First, serious kudos go to whoever wrote the ‘previously’ page. This is the first one I’ve read in years that sufficiently brings readers up to speed on what is truly going on. And after reading the last three ‘previously’ pages in Thunderbolts, believe me, this is a welcome breath of fresh air.

We open on Loki, the Norse god of mischief, doing what may be his final monologue. Well, this being Marvel Comics and not the post-Blackest Night DC Comics, death just isn’t as final as it should be. We all know Loki will be back, he’s been dead before and come back. And on that same note, we all know, sigh (and spoilers), that the Sentry will be back as well.

Loki, realizing he has backed the wrong horse in Norman Osborn and also Osborn’s attack dog Sentry, has repented. He calls upon the power of the Norn Stones to empower the Avengers to fight the demon that was within the Sentry – The Void. How’s that for Avenger-like? Loki even relieves Avengers foe The Hood of the Stones to do this. Sounds like Hank Pym was right on target asking him to join.

Loki after all founded the Avengers in a strange way, without him, there would be no team. Much later in the team’s history, Loki is even responsible for saving the Earth from Dormmamu, despite it involving pitting them against the Defenders in the process. It’s just one example of, however indirectly, his heart is in the right place. Yes, Loki the Avenger has a nice ring to it.

Sadly, on page six when the Avengers are re-energized by Loki and the Norn Stones, BMB falls back onto his old tricks. Once again Bendis speaks through Spider-Man in the author’s voice telling the readers not only what is obvious, but what the readers themselves should be saying – not what anyone on the page should be saying. Spider-Man slips into this mode more than a few times in Siege #4. But this is the least annoying thing going on in the issue.

The Avengers recharge is short-lived because the Sentry takes out Loki fairly quickly. That’s right, The Void takes out – and if we’re to believe the inconsistent and frequently misleading art of artist Olivier Coipel – and incinerates the Norse God. That’s quite a bit of power, perhaps more than reputed power of a billion suns that Sentry’s press agents want us to believe. It could be assumed that the Norn Stones are also destroyed.

Yeah, these are gods and god-toys we’re talking about here. So let’s talk a bit about the nature of what exactly the Sentry and The Void actually is. Osborn claims he’s the Angel of Death. That would go along with Biblical flashbacks we saw in issues of Dark Avengers. Sooo, basically Sentry is the Spectre from over at the Disguished Competition, or more accurately, The Void is the Spectre and Robert Reynolds is Jim Corrigan. Yeah, I found the parallel rather disappointing too, but I guess if DC isn’t using the character to its potential, marvel might as well take a half-assed shot at it.

So, Sentry equals Angel of Death. So, at the risk of getting into a religious discussion here, let’s see what this actually means here in Siege #4. A being created by the Christian God can kill a Norse god and also destroy Asgardian magical relics. And then, that same being can be seemingly killed by another Norse god, and be assumedly destroyed by being pushed into Earth’s sun. This line of logic isn’t making much sense, gang. And not that I know myself what he looks like or I have artist model sheets on my desk, but why does the Angel of Death look like a giant spider with scorpion tails for legs?

And of course we know that Sentry isn’t gone. As we are told in one of the four dozen other comics whose reading is required to make sense of the four-issue mini-series Siege, we know that CLOC is building another Sentry Tower. He’ll be back, don’t worry. Maybe these questions will be answered then, because they certainly haven’t been answered now.

The death of Sentry bothers me quite a bit. I don’t like my heroes becoming killers, and it feels so wrong having Marvel’s much-hyped “Heroic Age” begin with a cold-blooded murder by Thor, that the rest of the Avengers readily sanction. And this isn’t a moral dilemma like it was in “Operation: Galactic Storm,” no one says anything, except for Iron Man’s “It had to be done.” Really? Great, Will they be killing Kang in the first story arc of the new Avengers title too?

After this, all the loose ends are tied up quickly. Superhero Registration Act rescinded, New Avengers pardoned, Dark Avengers imprisoned, Steve Rogers in charge of (one assumes) SHIELD, Asgard and Earth at peace, and new Avengers teams for everyone. All this happens in seven pages. Sentry’s death took less pages, and Sentry vs. Thor – a fight we had been waiting for since Sentry first showed up – was barely a couple panels. What the hell?

Olivier Coipel does a serviceable job on the art, but falls into the same potholes he used to stumble into with Bendis scripts in the early New Avengers days – big panels one and two pages long, unclear actions, confusing panel structures and basically unidentifiable characters in group shots. When Thor, the artist’s forte in my opinion, is front and center, Coipel is good, otherwise, this issue is not his best work.

And so, I give Siege #4 two and a half stars out of a possible five. Props to Loki the Avenger and Hank Pym being right, boo hiss to the quick nearly effortless wrap-up. It’s just too simple, too clean cut, too easy. This issue could just as well be like “One More Day,” a magic wand is waved and everything is just dandy – or crappy, depending on your point of view. Either way, I’m looking forward to a new era of Avengers, I just hope it’s a different era of Avengers, and most importantly, a better one.

	Glenn Walker
	Glenn has been a fan of Marvel Comics' Avengers since the early 1970s, when their current adventures were chronicled by Steve Englehart and their early exploits by Stan Lee in classic reprints featured in Marvel Triple Action. He has persevered through many incarnations of the team and he still loves the Avengers to this day.