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Hello, Marvelites!
You are watching Marvel's Pull List, I'm Ryan Penagos,
aka Agent M.
And I'm Tucker Markus.
And every week here on The Pull List,
we talk about awesome comics.
Tucker, what are we talking about this week?
This week we're talking about Dark Reign.
It's the storyline that put Norman Osborn at the front
and center of everything good, everything bad of the Marvel
Universe at large.
It's incredible.
It comes after the events of Secret Invasion,
where Norman Osborn really seizes his opportunity
to take control of everything.
And that leads us into some very, very fascinating places.
RYAN PENAGOS: Yeah.
It's-- I love the end of Secret Invasion.
Norman Osborn-- he gets the kill shot.
He wins the day.
He's, like, I'm the big dog.
He becomes Nick Fury mixed with Iron
Man of the Marvel Universe.
Top cop, big dog, and it all goes
completely sideways from there.
And it's so much fun.
And it begins with a really cool issue, right?
That's right.
The kind of transition issue between Secret Invasion
and Dark Reign is a one-shot called Secret Invasion:
Dark Reign number one.
And, man, did I love this book.
Norman essentially calls a meeting with a group that then
becomes known as the Cabal.
It includes Emma Frost, includes Doctor Doom,
it includes a favorite iteration of Namor
the Sub-Mariner that I really--
- Favorite for you. - Yeah.
Let's not get crazy.
You know what?
The visuals are exactly what I imagined in my heart.
Namor the Sub-Mariner really looks like-- anyway,
those characters come together.
And they have a fascinating conversation that essentially
is the building blocks of where we're
going to go from here across the mighty Marvel Universe
because like we mentioned, Norman
Osborn has taken his chance.
He is not just the big bad in New York City
or in the world of Peter Parker now.
He's the big bad across the entire universe.
I think this is ultimately a book all about the kind
of morally gray area that somehow we are
led to find Norman Osborn in.
And I think that's an incredible achievement.
Yeah.
I think you use the term "anti-villain."
So we have antiheroes, and he is the anti-villain
because, yes, he is deplorable.
He's the worst.
But then you kind of start getting into Norman Osborn,
at least I did.
I think particularly it was in the pages of Dark Avengers
that I really started to say, aw, man, Norman Osborn--
he's kind of compelling and I can see his point in some ways.
There's this great scene with Norman Osborn--
so basically, Norman Osborn becoming the Iron Man of it
all creates a suit of armor called the Iron Patriot,
so he's Captain America and Iron Man together.
He's leading a team of Avengers, which is stacked with villains.
We're not even going to get into that
in full, this conversation.
But he has this team, and one of the people on the team
is the Sentry.
So he's basically been gifted the most powerful weapon
in the universe in the body of a mentally
unstable man who has a dark side,
which could destroy everything.
And Norman's like, oh, cool.
That's me.
I'm you.
Hey, bro, what's going on?
Do you want some hamburgers? Let's hang out.
Let's talk.
You're going to be fine.
And there's this wonderful scene where Norman breaks
through to Sentry and talks to him in ways
that no one else has, and it becomes this really compelling,
like, multi-layered exploration of who Norman Osborn is
to the point where I'm like, man, Norman really
should be higher up on that, like, pantheon, that Mount
Rushmore of villains.
Completely.
It's that thing where the scariest moments of Norman
Osborn, in that one shot I mentioned in Dark Avengers,
aren't when he's just being outright
villainous and dastardly and all of those things.
The scariest moments are actually
when you empathize with him, and you find yourself drawn in
and you find yourself kind of getting his points.
But that just speaks to the power of the writing.
It speaks to the power of the artwork.
It's all so incredible, and like we said,
I mean, Norman Osborn, he's a pretty convincing guy.
RYAN PENAGOS: Yeah.
Plus, that team has got, like, Venom eating people.
It's got cool monsters.
It's got Bullseye in a Hawkeye costume.
It's a whole lot of fun.
There's so many cool comics to read in this entire Dark Reign
storyline.
Hey, speaking of reading, it's all on Marvel Unlimited
right now, so you should go check it out.
RYAN PENAGOS: And then if you read through all
the Dark Reign stuff, it gets to a storyline called
Siege, which is really cool.
Maybe we'll talk about that another day,
but for Dark Reign and Secret Invasion,
we had really cool conversations with editor Tom Brevoort, who
worked on all these books, and Tini Howard, writer
of Excalibur and many other comics,
who's just like a super-fan like us.
And we got to get some really cool behind the scenes stuff.
You can hear about all of that on Marvel's
Pull List, the podcast version.
Get it wherever you get your audio
and we'll be back with another video episode real soon.
I'm Ryan.
And I'm Tucker.
And this is Marvel--
Your universe.
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