Overall, where do you think Dark Reign failed?

[explicit]

1. Osborn never went out of his way to do anything convincingly heroic. Everything was for his own gain or to look good for the public.

2. None of the good guys (who matter) ever allied themselves with Osborn. This could've added depth and some neat paradigm shifts (and covers) but alas, this was skipped.

3. Since having Nick Fury/Tony Stark/Maria Hill's old job Osborn has NEVER truly been tested. Not once. The old guys had to hold back entire alien invasions... MULTIPLE times and still ate shit from the public anyway because a city bus got a flat tire. Norman Osborn is a known serial killer and an unproven leader yet the masses would fight over each other over who gets to lay down their lives for him.

4. Marvel had the balls to replace S.H.I.E.L.D. with an acronym that STILL has no meaning.

5. Osborn never got his hands dirty.

(Sending your lackeys to try and kill someone isn't cutting it)

6. His cabal sucks/His cabal is missing the likes of Arnim Zola/Red Skull/Baron Strucker.




Hmm.. What am I missing?



And yes, I do realize Dark Reign is still ongoing. It's just something you mostly ignore nowadays.

[dirtydozen]

Blame crappy characters like White Queen and The Hood being there over the ones you mentioned.

[AgPhoenix]

How about the fact that for every excellent book (Secret Warriors, Invincible Iron Man, Thunderbolts), you had 5 - 10 books that ranged from mediocre to terrible. Not only that, but you also had a storyline that spun its wheels for months and months. There were plenty of books where the storyline wasn't advanced in any significant way.

Then there is the $4 price tag that most of those suckers had, but they still sold well for the most part, so I don't know if this is a valid complaint.

[Agent_Torpor]

It was boring as flat teats.

Seriously. Norman Osborn's a loon. Wow. Warren Ellis already mined this to better effect during his compact-yet-efficient Thunderbolts run.

[Brannon]

My view:

1. Norman Osborn. In the great scheme of thing's he's really just an old Spider-Man villain that should still be dead. He was never a world dominating genius like Doctor Doom or Magneto and I never bought his forced inflated importance.
2. Poorly executed in general.
3. Poor characterization. The REAL Doctor Doom (as far as I'm concerned) would never join Osborn's insipid cabal and would most likely have him killed if he pushed his luck. Also the idiocy of the government and public in the current post-Nick Fury lead SHIELD era is laughable.

[XPac]

Though I don't agree that Dark Reign failed, I do wish the Cabal had done more collectively .

It would have been cool to get a few one shots where they worked together as a team to accomplish a few things here and there, like the Illuminati did.

[daveageallen]

i think bendis made dark reign slow on purpose to make this seige crap look mind blowing and out there.

i did not realize dead means dead got replaced by no more big events by marvel and there things they sa that are not real.

[worstblogever]

You know, I don't know that it did fail. Other than the fact that from the start, a guy convicted of murdering an innocent woman was yanked out of prison, and within the span of maybe a year, attacked a foreign diplomat (Atlantean). He was then pardoned, placed in charge of a team of reformed villains whose targets were often left brutalized, before the facility was ransacked from within by its members' own insanity. Before that story could leak to the public, though, he played to the cameras in Washington, D.C. during the early parts of the Skrull Invasion, then got one killshot on what most average people may not have known was the Skrull Queen.

He follows this up by laying blame on those who set him up with his pardon, and tons of more shady dealings.

It's supposed to parallel the "patriotism" that came in the wake of the attacks on N.Y. and Washington in 2001, and the faith the public put in our leaders at the time, I know. But nobody in the Bush administration threw a blonde of a bridge, or more publicly, say, murdered a reporter who worked for a N.Y. newspaper, like Daily Bugle reporter Terry Kidder.

Past that, though, the idea that fear, and shock of such an attack will have the public ready to turn to whomever makes them feel safest, regardless of their intent... well, that story speaks to me. And it's given the villains of the Marvel U. a lot of potential to abuse the powers that SHRA could give them.

[Expletive Deleted]

Too much Norman for too long. Six months of Dark Reign, one storyline per title, would've been plenty.

If the status quo had been a little more subdued, with Norman and company working in the background, it might've been okay to have it last this long. But with almost every superhero actively fighting Norman and only Norman (and/or one of his proxies), month after month . . . it's dragging.

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't characterize Dark Reign as a failure, but it's length is its greatest failing.

[Brannon]

Originally Posted by XPac

Though I don't agree that Dark Reign failed, I do wish the Cabal had done more collectively .

It would have been cool to get a few one shots where they worked together as a team to accomplish a few things here and there, like the Illuminati did.

I dislike the Illuminati concept as much as the Cabal mainly because it goes against what I have always perceived as the motivations of the respective character involved. It's the classic case of using characters to tell a story that doesn't fit with their established characterizations.

This is why I've avoided the core titles like New Avengers and all the Dark Reign stuff and stuck with the more or less left to itself Cap and the cosmic titles.

[Grapeweasel]

It failed like most Marvel Events.

Things that should take years to play out are shrunk down to a matter of months or weeks.

[kindella2]

i dont think it failed...i think too many takes on Osbourne from too many writers thus too much over exposure (like Tebow, or Hansbrough) it just made people sick of Osbourne his cronies and the Hood.
There were some great books and great writing but just too much of one person.

[Blue Blazes]

Originally Posted by Expletive Deleted

Too much Norman for too long. Six months of Dark Reign, one storyline per title, would've been plenty.

If the status quo had been a little more subdued, with Norman and company working in the background, it might've been okay to have it last this long. But with almost every superhero actively fighting Norman and only Norman (and/or one of his proxies), month after month . . . it's dragging.

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't characterize Dark Reign as a failure, but it's length is its greatest failing.

totally agree with this. It would have been more useful to have some on-goings behind the scene, instead of Osborn in EVERY story of EVERY issue (practically anyway) Marvel published.

[Syrant]

2. None of the good guys (who matter) ever allied themselves with Osborn. This could've added depth and some neat paradigm shifts (and covers) but alas, this was skipped.

I'm not sure who "matters" in your opinion, but I remember War Machine and New Avengers had to accept his help. And DA is about to team up in Mighty Avengers, I think.

6. His cabal sucks/His cabal is missing the likes of Arnim Zola/Red Skull/Baron Strucker.

Would Red Skull ally himself with Osborn? Norman is reaching his hand out to help him right now in Reborn, but Red Skull's reaction wasn't exactly friendly.

My least favorite part of Dark Reign is the Cabal. They could have done a lot more. Namor and Emma were such teases. The Hood feels like just a lackey. Dr. Doom and Loki are the only ones really teaming up, and it's not even with Osborn.

[mattbib]

I don't think it failed at all. I agree with ED that Osborn's machinations would have been better if more subdued and secretive and not so in-your-face, but I think purpose-wise the storyline (I refuse to call DR an event) has done what it set out to do. Like it or not, most of us are buying it and talking about it. That's a sign of success, not failure.