between "Siege" #3 & 4, after the Sentry brings down Asgard on top of everyone. The once (and no doubt future) Captain America, Steve Rogers, and the current Captain America, Bucky Barnes, both dig themselves out and rescue some white trash idiots (okay, the parents are idiots; the kids are sympathetic) from a D-list villain. Gage, who is a solid writer, can't dig anything meaningful out of this, and the art, while starting out strong, isn't especially suited to superhero stuff. The most notable thing here is the utterly hilarious-looking villain Razor-Fist, who has swords for hands; I'm not sure we were meant to find that funny. Rating: 2 of 5. 2. "Siege: Spider-Man" by Brian Reed and Marco Santucci probably flunks the relevance test (Reed is an occasional contributor to Spidey's titles, but there's not anything of importance either to him or to the event happening here), but it's arguably the most enteratining issue of the bunch. Spider-Man and Ms. Marvel (whose title Reed wrote for 50 issues, and who he's written as having a flirtation with Spider-Man) take on the traditional Spider-Man villain Venom, who has been serving on the Dark Avengers for a while; Reed follows up on his own miniseries starring Venom, but overall this is just a fun superhero story, with great art from Santucci. Reed offers a few innovations on the typical Venom story. 4 out of 5. 3. "Siege: Loki" by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie scores at least second-highest on the relevance scale, given that Loki is one of the chief players in "Siege" and Gillen has been filling in on the "Thor" title for the last little while. This is mainly a backstory issue, giving us a view of what Loki has been up to while the heroes are fighting Norman Osborn's men. For someone unfamiliar with the "Thor" title in recent years, this might not be especially interesting, but it's very much tied into the status quo as established by J. Michael Straczynski and Gillen; indeed, Gillen's follow-up arc on "Thor" is directly related to the events of this issue, and one expects that a particular development here will be important to Loki's future. Jamie McKelvie's art is nice, and his presence here with