Siege Attacks!

Marvel is up to some crazy tricks.

"Siege: The Cabal" came out this week. It was pretty sweet. This is where and when the crossover 'event' is scheduled to be played out from here on to APRIL:

The main crossover 'event' miniseries itself: "Siege" numbers 1 through 4, in January through April.

The connected mini: "Siege: Embedded" numbers 1 through 4 in the same months.

An issue of "Avengers: The Initiative" for December and then each month the mini comes out.

An issue of "Dark Avengers" for each month (a no-brainer really).

An issue of "New Avengers" for each month.

Three issues of "Dark Wolverine" for the first three months of the event.

Three issues of "Thor" for the last three months of the event (although if you ask me, the new arc that just started with #604 HAS to be connected at least as prologue).

Three issues of "Thunderbolts" for the last three months.

Two issues of "Mighty Avengers" for the last months in March and April.

One issue of "New Mutants" (#11) in March.

And, of course, a handful of just FOUR one-shots: the one that just came out, "Siege: The Cabal", the cryptically titled "Origins of Siege", "Siege - Storming Asgard: Heroes and Villains", which are probably either collections of short stories or a collection of written pieces (a la "The Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe") about the players, and what is probably an epilogue one-shot tentatively titled "Fallen".

(Also, the story just started in "the Invincible Iron Man" #20, is probably going to be prologue material too.)

The main mini is going to be written by Brian Michael Bendis and drawn by Olivier Coipel and if you remember how much I like "House of M", you'll understand why hearing those names again makes me excited.

You want to know the really weird thing? "Fall of the Hulks" started this week too, with the "Fall of the Hulks: Alpha" one-shot...

That just seems stupid to me. They're probably not going to connect much at all and it's asking the average reader to cut-back on what they would spend otherwise.

I won't be reading "Fall of the Hulks". Primarily because I'm not a big fan of the Hulk family of characters, and partially because the one issue I read of Jeph Loeb's Hulk was pretty bad, but I would have considered it more seriously if not for the clear fact that I would probably find myself deciding between the two events at some point over the next few months. I expected that they were going to spread these things out over the next calendar year. Giving us breathing room. By not doing that, they are risking exactly what I warned against in my last editorial: widespread 'event burnout'.

In a complete sidenote related to crossover 'events', I bought issues #1 through #5 of "Identity Crisis" which I'm quite excited to read, on Black Friday. And just last night, while walking through Times Square, I bought "Zero Hour: Crisis in Time" #4 through #1 (they are numbered backwards, get it?) from a street vendor. I really do love that part of living in New York, unequivocally. Now, neither of those were a full miniseries. So after I do some reading I will have more buying to do...