Day 4 – Brian Bendis and I discuss the hottest thing at Marvel right now: Siege. From its inceptions to Thor’s beat down, Brian opens up on some of the excitement we saw in the first issue.
It’s been said millions of times now, in interviews all over, that Siege really began in the wake of Avengers Disassembled. This was a big building up to moment. But for you as the writer, when exactly was the first moment we really began building, or that YOU really began building, to Siege?
BMB: Well, the physical road to Siege…well, there’s moments. When the Avengers broke up, I absolutely was like, they will reunite one day. And hopefully I’ll still be on the book! And I wrote that down that there’s an arc here that’s important. What you always hate to do is break a toy and then someone else fixes the toy, and everyone goes “YAY! You fixed that toy that asshole broke!” I was a big believer in that I’m going to disassemble them and I’m going to assemble them.
Then when Civil War happened (and it was always on the list), it became, “When will it be time to bring them together?” When Civil War happened, I was like, “Oh good! I don’t have to do it for a while!” By this time, New Avengers is a hit book, and I’m on it. I’m on contract so I can stay on the Avengers as long as it keeps up. Civil War happened to make the divide between what I would consider the holy trinity of the Avengers. It’s why I disassembled it. And then Captain America dies, and I go, “Well, I’ll put THAT away for a while.”
Then we all get together as a group and decide when these pieces will be available to really, to converge towards each other, because even if Captain America comes back to life, there’s still that big giant, “Hey, Civil War kinda broke up our friendship pretty bad” kinda thing. The entirety of the Secret Invasion pitch, the ENTIRETY of it, included what became Dark Reign. I didn’t call it Dark Reign at the time, I just called it that Norman Osborn was able to use this moment in his life to build himself to a great political moment, and that flowed.
I think all I wrote down was that every superhero in the Marvel Universe got to feel what it’s like to be Peter Parker for a day, even when you lose. That’s what I wrote down and Joe got very excited about that idea. They named it Dark Reign elsewhere.
And I said what will have to happen is that Norman builds to a frenzy, and the frenzy ends with the Avengers getting back together, and it’s a new day for the Avengers and it’s a time for healing. I was excited that everyone at Marvel was so excited about this path. 
How long Dark Reign would go on for? Calling it Dark Reign and all that, that was their decision. I also was absolutely fine with Siege happening in the pages of Avengers, I thought I had done my big events in my life, and that’s fine. But they were like, “No no no, it started as an event, it ends as an event.”
But we all agreed that that would be the last event for now, or for a while, and I’m happy about that too. So it’s been gestating all this time and really birthed during the planning stages of Secret Invasion because by then they were like, “Well, what’s your optimum goal?” And I was like “Well, the one thing Cap and Iron Man would get together for would be to help Thor. Regardless of all the other shit that’s gone down.” And with Asgard exploding over Oklahoma, which to me is a blatant visual but a gigantic political critique that people would put up with this. Norman would see this as a threat and would act accordingly and would have Loki on his side pushing him. That would be it! That would be the battle over Asgard.
Continued belowIt had to be dealt with on some political level beyond what’s going on in Thor, and at that time, JMS had stepped down to go off to DC, and it was freed up to do. So all the pieces came together very nicely and Ed was more than ready to bring Cap back.
Same thing with Tony Stark. Tony Stark was on a hell of a journey this year. So all the pices converge in a nice way. It did delay the Dark Reign a few months, but some really great stories came out of it last half just to get all the ducks in a row. I think that we all really fell to it. Sometimes all these moving pieces in a shared universe, some people can feel either there is too much going on. This one really gelled together really smoothly. We all really felt that this is what we wanted to do at the same time.
Did you feel a lot of pressure as perhaps the biggest architect of the Marvel Universe of the past seven years?
BMB: Well, pressure is not the right word… you don’t wanna fuck it up at all. I don’t live with pressure. Brain surgeons have pressure. That seems hard. You want to live with the good in the worst way. Your name’s on the book so you’d like it not to suck in the worst way. I have children that will read these one day, I’d like them to go, “Oh, that was cool dad.” I told you before, there’s something freeing about the fact that I’ll make everybody happy.
To just really make myself and my peers happy is a big, big deal for me. I have a lot of mixed feelings about it because I absolutely want everyone to love it, and I want to have this exciting time while they’re making it. But at the same time I can’t control that. I don’t give myself pressure about it, if that makes sense.
What has the general response been like to the destruction of Chicago’s Soldier Field?
BMB: That is always the weird thing that I can never expect what is going to happen! It’s that kind of stuff, and when you kill a character! Like, I kill Hawkeye and people wanna rip my face off! I kill the Wasp and everyone’s like, “Good, I hated her!” 
And I’m like, “REALLY? Oh, ok!” Not that I was trying to piss everybody off. But I was genuinely startled when the reaction was almost favorable!
Same thing here. I’m not a sports guy, so I’m not that aware of everything. Originally, it was supposed to be a baseball field. It was supposed to be Rigley, but Joe loves baseball and wasn’t gonna have it. And then I did it, and the Chicago press went nuts… but in a positive way! It’s fun for Chicago press, and all of them were like, “Good, we hate them!” It seemed to go over well as far as global acts of terrorism and destruction in comic books go.
Is the reaction to the Soldier’s Field destruction greater or smaller than whatever was heard from after Stamford got destroyed in Civil War?
BMB: I don’t even know. I didn’t destroy Stamford so it wasn’t directed at my face. I mean, I think Stamford is more horrifying because it’s a school of children. I can’t answer that directly, but you know… it seems that there’s a different tone of Siege. Like, with Civil War you didn’t know who was gonna win, and even if you win you lose. If Iron Man wins, we lose Cap. If Cap wins, we lose Iron Man. There was a different tone to it.
This one seems there is a genuine tone to it that there’s gonna be an ass kickin’ of the bad guy, and the question really is how much damage will be done before they can get to ‘em? And that’s the question. How much sacrifice to get this done? So there’s generally a feel like something cool’s about to happen so people seem to be enjoying it more, the madness of it. They seem to be enjoying that which is interesting to me, but it’s great fun.
Continued belowSo given that Siege is so heavily related to Asgard, was it always the plan to have Thor be 
the first casualty right off the bat into Siege? Because him being taken out is a figurehead for the rest of the Heroic Marvel, it’s just surprising that from a sheer firepower standpoint that they were able to bring him down.
BMB: Well that’s just math! I saw some of that on my board too. There’s like, nine of them! And they’re all pretty powerful. Iron Man and Thor could always go at it, and Iron Patriot’s got all of Iron Man’s stuff. And that’s just ONE of them! And then there’s a bunch more! It’s numbers, and it’s a good plan. I’m bummed out the back matter got a little misprinted so people missed some of the plan, but the plan was pointed at Thor. It was pointed at Hemidall’s observatory, which kinda locked out Asgard. It’s a very good first wave of attack, and it’s just numbers at this point. It’s just that much pressure on that one thing will knock it down.
How come, in comparison with the other events that you’ve written, you decided to keep Siege so short and contained?
BMB: I agreed with some criticism about length. And it’s not length of story! People read House of M or Secret Invasion now in trade paperback, and they seem quite happy, because it’s all right there in front of you. But I think the wait in between issues during an event… I don’t think it exhausts what they call the adventure gene, I don’t think it comes from the storyline. I think it comes from a part of marketing. Some of which is from us, and some of which is people constantly talking about it.
I think once you get the issues fixed over long runs some people get dizzy from it. And also, as a writer you say, can I do that? Can I get this in four issues and it’ll be good? Plus I have all the buffer of the tie-ins that I’m writing to get across any idea I have that I don’t have to skip over any of the content. But the main plot blow through… can I do it in four? Can I do it with boom, boom, boom? Because that’s what this storyline should feel like.
With Secret Invasion, it had a conspiratorial “who’s who?” “what’s what?” “how could the heroes possible get together just to fight this foe?” So there’s much more pieces being handed about. But with Siege, all the pieces are headed towards one place very quickly. They have to. There’s a war going on and they have to be dealt with immediately. So it seemed like removing the second act and getting right to the third act, and that’s interesting.
Can I do it? And I was pleased! I was also pleased with Marvel because I kept harping this point that we should get in and get out. Boom, boom, boom, boom, you know what I mean? That’s what it should feel like. That’s what the story feels like to the characters, that’s what the story should feel like to the audience. And they stuck to their guns and they did it and didn’t get greedy on me which I was really happy about.
