Dark Reign (comics)

Norman Osborn, A man you can trust
"This is my country."
—Norman Osborn, Thunderbolts #124

Marvel Comics' non-Crossover (read: a verse-wide storyline described by Joe Quesada as "it's not a crossover, just what's happening in the Marvel Universe") which follows the Aftermath of Secret Invasion. It's a Crisis Crossover-sized event, but is not a crossover in the common meaning of the word - comics were not tied to a strict plot, but were showing multiple heroes dealing with a Villain with Good Publicity becoming one of the most powerful men in the United States.

After Secret Invasion, the general public blames Iron Man, then director of SHIELD, for not preventing the Alien Invasion. Meanwhile, Spider-Man's Arch Enemy Norman Osborn, leader of the Thunderbolts, gains himself some huge points in the battle of public opinion, as news networks featured him being a leader in the fight against the Skrulls, and eventually ending the entire conflict by blowing the head off the Skrull queen before any of the assembled heroes could kill her. This televised act of heroism (which may have been staged, depending on whether you believe Deadpool or not) led The President to dismiss Stark and replace him with Osborn. Norman, very happy with how things went, quickly replaced S.H.I.E.L.D. with his own organization, H.A.M.M.E.R. and formed the Cabal - an alliance between him, Emma Frost, Namor , Loki, The Hood and Doctor Doom. He also creates his own, twisted version of the The Avengers - Dark Avengers, with most of the team members being supervillains in heroes' costumes led by Osborn himself in Iron Man's armor, under the name of Iron Patriot. At the same time, he sets up a plan to replace and kill half of his former Thunderbolts teammates, as they might have information that would make him look less appealing to the public at large (second half joined DA). His allies from The Cabal are plotting against him, many heroes and a few villains want to get rid of him, but Osborn doesn't seem to care - he has a mysterious ally, somebody who can instill fear even in his fellow members of The Cabal.

Dark Reign spawned several tie-ins, but some plot points are also being resolved in titles not officially marked as such, like the recent plot arc of Thor. Due to this, fans still consider everything which deals with Norman or any other member of Cabal as a part of the event.

Dark Reign started right after Secret Invasion and lasted a year before Grand Finale – four-part Siege event. It's followed by Heroic Age.

Has nothing to do with the Dark Reign game series.

Tropes used in Dark Reign (comics) include:
  • Abusive Parents: While Ares has been Genre Savvy to the point that he left Nick Fury take care of his son (which was what Phobos wanted) because of being afraid he would start to abuse him emotionally or physically, right now his son from ancient times is hellbent on revenge for the merciless neglect he received.
    • Hera has a classically dim view of her children/half-children/other relatives, and won't hesitate to chuck one out of a thirtieth story window if they talk back to her.
  • All There in the Manual / Guide Dang It: For many people the way the Void was defeated and killed at the end of Siege was idiotic. It does make a lot more sense if you had read Dark Avengers... and every single interview with Brian Bendis published between the end of Secret Invasion and Siege issue four.
  • Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Does being turned into the big bang to create a new frikkin' dimension count? If so, then Wasp. While Dan Slott expressing his annoyance with the end of Secret Invasion lead to some hints of possible alternate dimension solutions coming into play, pretty much nobody expected for her to actually be the dimension in question.
  • American Robot: Normon's Iron Patriot persona, deliberately meant to echo both Captain America (comics) and Iron Man. However, star-shaped ARC Reactors don't exactly work well .
  • Anti-Hero Substitute: Hard to count (or easy- it's inverted as most of these guys are 'villains.
    • Dark Avengers for Avengers
    • The Cabal for The Illuminati
    • Dark X-Men for X-Men
    • The Hood and his "reformed" supervillains for The Initiative
    • Dark Young Avengers were a little bit of this for The Young Avengers.
    • Subverted with She Hulk and Savage She Hulk- they are very good friends and Jen seems to be a role model for Lyra
  • The Atoner: Subverted. Osborn loves playing this card in televised interviews whenever somebody attempts to remind the public that he was the fricking Green Goblin.
    • Also played straight with Loki at the end of Siege. He deeply regrets having brought such a ferocious battle to Asgard when it reaches its breaking point, and so fetches the Norn Stones back from the Hood and uses them to empower the heroes as they all attack the Void at once. When Void notices that the heroes' uncanny power is coming from another source, he turns unto Loki, whose last act before being torn asunder is apologizing to Thor. Betcha didn't expect that coming from the Norse god of mischief of all people.
    • Somewhat averted in the main Thor title and elsewhere, Loki planned for his own death to avoid from going to Hel, the land of the dead and was both the source and the solution for the key problems plaguing Asgard after SIEGE. He has hinted to wanting to try and change so it is yet to know how much is an act and how much may have been genuine.
  • Badass: Ares
  • Badass Boast: Quicksilver, while fighting with Mister X, please note that every dash equals Mister X being punched.

You can read minds enough to be able to predict any attack your opponent will make. So you will be able to - anticipate every move I make - and do absolutely — nothing about it — because -I-am-the-fastest-man-on-earth.

  • Badass Bookworm: Bruce Banner, after losing his powers, proved himself to have so many levels of scientific manipulative badass that Osborn plotted a scheme to turn him back into Hulk, because a green monster would be less dangerous.
  • Badass Grandpa: Bor, and how!
  • Badass in Distress: Doctor Doom - The first mission Dark Avengers took on was to save him from Morgan Le Fay. Right after that Doom easily defeated Morgan.
  • Badass Normal: Zodiac, Nick Fury
  • Bat Family Crossover: Three of them are consider as a parts of Dark Reign.
    • Thunderbolts/ Deadpool: Magnum Ops, where Osborn sends his team of killers after Wilson
    • Dark Avengers/ Uncanny X-Men where Osborn's is trying to solve problem of mutants. Permanently
    • Siege - Grand Finale of Dark Reign, where Osborn invades Asgard, forcing heroes to gather and bring end of his madness.
  • Betty and Veronica: Harry's girlfriend Lilly has been choosing between Harry (Betty) and Norman (Veronica) She chooses the craziest Osborn.
  • Big Damn Heroes - During Siege, Captain America (Steve Rogers) leading the New Avengers, the Young Avengers, and the Secret Warriors against Osborn's forces, starting with Steve throwing his shield at Osborn and crying "Avengers Assemble!" for the first time in some three years.
  • Boss Rush: can the "Gauntlet" storyline count as a comic book example? Given that Spidey has got to fight most of his Rogues Gallery in a row, well, yes.
  • Brainwashed and Crazy: Mr. Negative can do this to people via touch. The more good person was, the more crazy he/she becomes.
    • Played straight with Mr. Negative's split-personality of Mr. Li who runs a soup kitchen, helps the homeless, aids the needy... And winds up curing Eddie Brock's psychosis leading him to become The Anti-Venom
  • Butt Monkey: Mighty Avengers is working hard to rescue Pym from his status as one, by putting him back in his West Coast Avengers position of a Doctor Who style Science Hero. Series often lampshades it, too. A lot.
  • Cannon Fodder: The Shadow Initiative during attack on prison in Negative Zone. Turned into somewhat of a Tear Jerker in an issue of The Initiative, as we get to see it all from the point of view of a Red Shirt who knows damn well he's going to die, and has taken steps to make sure that his best friend doesn't go down with him, and his family will be taken care of after his death.
  • Captain Ersatz: For some people Zodiac is a little too similar to The Dark Knight's version of The Joker in his actions. And he looks like Light Yagami.
    • Many readers think he looks a lot like the witness sketches of the original (there was also a copycat in New York) real life Zodiac Killer. Whether or not he's supposed to be that Zodiac, ramped up to a higher level of villainy, is never made clear, though for it to be possible, de-aging or other comic book alterations would have to be in play.
    • And of course Sentry is, as always, an Ersatz Superman.
  • Calling the Old Man Out Harry finally does this To Norman.
  • Card-Carrying Villain: Zodiac, right to the point he went against Osborn because he finds his good publicity as an insult to those who commit crimes "for the sake of mischief".
  • Chekhov's Boomerang: In his own mini-series Bullseye got a copy of his old costume as a part of story's villains plan to manipulate him. Later, when Osborn ordered him to go after Daredevil, Lester dressed in that costume.
  • The Chessmaster: Zodiac - When he entered the scene, everybody, including the Fantastic Four, Osborn and all of H.A.M.M.E.R. turned into his puppets and remained that way until he got what he wanted.
    • And he even arranged things like Whirlwind's stint as Osborn's chauffeur and Manslaughter Marsdale's coma before the series started.
    • Loki is this as well, manipulating Thor, all Asgardians, Norman, Hood and Mighty Avengers any way he wants to, even after some of them realized that.
  • Continuity Nod: All over the place, but surprisingly, there's a nicely subtle one in the otherwise balls-out Zodiac miniseries. Osborn hires Whirlwind as his chauffeur, with a snide reference to his prior work history. Way back in the classic Avengers and Marvel Feature comics, David Cannon had worked under a false name as Wasp's chauffeur while planning an inheritance heist and kidnapping.
  • Costume Copycat: Most of Dark Avengers members wear the outfits of existing superheroes and Clint took Ronin's identity and costume, used by Echo before Civil War. It was even parodied:

Ronin: So that's Bullseye? Bullseye, the crazy assassin?! Dressed like me?!
Spider-Man: And you're dressed like Maya.

    • Taskmaster and Deadpool in Magnum Opus
    • Zodiac's gang includes the Clown, famously of the Circus of Crime... except it isn't the real clown; it's his illegitimate half-brother impersonating him due to some identity crisis. The real Clown is currently a member of the Gamma Corps as the avian Griffin. Zodiac was aware of all this from the start.
  • Creepy Child: Phobos.
  • Curb Stomp Battle: Dr. Doom vs Black Panther, where Victor proved that even God Mode Sue like T'Challa is not a match for him.
    • Quicksilver vs Mr. X
  • Death Equals Redemption: Sentry
  • Death Is Cheap: Explained in Incredible Hercules as resurrection having become literally random chance, represented by casino games, thanks to assorted gods of the dead either having been destroyed or having abandoned their positions. Multiple heroes (including the recently offed Wasp), villains, and civilians are gambling for either an afterlife or a second chance, and in a joke harking back to the Geoff Johns run on the Avengers, and Avengers Disassembled, Jack of Hearts wins his resurrection while Herc and Cho are visiting (though he has yet to actually return).
    • Jack of Hearts finally came back to life in Marvel Zombies Supreme.
  • Demonic Possession: Hood by Dormammu. Quicksilver by Chthon. Nightmare was trying to do this with Trauma.
    • Somewhat subverted during Spider-Man's Siege tie-in, when Ms. Marvel manages to pull Mac Gargan's body out from the Venom symbiote's, and it tries to possess her instead.
  • De-Power: The Hood after losing to Doctor Voodoo (and then again towards the end); Bruce Banner.
  • Depraved Bisexual: While he used it only to mock Venom, Daken has hooked up with people of all stripes, and thinks nothing of manipulating them for something he wants and killing them (directly or indirectly) when he's done with them. He even kisses Bullseye in the mouth in his Siege tie-in. And doesn't make any attempt to be deceptive.
    • Au contraire on the lack of deception. He did it to load up Bullseye with pheromones so that he'd follow orders. It didn't work. And then readers found out the whole scene was All Just a Dream fed into Daken's head to show how fucked over he'd be if he didn't accept help from the fates.
    • Arguably Loki: At the beginning of the storyline, he's stuck in a female body, and has no qualms about using his/her attractiveness to his/her advantage.
  • Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Deadpool almost quotes this to Taskmaster in the alternative cover of Avengers: The Initiative #33 ("Dude! You knocked out Thor?"). Too bad he doesn't appear in the issue, though.
    • And that really did happen. Granted, he had jumped in when Osborn, Moonstone and the U-Foes were barraging Thor already, but Taskmaster was considering that the prime time of his life, so let's give him that - despite Osborn promptly chewing on him by doing so.
  • Discard and Draw: Hood, after losing connection with Dormammu, lost all his powers, only to get an entirely new power set when Loki gave him magic Asgardian stones. Just to be discarded again when Loki got the Norn Stones back to empower The Avengers so they could stop Asgard from being destroyed any further. And, as a last resort, Madame Masque takes him to see her father, Count Nefaria, so he can empower the Hood again, but he relents when he hears that he'll have to give all his money to Nefaria to be repowered. The New Avengers nab them before anything can be done.
  • Distress Ball: Clint Barton breaking Norman's base alone and getting caught because of it.
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?: Osborn wants to take out the Asgardians in order to make himself look more necessary to the government, but the President won't allow him to do this "without due cause", prompting the need for an "incident" to turn public opinion against the Aesir. It's basically every conspiracy theory about 9/11 with a coating of Norse God.
    • In-story, it's an intentional evokation of the Stamford Incident that kicked off Civil War.
  • Downer Ending: Dark Avengers.
    • Please elaborate. If it's a Downer Ending for them, then I can understand.
    • If you thought of Sentry and Ares as heroes, I suppose it's a downer ending for them. Certainly Lindy didn't deserve what happened to her.
  • Dying Moment of Awesome: The mortal, Bill, takes out an Asgardian that was about to murder Balder. With his last strength, he warns Balder of Loki and Dr. Doom's treachery. Bill is so Badass that he is given an Asgardian style funeral. In the aftermath of Siege, it is revealed that his bravery has won him a place in Valhalla.
  • Earn Your Happy Ending: Did they ever.
  • Eldritch Abomination: From the looks of things, The Sentry/The Void is, and always has been this.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: You know something's wrong with you when you reveal your evil plan to somebody like Osborn, and he calls you crazy. This happened with the goddess Hera.
  • Evil Matriarch: Speaking of Hera, she's become this even more than she was in classical mythology. Kind of surprising, when just a couple of decades ago in comics continuity, she actually aided the Avengers when Zeus accused them of nearly killing Hercules, but justified in that she's lost more than a few screws since gaining control of the entire Greek pantheon.
  • Eviler Than Thou: Mr. Negative (who is a Super-Powered Evil Side of some guy and believes in a Balance Between Good and Evil) told The Hood that because he thrown out all what was good in him, he'll fall for sure.
  • Face Heel Turn: Subverted by Emma in Utopia. Ares and Sentry joining Dark Avengers can be seen like one (Heel Face Revolving Door in Ares case).
  • Famous Last Words:

Ares to Sentry: I thought us friends. My mistake.

  • Fan Nickname: Lyra is called Thulkdra which was lampshaded when they put this nickname on one of her mini's variant covers. Molecule Man's team (despite being a Red Herring) is called "The League Of Ultimate Evil And Enchantress".
    • Bullseye in Hawkeye's costume is called "Bullhawk"
    • Daken earned himself name Trollverine.
  • Femme Fatale: Moonstone, Madame Masque
  • Final Battle: Siege
  • Five-Bad Band:
  • For the Evulz: Zodiac doesn't have any general reason to be evil, he just likes it.
    • Same with Bullseye. Even doped up on anti-psychotic medication, he still is completely evil and threatens his own teammates (who know full well that he tends to carry out such threats) with death for kicks.
    • And Mr. X - he murders people and read their minds as they're dying, and finds it very entertaining.
  • Gainax Ending: The Dark Avengers lead-in to Siege seems to show that Sentry/Void is basically an aspect of God Himself. Then, in Siege, his human side decides to stop living, and lets Thor kill him before any of it goes anywhere.
  • Gambit Pileup: Pretty much possible this will happen in Siege with Norman revealing his secret ally, Loki setting his schemes to the final phase, Daken and Moonstone with Bullseye making their moves against Osborn, Taskmaster looking for a chance to get the hell out of there, Scourge brainwashed by Agents Of Atlas to kill Norman, Pym's and Barton's Avengers with Captain America getting in the middle of it, Tony Stark trying to help, return of Ultron, Hela revealing her deal with Dani Moonstar, Thor or Balder's defense plans and Sentry/Void as unpredictable factor.
  • Grand Finale: Siege.
  • Groin Attack:

Sentry: Do you really want's me to unleash the power of million exploding Suns?
Hercules: Of course not. I'll do it. (Kicks Sentry in the nuts.)

  • Heel Face Turn: Loki, after realizing what he has done, transfers the Norn Stone's powers from Hood gangs to Thor and co. so they can defeat The Void. Void is not pleased and blasts Loki to death.
  • Hero with Bad Publicity: Iron Man, who in a subversion of this trope, DID fuck things up big time and pretty much brought all of his troubles upon him. Jessica Drew, because the Skrulls' leader was disguised as her, and even some heroes think she might still be the Skrull Queen. Not exactly an easy reputation to live down, especially when in the past she's been a member of HYDRA, a terrorist/spying group.
    • Subverted with Hank Pym, who was able to not only shake the taint of being replaced with a Skrull, but made most of the world fall in love with him and his new Avengers team by stopping several major threats that Norman refused to lift a finger to stop. As of Mighty Avengers #32, apparently, most of the other national governments see his team as the real Avengers, not Osborn's crew.
    • Thor, who has been exiled from Asgard after Loki's scheme led him to killing his own grandfather.
    • Wonder Man - when he went on TV and said that America deserved Norman Osborn as their top hero, as far as his response to Hawkeye denouncing Norman on live television/outed the Dark Avengers as bad guys, his career was effectively deepsixed by the public backlash and he was denounced as crazy by David Letterman of all people.
    • Doc Samson, after Osborn used a Xanatos Gambit to force him into nearly killing Barack Obama and splashed it all over the news. Samson has a Face Heel Turn completely unrelated to this incident, and thus doesn't really give a damn about it anymore.
  • He's Back: Steve Rogers.Avengers Assemble!
  • Humans Are the Real Monsters: After reading War Machine's files, Ultimo got to that conclusion.
  • Humiliation Conga: Everything that's happened to Iron Man since Dark Reign began.
  • Idiot Ball: Subverted with "Utopia" as the X-Men successfully outplay Norman and humiliate him via exposing his sadistic abuse of mutant prisoners for the whole world to see, then successfully flee to their new island home off the coast of California. Made even worse for Norman, in that Emma Frost also cuts a deal with Namor to get him to betray Norman, effectively robbing Norman of one third of the Cabal and alienating Doom (who doesn't take kindly to Norman's vows of revenge against his friend).
    • Still, Norman and most of DA seems to carry them in Utopia (you know something's wrong if Bullseye becomes voice of reason)
      • He wasn't really the voice of reason; he was mostly just itching to kill people, even if he was Genre Savvy enough to realize that Osborn's plans wouldn't go as smoothly as he wanted. But at least Osborn was actually trying to impose civic order, and didn't spend the whole time wanting to go on a murder spree.
    • The Spider-Man tie-ins are worse: Norman keeps dropping the ball on Spidey and vice versa. It's made worse when Marvel decided that Norman was affected by the One More Day reality warp, meaning he no longer knows that Peter Parker is Spider-Man and seemingly doesn't care.
    • Norman not killing Iron Man when he had him on life support and brain dead in the recent issue also counts, especially Norman had no problem beating Iron Man nearly to death in public prior to taking him into custody.
      • For that matter, beating the shit out of him on live camera in the first place. Prior public embarrassments may have been the result of people getting hold of information meant to remain secret, but the fact that Norman ignored Hand's warnings about the camera crew in the vicinity means this one's all on him.
  • If You Kill Him You Will Be Just Like Him: Spidey delivered it at last twice to Clint Barton and once to Harry Osborn. Clint, however, has the balls to respond by pointing out how much misery Norman's been able to cause because of Peter's moral high horse.
    • Critical Research Failure: The writers seem to have forgotten that Osborn has a Healing Factor and is thus damn hard to kill, particularly since Clint's grand plan seems to have been simply to shoot Norman with an arrow
  • The Illegal: Now that Gyrich is in charge of S.W.O.R.D., he's declared every damn alien on the planet illegal, and is taking steps to deport them all, even if they previously had government permission or clearance to live on Earth.
  • I Have No Son: After the American Son story Harry is as good as dead to Norman. A Double Subversion since Norman's plan in that story was to have Harry murdered to garner him public sympathy.
    • Pregnant Lilly reappears in Ms. Marvel but mostly because Brian Reed is using this comic in his efforts to join The Amazing Spider-Man writing staff.
  • Ironic Echo: In-house ads for the event had the tagline "Accept Change", a slightly more pragmatic version of Secret Invasion's tagline, "Embrace Change!"
  • Jerkass: Reed Richards in Mighty Avengers. The yea or nay decision on whether to give Bill Foster's tech to Pym should have been Ben's, since Bill willed it to him, but Reed bulled his way into being the one to make the call, and then had to be a jackass to Pym on top of it and get snide when Sue called him on said jackassery.
    • Also, Maria Hill sometimes. Maybe it's because she's an Action Girl who had been drilled on to act fiercely as director of the post-Civil War S.H.I.E.L.D., but she absolutely didn't need (and didn't have any power, to boot) to issue a prison order to Speed when he came to deliver a spare armor to a recovering Stark so he could go up to Asgard and fight Norman in the Siege.
      • Alternate Character Interpretation: She was clearly panicking and had been told to protect Tony at all costs. Plus, Tony screwed over the hero community-she might have thought (for some weird reason) that Speed was there for revenge (he's not the nicest Young Avenger, after all).
  • Karma Houdini: Daken, he got away scot-free. Mister X also avoided arrest.
  • Kick the Dog: Several villains, especially Norman, has a few. Lampshaded a little when Bullseye tossed a dog right into Venom's eye just to prove he can.
  • Knight Templar: Seems to be how Norman Osborn sees himself in the epilogue issue of Dark Avengers.
  • La Résistance: New Warriors/Avengers Resistance.
  • Late Arrival Spoiler: Kind of hard for the return of Steve Rogers to be a surprise, given that it was blown all over mainstream news sites months ago. In terms of the comics themselves, the delays on Captain America: Reborn mean that he had reappeared in at least three titles and a special before he was even supposed to be back.
  • Leeroy Jenkins: Ares described himself as one, placing "checking out if you have enough ammo before rushing into the battle" at the list of things that are part of his sister's domain, not his.
  • Legacy Character: Noh-Varr as the new Captain Marvel. Hank Pym as the new Wasp.
  • Like a Badass Out of Hell: Glorianna, Captain Britain's wife managed to start a revolution in hell and even defeat one of the Hell-Lords before she returned to the world of living.
  • Lying Creator: Matt Fraction listed several things in interviews that were supposed to come up in Utopia, like a fight between Colossus and Ares or Sentry, or interaction between Noh-Varr and girls from New X-Men. Yeah, we're still waiting on that. Dan Slott said that return of Scarlet Witch in Mighty Avengers is the real deal, while it turned out It's Loki. Brian Bendis' has habit of doing it but currently the solicitations of his comics are a better example. Don't even try to guess plot points based on those, because they're wrong.
    • She does come back later, though, and offered to try and undo the Decimation after a Cooldown Hug with Wiccan.
  • Manipulative Bastard: Again, Norman. But Daken has his moments too.
  • Mayfly-December Romance: Dr. Doom points this out when Kelda comes to get revenge for his part in Bill's death, saying that the guy was mortal and would die anyway, and she'd forget about him eventually.
  • The Mole: Grim Reaper in Lethal Legion. Diamondback in Osborn's Initiative. Zodiac had Whirlwind feeding him information on Osborn.
  • Mole in Charge: The premise of the series.
  • Motive Rant: Norman at the bitter end of Dark Avengers to the Goblin, espousing both his surprisingly valid fears and good intentions.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: Loki, who turns out to be manipulating Norman Osborn and the others just so Asgard can reign supreme, not so that Asgard is destroyed by the Void. Once he realizes what happened, he pulled a Heel Face Turn.
  • Naive Newcomer: Noh-Varr, of sorts. He didn't even know the team he was in (the Dark Avengers) was mostly composed of supervillains until Moonstone let it slip one night after they had sex and were watching Norman on TV. As soon as he did, he dropped out without leaving a note on the fridge.
  • No One Could Survive That: Word of God says that's why Ares' death was specifically demanded to be "as gory as possible" - as a signal he got Killed Off for Real.
  • Not So Different: Despite that Ares and War Machine are almost complete Foils for each other, the former consider the latter as his champion and believes they are quite similar deep inside.
  • Only Sane Man: You know something is messed up in a group when Venom looks like the normal one. He even lampshades it in his mini, saying that compared to the nutcases on his team, he looks like Tom Hanks.
    • Ares sometimes has to act like one, both doubting Osborn's actions and calling his teammates out when they act too crazy..
    • Bullseye in the "Mission Briefing" of the Inititave's attack on Asgard that was included in Siege #1. He spends the entire thing essentially saying "Yes, BUT THEY ARE LITERALLY AN ARMY OF GODS".
  • Out-Gambitted: Dracula by Pete Wisdom.
    • And Osborn by Cyclops and Emma.
  • Papa Wolf: Ares. When he heard about Phobos being hurt, he rushed to save him and murders a man who was taking care of him, without even thinking twice about this information having come from Hera.
  • Person of Mass Destruction: Sentry and Molecule Man. Bob proved to be bigger one.
  • Power Fantasy: Right after the first Cabal meeting Doom imagines how he will overthrow Osborn, kill Namor and Hood and turn Emma and Loki into his slaves.

Namor: Sometimes I wonder what's up in that head of yours.
(Doom imagines himself killing Namor)
Doom: Doom. Always Doom.

  • The Power of Trust: Inverted - people's lack of trust in Pym gave Chthon more power.
  • Putting the Band Back Together: Fittingly, Siege ends not just with the fall of Norman Osborn, but the reunification of the The Avengers.
  • Redemption Equals Death: Ares
  • Reed Richards Is Useless: And after Secret Invasion he got tired of it, went to look for an Alternate Universe where he wasn't, and it inspired him to start working to solve everything. Unfortunately, this is still making him useless in a sense, as while he's busy with this, the rest of the team is having to deal with Osborn.
  • Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Subverted - Kelda started to go on one after Bill's death, only to be not quite killed by Doom, without doing any harm.
    • Played more straight with Tigra. After what The Hood did to her, she's pissed, and wastes no time starting to hand out the torture to the minions who assisted or were there to witness.
  • Self-Made Orphan: Bullseye, who claims to have killed both of his parents Double Subverted when his father appears only to be murdered by Lester.
  • Shut UP, Hannibal: As expected, Spider-Man gets the final one on Osborn.
  • Sixth Ranger: Dracula wanted to become one for Cabal and his plan to conquer England was supposed to give him necessary position.
  • Smug Snake: Osborn.
  • So Proud of You: When Phobos managed to trick Osborn and then used his powers to scare the hell out of him, Ares was smiling proudly.
  • Straw Feminist: Boudica, Lyra's AI sidekick was programmed as one.
  • Strong as They Need to Be: Pretty much entire point of problems with Sentry.
  • Sympathy for the Devil: At the end of Siege, Dark Avengers, and the Reign itself, Norman makes his disgust for the insane, unstable world he wanted to help known, fears and anxieties that are surprisingly valid and human.
    • Though they are undermined by the fact that he is Norman Osborn, and is not exactly the person who should be complaining about other people being unstable or insane. Especially after this storyline, where his Character Arc consisted of one long Villainous Breakdown brought on by his denial about how he is, at the end of the day, a psychopathic supervillain, and one who is mentally ill on top of that.
  • Take That: The books read like a snub to all of the fans who thought the Stark Administration was evil.
    • Which is quite silly, like saying that Kim Jong Il is good because North Korea isn't Burma. Just because something is worse doesn't make it okay.
    • It's especially silly because Osborn was in the Stark Administration and thats how he came to power in the first place!
    • One of the last pages of Siege shows the skyline of New York, as a digitally written " Superhero Registration Act thrown out" scrolls on a building. It almost seems the panel originally had confetti in it, really. Just add confetti and you'll have evidence that most of the writers had really had enough of the bucketload of crap Joe Quesada has put the Marvel Universe through. But since Quesada (as you can see in his comments about Siege in the pages of the miniseries itself) was so proud of the whole epic saga made up of the various Story Arcs (Avengers Disassembled, Civil War - and by extension, given it was exactly what Quesada was aiming at, One More Day - Secret Invasion and now this), maybe he himself demanded the confetti to be removed.
  • Tangled Family Tree: Considering Ultron originally created Jocasta to be his bride, the fact that they finally marry (albeit a "political marriage", as she still really hates him) isn't too bad. Then you remember that Jocasta's brain is based off his "mother". And that he created her, making himself her "father" in a sense. And she was dating his "father" at the time...who was her brain-source's ex-husband. Jesus Christ, this family.
  • There Is No Kill Like Overkill: War Machine provides trope page's image.
  • Unwitting Pawn: After pulling off a major Xanatos Roulette in Secret Invasion, this quickly becomes Norman Osborn's role over the course of the storyline, as every other member of the Cabal betrays him for their own purposes by the end. It's rather strongly foreshadowed from the beginning, though, and doesn't really lead to Villain Decay since, as a Spidey villain, even though he's totally out of his league he's still punching above his weight.
  • This Is For Emphasis, Bitch!: Pym's reaction when Reed Richards said he know more about Pym Particles than him.
  • Too Dumb to Live: The whole premise of Dark Reign is the United States government giving Norman Osborn, who is known to have been the Green Goblin, authority over superhuman affairs, who in turn demonizes and makes outlaws of the superhero community save the Fantastic Four. While the government's stupidity could be accepted, the fact is that the American public actually embraced Osborn and joined in the demonizing of the superheros. It really makes one wonder why the heroes don't just let Galactus eat the planet.
  • Took a Level in Badass: Brother Voodoo. Rhodey did as well for a while. Becoming a walking , talking instrument of War that could add any arsenal to his body and unleash new levels of destruction. Impressing even Ares and earning the title Champion of War.
    • Osborn doing this is the premise of the series; its also his second in just over a decade, the first being when he came Back from the Dead and, firmly established himself once and for all as Spidermans Arch Enemy, as well as becoming a purer and more powerful Corrupt Corporate Executive than he was in the 60's and 70's.
  • Tyrant Takes the Helm: Norman stars in this story arc. Also, thanks to him, Henry Gyrich has one with S.W.O.R.D., and Taskmaster and Hood with The Initiative. But considering the wild parties he likes to throw and all, Taskmaster's story is perhaps more Bait and Switch Tyrant.
    • It's worth nothing that Gyring managed then to be pain even in Osborn's butt, making him possibly biggest tyrant of them all.
  • Unexplained Recovery: Sentry. Four times.
  • Villain with Good Publicity: Norman of course.
  • Villainous Breakdown: Recent comics have depicted Norman as being a hop, skip and a jump away from one of these, and his constant need to be a Villain with Good Publicity appears to be taking its toll. Perfectly in-character, though, as he was always portrayed as being mentally ill, more so than most.
    • And it doesn't help that Loki's making a good attempt at kicking him over the edge by manipulating him into increasingly risky plans. Like Having the U-Foes take on the Warriors Three in such a way that it might get the Asgardians blamed for the destruction of Chicago's Soldier Field and the deaths of everyone there, thus giving Osborn the right to invade Latveria to get at them. Key word on that: might.
    • Siege #3. As everyone expected he eventually would, he's lost it. Though, frankly, it wasn't nearly as impressive as some of the breakdowns he's had previously.
    • Osborn's breakdown in response to Deadpool was particularly indignant, and his instability is made all the more all the more apparent as he stops piloting the plane he's in just to stomp a mudhole in Deadpool. While the autopilot is OFF.

Osborn: I owe (you)...? After all I've done for you people?! Do you have any idea who I am? All you people ever do is take, take, take! And it's never enough! I'm Norman Osborn! I saved this miserable planet and everyone on it! You owe me your lives! Every worthless last one of you!

  • The Virus: Ultimo Virus, which turns all carriers berserk and gives them eye beams.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: War Machine can be seen as this, because he acts like one-man version of The Authority. Osborn thinks he's one of these, but unsurprisingly, he isn't.
    • Loki just wanted the Soldier Field incident to happen because he thought it would send Asgard back where it belonged, away from mortal eyes. Instead, Osborn decides to go gung-ho and bring it down.
  • What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic - In the last issue of "Siege", Loki uses the power of the Norn Stones to power up the heroes. So, the god of imagination (yes I know Loki does other things as well, but still) decides to favour the heroes over the mindless engine of destruction. Hmmm.
    • The Sentry and the Void. Sentry is supposed to be the "ultimate hero" while the Void is the "ultimate villain". Dark Reign began with the the Sentry joining with the villains, the fall of the ultimate hero, and it ended with the Void's death, the defeat of the ultimate villain.
  • Wild Mass Guessing: Marvel encouraged this when it came to the identity of Osborn's mysterious and scary friend. One popular Epileptic Tree was that it's the newly-acquired Marvelman/Miracleman.
  • With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: It's been awhile since we've seen Molecule Man, but considering that he made imaginary friend duplicates of some of the most powerful figures in the Marvelverse, created his own pocket dimension to live in, and is vanishing anyone who gets too close to it, the years clearly have not been kind to his brain. Also, Sentry. In spades. Even once the Void's no longer in his head (and is off wrecking hell on the X-Men), he's still a walking ball of about a billion neuroses.
    • Fittingly enough, this is also what happens to Osborn, as while he's always been batshit crazy, the pressures of his new job as the top dog cause him to slowly break, after years of more or less managing to keep his Goblin side under control.
  • The Worf Effect: Sentry suffers from it sooo much. Being all powerful doesn't really help much when you're too neurotic to use it effectively in a fight.
    • It happens so often that it's really scary when he becomes serious in Siege.
    • The entire Zodiac supervillain team is murdered mostly off panel (we see their bodies afterward) by the new Zodiac, who thought the name was cool and didn't want to deal with copyright issues. He also carried their heads around in a bag for awhile.
    • Ares is even more of a Worf than the Sentry. When the writes want to take out the Dark Avengers' big guns to show how dire their situation is, the Sentry usually just has a Heroic BSOD and runs off, while Ares gets beaten down, blown up, turned to stone, torn in half, etc.
  • Wrecked Weapon: Mjolnir, after delivering a deadly hit to Bor.
  • Xanatos Gambit: Several
    • Zodiac managed to pull a big one in his mini.
    • Osborn pulls dozens of them, some more successful than others.
    • Emma Frost pulled one in Utopia
  • Xanatos Speed Chess: Loki managed to play one of greatest XanatosGambits in his career by manipulating Thor into killing Bor, thus getting him exiled, and convincing Balder to have the Asgardians move to Latveria. But just in case something could go wrong and restore status quo, he's got several other gambits prepared, and apparently has backup plans for his backup plans.
  • Your Mind Makes It Real: Sort of. Erebus has always existed in the Marvelverse, but now that Hades/Pluto is no longer interested in maintaining the souls of the dead, it altered itself to become an arena of games of chance. Which, in modern minds, equals casino. It's also been relocated to Atlantic City.
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