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Dark Avengers

The setup to Siege was an outlandish affair, where Norman Osborn recruited a team of super-villains to take the place of the most notorious team of masked heroes in the Marvel universe. Brian Michael Bendis expertly crafted the kind of interactions that would occur were eight mentally unstable people thrown into a room and told to save the world. At the head of it all is Osborn, who is trying to hold it together inside as he vies for total control over the American populace and simultaneous public adoration. Not the easiest thing to achieve for the former Green Goblin. Osborn preaches patriotism, something he literally slaps onto his discount-Iron Man armor.

Such are the running gags of the series. Osborn wants to succeed Tony Stark and show everyone he is the better protector and leader, but he keeps coming up short when held into comparison to Stark's previous achievements. His hair is ridiculed (and Bendis never does reveal how he makes his iconic 'sideways dreadlocks' kind of style. His armor also routinely lets him down, at one point a passerby even comments on how it looks 'plastic.' Not the kind of output one would expect from Tony Stark's technological competitor.

The team itself is a mess, and that's the idea of the series. Villains can't replace the Avengers. They keep getting in their own way. Bendis crafts Dark Avengers and Siege as a warning to show what happens when one single person amasses too much power. Their grip and their sanity slip, and eventually either they fall or society around them does.

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