"Events" used to be a once-a-year thing with the big comics companies, something that strived to create excitement and force readers to buy numerous crossover books over a series of weeks or months. But "events" at DC and Marvel have become so common that they don't excite as much interest any more; it's hard to consider something epic when something even grander is sure to come out next month.

Siege, one of the big events over at Marvel, never caught my eye. Although I read pretty much of the Civil War storyline, I started to lose interest during the endless Skrull invasion story that followed, and by the time supervillain Norman Osborn took over both S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers in Dark Reign, I was avoiding Marvel events altogether and just hoping someone would figure out how to reunite Peter and Mary Jane in the various Spider-Man books. (Yes, another recent "event" sundered the company's best-loved married couple because the Powers That Be decided they couldn't tell good Spider-Man stories while he was married. Ugh.) So, anyway, I decided to pick up the collected Siege Prelude in hopes it would pull things together enough to make me read more.

It didn't. What a mess!

The book credits nine writers and nine artists on the back cover, and I don't think that's everyone. Perhaps it's a matter of too many cooks, but this collection is disjointed, disorganized and uninteresting. Tossing in a couple of Spider-Man stories from the 1970s just demonstrates how hard they were trying to pad this book. But quantity does not equal quality, and it shows.

That doesn't mean this collection is entirely devoid of gems. Brian Michael Bendis tells an interesting tale as the original Avengers disperse and Osborn's replacement team steps up to bat. Bendis returns later in the book to describe an attempt by Clint Barton (a.k.a. Hawkeye, a.k.a. Ronin) to assassinate Osborn; Marko Djurdjevic's pencils on the first half of that tale is strong stuff, while Mike Mayhew's gorgeous illustrations for the second half are a revelation.

Beyond that, Siege Prelude failed to impress me, and unless a copy of further Siege collections fall in my lap, I won't bother following this storyline any further.