Avengers Under Siege with Case Aiken
We’re back with another episode of Trade School! This time, we’re talking about Avengers Under Siege! Our host this week is Case Aiken!
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Edited by Case Aiken
Scored by Bret Eagleston
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Outline
️ Introduction to Trade School & Host (00:00 - 00:30)
Case Aiken welcomes listeners to the Certain Point of View’s Trade School podcast.
Announces discussion of the comic trade paperback Avengers: Under Siege.
Overview of Avengers: Under Siege Story and Characters (00:30 - 02:25)
Trade collects Avengers issues #270-271 and #273-277 from the 1980s.
Focuses on the Masters of Evil's renewed threat to the Avengers.
Masters of Evil & Villain Roster Expansion (02:25 - 03:50)
Led by Helmut Zemo, son of Heinrich Zemo, aiming to outsmart the Avengers.
Villains recruited: Moonstone, Blackout, Wrecking Crew, and others.
️ Conflict Dynamics & Key Battles (03:50 - 05:30)
Sub-Mariner temporarily absent due to Atlantis issues.
Showcases especially powerful Goliath’s fight and Hercules’ near death experience.
Wasp's Leadership & Team Counterattack (05:30 - 07:10)
Wasp gathers remaining Avengers for a counteroffensive.
Scene depicting Captain America’s grief over Zemo destroying his late mother’s photo.
Significance & Influence on Marvel Lore (07:10 - 08:30)
Story sets a turning point for the Masters of Evil.
Direct precursor to the Thunderbolts series; many villains reinvented as Thunderbolts.
️ Availability & Format Considerations (08:30 - 08:38)
Available on Marvel Unlimited platform.
Trade paperback includes an insightful foreword detailing villain choices and cameos.
Character Highlights & Narrative Style (08:38 - 11:50)
Moonstone praised as a standout villain—manipulative and complex.
Emphasis on the Avengers being outpowered and outnumbered despite strong roster.
Personal and Storytelling Commentary (11:50 - 13:45)
Appreciates fight sequences, especially Hercules’s.
Acknowledge story aging but still fun and important.
Host’s Engagement & Call for Listener Interaction (13:45 - 15:40)
Encourages subscribing, reviews, and listener submissions for the series.
Promotes Certain Point of View’s Patreon and Discord server for community interaction.
Upcoming Shows & Abschluss (15:40 - 16:20)
Mentions potential new show about Superman called Men of Steel.
Sign-off invitation for continued engagement.
Transcript
00:00
Welcome to Certain Point of View's Trade School, where each episode a different host talks about a comic book trade paperback that they loved and why they love it. Hey everyone, I'm Case Aiken. And yes, I'm back on Trade School to talk about a comic book that I love because this is a show about comic books that we love. And I just wanted to gush about a book for a moment here today. I want to talk about Under Siege. This is a trade paperback that collects volume one, issues 270 through 271, and then 273 to 277. And it is a really fun, impactful story that was written by Roger Stern with art by John Buscema and finishes by Tom Palmer. It is a really interesting trade. It is from a time before books were being written for collected editions.
00:51
This is from the 80s and it is the story of the Masters of Evil coming back after years of dormancy to become a real threat to the Avengers in a way that they had never really been before. So let's set this up. This is a story that took place in the 80s with a pretty strong roster of Avengers. At the time it was Hercules, it was Namor, Captain America, the Black Knight. And then they had Wasp as the leader of the team at the time. And, oh, and Captain Marvel, the Monica Rambeau, Captain Marvel, who is arguably the most powerful Captain Marvel. And certainly at the time she would have been considered as such because her powers were just jaw droppingly powerful. And they were doing a big job in the 80s of sort of fleshing out just what she could do.
01:42
Because the ability to turn into any kind of electromagnetic radiation is a really strong one. And the more that we know about science, the stronger that power gets. So strong roster of Avengers. And so they introduced this new version of the Masters of Evil which goes back to the early days of the Avengers being led by Baron Zemo. And so it was originally led by Heinrich Zemo and now it's being led by his son, Helmut Zemo. This is the one that has shown up in the mcu. And this version of Baron Zemo wasn't going to do the same mistakes that his father made.
02:20
And so rather than just trying to match the Avengers man for man, which had been the best strategy that the Masters of Evil had done up until that point, and for the most part had actually been usually a smaller roster of villains than the Avengers, this time they were going to think outside the box. And by That, I mean, get more bad guys. So Zemo assembles a team of a lot of villains. In fact, it's going to be difficult for me to cover them all because there's so many that they're never even all on panel together because he recruits all kinds of forces. So the main thrust of it is he gets Moonstone and Blackout, he gets the Wrecking Crew, he gets Tiger, he gets Mr. Hyde, and he gets Goliath and the Fixer, as well as the villainous version of Yellowjacket.
03:11
And we see some others. We see Black Mamba from the Serpent Society at one point, screaming Mimi is working for them at one point, along with the Gray Gargoyle. It is an impressive roster of villains, and it is such an impressive roster that they have no trouble breaking into Avengers Mansion, taking over the facility. And then they do a lot of unthinkable stuff. They, they brutalize Jarvis, the Avengers butler, who is normally considered an off limits person in these encounters. They, they lure in the Black Knight and capture him. And then once the Avengers actually become aware of what's going on, they have to deal with the fact that one submarine, the submariner Neymar, has left the team temporarily because of issues in Atlantis. So they're down a man from that, and a very powerful member of the team at that.
04:01
And they have to deal with the fact that Hercules like listening to the Wasp, who is the current chairwoman of the team. And Hercules refuses to listen to her plans because he is written in this book to be a pigheaded stubborn bastard. And so with a little bit of liquid courage fed into him by the Masters, he decides to go in and deal with the Masters of Evil all by himself. And that's a mistake, because the Wrecking Crew individually are all strong enough to fight Thor. And they do a pretty good job, especially when Mr. Hyde joins in.
04:34
But it's really when Goliath, who is a supervillain who would later go on to be renamed Atlas and started his career as Power man, his power set is he has the same powers as Wonder man, but he also has the Pym particles that allow him to grow. And so when you get a character who is Wonder man, but he can also become a giant, he is able to take down Hercules with very little effort. And then the rest of the masters just dogpile Hercules. In fact, they think they kill Hercules. He gets beaten so badly that if he wasn't an immortal God, he wouldn't have survived. And they beat him to the point where he has a heartbeat only once every 10 or so minutes that. That's how badly he gets beaten.
05:19
And so it becomes this story of the Wasp collecting her forces and then mounting a counter offensive. And it's a really cool story. It has some incredible scenes of the team working together, of coming together, of Zemo just being an absolute bastard. There's a great scene in there where he goes through Captain America's locker and just destroys all of his personal effects. And at the end of the six issue arc, there is this great moment of Captain America just holding the photo of his mother that Zemo ripped up. And it's the only photo he has left of his mother because, you know, he was frozen in, suspended in animation for a period of time. He, he was frozen in ice and his mother's long dead. She's.
06:08
You know, admittedly, it's not as dramatic of a gap in time as it is now between World War II and the current story point. But yeah, it's a Captain America who doesn't have all these things and, and it's been destroyed from him. He, he, he mourns while acknowledging that there's been so much loss on the team at this point. And it's a really touching scene. It's a thing, It's a scene that I go back to a lot. It, it shows what cost there is to living some of these superheroic lives of not having the personal effects to sort of recount and hold on to. And it's a really cool moment there where Cap talks about how he was able to push it all aside while Zemo was torturing him, while things were in the thick of things.
07:03
But now that he has a moment to breathe, he's allowed to grieve and that grief is palpable. And so this is a great book. It's just by itself. It's a great story. It's really cool. The, the action is great there's the telltale signs of this being from the 80s where they recap a lot of things, they restate character names each issue picks up and you usually get some kind of recap of the previous issue. So there are those kind of limitations on it. But I also wanted to talk about it because it. To the greater Marvel universe. This was a big turning point for the Masters of Evil as a villainous organization and is the direct precursor to the Thunderbolts. And by that I mean the Thunderbolts, which is a fantastic run by Kurt Punk and Mark Bagley is really reverential to the story.
07:54
They bring it up a lot. The Masters of Evil who are in disguise as the Heroic Thunderbolts are led by Helmet Zemo and the majority of the roster are people that were part this team. Goliath is becomes Atlas. The Fixer becomes Techno. Moonstone becomes Meteorite. Screaming Mimi becomes Songbird. So yeah, the, that team is hugely influenced by the roster of this and by their associations as Masters of Evil. So that team that then became a really big fixture of late 90s, early 2000s Marvel Comics is really notable about that. And then that of course was then aped and ripped off completely by Dark Avengers. So we're seeing how there's like the spillover effect that can just happen from this story, inspiring one story, which then was directly ripped off by Brian Michael Bendis for another story. So yeah, very fun stuff there.
08:55
So I can confirm that the arc is available on Marvel Unlimited. So if you want to check it out, you can check that out there. It's, it's a great arc. I, I highly recommend it. Obviously I wanted to talk about it. So yeah, it's available even if you can't track down the trade paperback itself. Although the trade does have a really nice forward that explains sort of the logic in terms of creating this version of the Masters of Evil, looking for what villains were available, what villains had grudges to bear against various Avengers. So the forward's really cool and it has a couple of asides such as telling you that Black Mamba is in this book because it's very easy to miss her because I mean she's very obvious when she shows up.
09:38
But like they don't go out of their way to illustrate like which character this is. So it's nice to have that. But it is a fairly no frills release beyond that introduction that has a few asides there. It is a very early trade paperback in terms of the big rise of trades being a thing. You know, if you go back to the late 90s, trade paperbacks were a new concept, these collected editions. And you know, you can see that in the nature of the trade and you can see that in the nature of the story. The story is from 1983 and is written like you probably half forgot each issue between each issue. So you know, take that for what it will.
10:24
The story is fun, but it certainly feels its age at times and man rereading it amount of events that are predicated on the lack of communication devices being readily available is just mind blowing. It's, it's just, it's one of those stories where you're like, if cell phones existed, most of this wouldn't happen. And so there's that in going against it in terms of just like how the pace and the plot sort of like transpires. But it's still a really good story. It's really important. It's. It's really action packed and the scenes are awesome. Hercules has this great fight against this, like, horde of bad guys and loses. And that's, it's a really cool sequence. So, yeah, it's worth checking out. Also need to emphasize I can't believe I almost didn't. Moonstone, who is just awesome as a character, is just awesome in this book.
11:20
She is this manipulative, horrid monster of a supervillain who, you know, has almost become a hero every now and then, but she is just the worst. Like, she is just this, you know, like, so she's so bad, like, in terms of how she manipulates and moves things around. Like, if you're a fan of like Bravo shows, like, she would be your queen. I guess I just want to say she's fantastic. I, I love her as a character. I was rereading this and I had to share just one of her snarky lines on Instagram because it, it's Moonstone and she's great and I adore her as a character. You know, the rest of the team is really fun. There's, there's, you know, Mr. Hyde is, is crazy. The Wrecking Crew are all a bunch of thugs.
12:13
Even though I believe Thunderball is a scientist and Goliath is just this big bully. And it's fun knowing that he eventually becomes a hero and a good dude. But at this point he's just a bully and it's fun watching him be that way. So, yeah, it's a God. It's a, it's such a great roster of villains. It's so fun seeing the heroes just really outgunned in a scene. Especially when it's a team that has regularly included Thor, who does show up in this book when it includes Hercules, when it includes Sub Mariner. Like we're talking about a roster that is really tough as Avengers and they are just outnumbered and out powered and it's really impressive. To see how that all goes and how they fight back when it gets down to some of their lesser powered members really having to hold the line.
13:06
So it's a really good book. I, I highly recommend it. I think you should check it out and like I said, it's available on the Marvel app, so just, you can just go and do that. It's really easy to check it out. Or I should say it's kind of easy to check out because the Marvel app sucks and is very difficult, at least on the website version, to look up an issue of a comic book. I'm just going to vent about that for a moment there. Anyway, moving on. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing, doing all the YouTube stuff or the podcast stuff. Leave comments Leave a review if you're listening to this on a podcast player, all those would be really appreciated.
13:50
I am the producer of this series so I, I really want to see it grow and I'm really excited to have people submit. That's another thing you could do if you like this series and want to do your own, please reach out to me. You can find me on most social media platforms aace aiken except for Instagram where I'm holding on 4 dear life to my AIM screen name from high school, which is quetzalcoatl5. You can reach out to me at my email address which is case Akin gmail.com I I would love submissions for the series. This. This is really cool just finding out all the comic books that mean something to people and I I really want to see the series continue to grow and get bigger.
14:32
And if you want to support the show, you can always check out the patreon for certain POV media. It's@patreon.com certainpov media we really appreciate any sort of monetary inclusion but there's fun stuff even at the free tier so please consider ch. You should check out the Discord server for Certain pov. It's a great place to interact with nerds. If you're listening to this I feel like you're probably a nerd. You'll probably find good people to chat with on our Discord server and you can find a link in our show notes or on our website which is certainpov.com it's always open. It's not a. You don't have to be part of the Patreon or anything to be to come and join the Discord server and it's not crazy busy. Like, it's busy.
15:16
There's conversations going on continuously, but it's not like one of those servers where, like, you go in and, like, if you. You turn your eyes away, you've, like, lost, like, 15 lines of text and have to, like, figure out, like, what. What the context for the next poster is or anything like that. So it's. It's a much more chill kind of server than some of the ones I've been on. So highly recommend checking that out. And yeah, until next time, happy reading. Hey. Oh, hey, Jeff. What's going on, guys? Oh, you know, talking about Superman. Oh, cool. I could talk about Superman. I could talk some more about Superman. We know. I'll bet a few people would want to get in on this. I'm down. You know it. That sounds like fun. I'll do it. Cool. Let's do it.
16:05
We can call the show Men of Steel, and you can find it at certainpov.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Yay, C POV. Certainpov.com.