Marvel’s latest crossover storyline is bringing together a few loose ends ever since the last major crossover, Secret Invasion. The in-between time introduced the set up for this new story, with Dark Reign, the introduction of the Dark Avengers, and the loss of Iron Man in Dissassembled.
Asgard sets up shop in Broxton Oklahoma, and one of the gods goes outside and blows up a football stadium after being attacked by The Hood’s men. Osborn makes a play and sends in the Avengers, taking out Thor in issue one of Siege. We close out as Iron Man is still in a coma, and Captain America looks like he wants to step up next.
Meanwhile Loki and Osbourn try to get together all of Marvel’s bad guys under one roof, but Namor and Frost quit the team for various reasons, and then Doom quits because Osbourn won’t attack Namor. Osbourn then asks the president to help him attack Doom, which just makes it worse when his follow up question is to attack Asgard. It looks like Osbourn doesn’t care if the president agrees with him or not, because he then sends all of his media sources to Oklahoma to make him look good. In comes the Embedded storyline, where Norse god Volstagg (who was blamed for the attack on the stadium) teams up with some reporters to get back to Asgard and give their side of the story.
Osbourn is the big bad here, although he listens to both Loki and his goblin mask for advice, which is bad news since he also goes around now as Iron Patriot, as leader of H.A.M.M.E.R. We have appearances from the Sentry, Taskmaster, the Hood, and some secret weapon that Osbourn used against Doom. Osbourn promised the Dark Avengers that if they follow him on this one they can go free, which means we could have the New Avengers (or some mix and match at least) coming back in the future. This storyline has most of Marvel’s big players, which could mean big things for the Marvel verse.
So we are officially into the new storyline, which seems to have Thor, Captain America, and Iron Man all teaming up to take on Osbourn, Ares, Loki, and the Dark Avengers. With Thor already down, the next wave comes out February, but there are still a few one shots and side stories to keep us going.
