Siege #4 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Of all the issues of the "Secret Wars" tie-in series that I've read (and it's a lot), this issue is the one with the most connection to the main event.

As we saw in "Secret Wars" #6, Thanos has a conversation with Ben Grimm that makes him realize that Doom has been playing him all this time.  By using Ben as the backbone of the Shield, Doom was able to get revenge on him for their years of animosity.  In this issue, we learn why Grimm would trust Thanos in the first place.  (Honestly, I hadn't even focused on that part in "Secret Wars" #6.)  Ben asked Leonardo da Vinci to use his "enlightenment canon" on him, allowing him to see the truth about Battleworld.  (Talk about a deus ex machina.)  Moreover, we learn that Thanos is responsible for uniting the denizens on the other side of the Shield.  From his comments, it's pretty clear that he created (or, at least, inspired) the Prophet, the mysterious revolutionary that we saw leading an army to Doomstatdt in "Secret Wars" #6.

In other words, if you're only reading the main title, you might want to pick up this issue.  Sure, the enlightenment canon is fairly ridiculous, but it answers questions that, as I mentioned, it didn't even dawn on me to ask when I was reading "Secret Wars" #6.  You don't even need to read the previous three issues of "Shield."  This issue can function as a stand-alone one.

If you have been reading this series, I'll say that Gillen wraps it up nicely.  That sense of camaraderie that I mentioned in my last review hadn't yet fully coalesced finally does so here.  After all, how else could this series end but with Abigail and Scott holding hands and facing the coming horde?  My only real complaint is that I didn't fully understand the purpose of Kang's time travel.  He used the Fury to clear the "chronomines" in the last issue, but I don't get why he wanted to return to the past in the first place.  It seems like he intended to do something more than just warn Abigail of the coming of Thanos (as he successfully did in issue #1).  But, I don't know what it is.

Overall, though, it ends better than it started.  In fact, Gillen seems to have written for the TPB here, since the series reads better as a continuous story than individual issues.  Now, we just have to wait to see where it all goes.  The end page says that hope now exists because the Shield fell, and I think that it's probably right.

*** (three of five stars)

Siege #1-#3 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

I accidentally bought the third issue of this series, thinking that I had already bought the first two issues.  I hadn't, but I decided that I might as well.  Given how many "Secret Wars" tie-in issues that I was reading, I figured that I might as well add another one.

Despite my love for Kieron Gillen, I can't say that I was particularly taken with anything that he does here.  We're introduced to Abigail Brand as the Woman on the Wall, orphaned when a breach in the Shield 30 years ago leveled Breakworld (she was nine years old) and widowed (as such) when the Beast was lost to the Annihilation Wave.  Her sole allies are Leah, her second-in-command that leaves her to find her lost love, Illyana, and Major Summers of the Eternal Summers, leader of an army of clones that Baron Sinister sent to the Shield when he realized that he had no use for them.  Kang replaces Leah after she departs, and his bravado is undermined when a future version of him (of course) appears to warn them that Thanos will breach the Shield in 20 days.  Over the next 19 days, we watch Abigail and company defeat a series of threats, including the return of Nick Fury (her predecessor) as part of the Ultron Perfection.  Illyana and Leah return to lend a hand, revealing that they actually simply wanted to be rulers so they decided on taking over a sub-domain of the Deadlands, since it's the only part of Battleworld that Doom doesn't rule.

Along the way, Gillen attempts to show us how the people on the Shield are a special sort of person and correspondingly share strong bonds with each other.  But, he never really sells it to me.  We see flashes of this sort of camaraderie -- like when Leah leaves Abigail to find Illyana or when Major Summer is touched when Abigail orders him not send in any more of his "good men" to needlessly die -- but somehow it never fully assembles into the esprit de corps that we're supposed to feel.  Instead, I think that he does a better job getting across the futility of the struggle at the Shield, or, as Abigail tells Kang when he first arrives, of hoping that on Monday you merely knock the enemy into Wednesday.

In other words, it's not a terrible series, but I'll admit that I don't really feel like it adds all that much to the main story or tells all that interesting story on its own merits.  If you're an Abigail Brand fan, you'll probably dig it, but, otherwise, I think you can focus your money elsewhere.

** (two of five stars)