Review- THE AVENGERS: UNDER SIEGE (MARVEL PREMIERE CLASSIC VOL. 51)

THE AVENGERS: UNDER SIEGE (MARVEL PREMIERE CLASSIC VOL. 51) (Marvel, 2010; Hardcover)

Collects Avengers Nos. 270-277 (cover dates August, 1986- March, 1987)

Writer: Roger Stern

Artists: John Buscema (Breakdowns) and Tom Palmer (Finished artwork)

Roger Stern is part of the holy trinity of Avengers writers, the other two being Roy Thomas and Kurt Busiek. Sure, there have been other good writers on the title, but these cats defined the team for me. In this book we see The Avengers get their @$$es handed to them by the new Masters of Evil. This hardcover edition thankfully includes Issue 272, which was omitted from the original trade paperback release. Coincidentally, Issue 272 was the only issue out of this block that I bought off of the stands at the time. 

Roger Stern crams so much more story into each issue of The Avengers than Bendis does. I shudder to think how many trade paperbacks Bendis would have milked out of an arc of this magnitude. We probably would have had a mini-series and forty one-shots to sift through, and still get a less satisfying read. The next time you go to read an Avengers book by Brian Michael Bendis, read this book first. It makes Bendis look like the ham-fisted assclown that he is. Make Mine Stern!

The artwork by the team of John Buscema and Tom Palmer are great at providing powerful, hard-edged stuff. Their fight scenes are downright explosive.

This was a $10 box find at last year's Motor City Comic Con. I normally forgo the variant covers shown above because they have a volume number on the spine. I actually prefer this dustjacket design to the book market design which I typically buy, but since I do not buy every volume in the Marvel Premiere Classic series, my OCD cannot allow me to buy these, unless they are dirt cheap like this. I'll do a double-dip upgrade if it is cheap. This was brand new and sealed.

The OCD zone- I love the Marvel Premiere Classic format. Nice paper and sewn binding at a decent price. The books lays reasonably flat. The restoration is generally very good, with one or two pages looking iffy to my eyes. This blows away the '90s release. The painted cover used on the '90s trade paperback is provided as an extra in the back of the book.

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