Comic Review: The Avengers - Under Siege

PUBLISHER: MARVEL (1986-1987)
WRITER: ROGER STERN
ARTIST: JOHN BUSCEMA

Marvel in the mid-1980s was not an innovative place, especially in the main titles where the status quo tended to be maintained. The Avengers had a constantly shifting roster but nothing ever really happened to the team exactly; against this backdrop the group of issues that make up the Under Siege TPB are quite innovative, dealing with a concerted attempt to destroy the team.


The basics of this are deceptively simple as Helmut Zemo, son of the (dead at the time) Heinrich builds a new Masters of Evil. His plan is straightforward - to simply build a huge team that have the weight of numbers on the Avengers and just knock the shit out of them. It's a realisation of the sheer number of villains in the Marvel Universe if only they could work together that would later be revisited for the 'Acts of Vengeance' event and, with striking results, in Mark Millar's 'Old Man Logan' (Millar himself having previously used it in his own terrible Wanted series). The villains rounded up aren't exactly out of the top drawer - Moonstone, Mr Hyde, the Wrecking Crew, Tigershark, Rita DeMara's Yellowjacket, a mind-controlled Blackout, the Erik Josten version of Goliath, the Absorbing Man, Titania and the Fixer. However, there's a believable feel they could function as a unit despite some rivalry and it makes for fourteen supervillains, most fresh from close encounters with the current Avengers roster.

The Avengers themselves are being led by the Wasp. This is a great harbinger as Jan leading the team is always a good thing and while not all her storylines were particularly great (the whole domestic violence arc with Hank Pym is still clumsily unforgettable) when someone says Marvel didn't do character development you show them the Wasp with her evolution from Hank's ditzy sidekick to the leader of the Avengers. Captain America is still on the team but handling lots from his solo title with the backbone being Captain Marvel (the Monica Rambeau version), Hercules (the dumb version who's not happy with taking orders from Jan because he's a massive arse) and the Black Knight. Namor has also joined up controversially; the first issue deals with the repercussions of a former villain joining the team and then the resultant fall-out when he promptly buggers off to sort out some Atlantean stuff.

Zemo's plan then swings into action, capturing Avengers Mansion with only Jarvis in residence, sending a couple of minor villains to keep Captain America busy, adding the Black Knight to his captives when he arrives and using Blackout's powers to both shroud the mansion and imprison Monica. Hercules meanwhile gets held up drinking and doing dumb stuff at a bar; when the Wasp meets up with him and the they arrive back at the mansion he's overpowered and beaten into a coma while Captain America is similarly captured soon after he arrives. 

This leads to an excellent little issue where a barely-alive Hercules is in hospital, overseen by a distraught Jan as the last active Avenger (various handwaves accounting for Hawkeye and the West Coast branch as well as the Fantastic Four, back in the day when Marvel bothered with that sort of thought into the wider impact of a story) with Zemo dispatching the Absorbing Man and Titania to finish Hercules off. Scott Lang, the nomadic second Ant-Man arrives to help but it's largely all Jan who foils their attempt with the late arrival of Thor renewing her resolve.

There's then the fightback, which is eminently predictable but well-written as the Wasp, Ant-Man and Thor (with low-key help from Doctor Druid, shortly before he joined the team) gradually free their team-mates and beat the bad guys, though not before Hyde has savagely battered Jarvis, Zemo has destroyed Captain America's possessions (including his only pictures of his family, something the character refuses to get riled by at the time only to break down when the crisis has passed) and much of the mansion is ruined. One impressive thing though is that aside from Zemo's control of Blackout failing it largely avoids the obvious idea of having the Masters turn on each other for no good reason.

Throughout it all Stern writes the characters well and gets across the trauma of the events even if there are some soapy suplots (like an emerging love triangle between the Wasp, the Black Knight and the mercenary Paladin) and while there's never any real doubt the good guys are going to pull through this one does put the Avengers in more of a corner than they had been in many a year even when up against the likes of Kang and the Kree-Skrull War. A solid story, if a little outdated.