Comics: The Penultimates!

Marvel Comics served up two pivotal chapters in its “Siege” storyline this week – the penultimate chapter of “Dark Avengers” (a series in which psychotic government hatchet-man Norman Osborn, with duped official sanction, creates his own team of Avengers using bad guys costumed as good guys), and the penultimate chapter of “Siege” (a series in which the aforementioned Osborn and his ‘dark’ Avengers and their storm troopers launch a full-scale attack on the fabled city of Asgard, home of the Norse gods, which at the moment is hovering about twenty feet over some empty badlands in Oklahoma). The tension – as events that have been percolating for a couple of years now start to boil over – is extremely well-handled by all involved, and the feat of these two issues, which tell very closely interlinked stories in perfect cooperation, is, to put it mildly, not Marvel’s usual way of doing things.

“Dark Avengers” should be read first, if only for the enormous pleasure of seeing Norman Osborn’s secret ally finally revealed. Some of you may recall that I made a prediction about this ally’s identity waaay back when this whole adventure was starting, and I’m happy to admit I was wrong – happy mainly because the actual identity of that mysterious ally is so perfect, so plain-as-the-nose-on-your-face that I laughed a bit when it was revealed: I should have seen this, the simplest possible answer, coming.

Of course the secret ally is the same ultra-powerful secret ally Osborn’s always had: the super-strong energy-wielding Sentry – only in his Edward Hyde persona as ‘the Void.’ Brilliant.

In the previous issue, readers saw Norman Osborn talk the Sentry down from a tantrum in which he might have destroyed Manhattan, and in a moment of criminal insight worthy of the former Green Goblin, Osborn realizes that the Sentry’s terrified, traumatized wife might be the disruptive element in Osborn’s control over her husband. He orders his ‘dark’ Hawkeye (actually the murderous Daredevil villain Bullseye) to make Mrs. Sentry disappear.



In this issue that happens. Under the pretext of flying her to a safe house to wait out the current crisis, Bullseye gets her alone in an auto-piloted plane and proceeds with his trademark snide mind-games:

You’re husband, he’s almost a god – and you – you’re kind of, well, frumpy is the best word I can think of. I mean, he can have anybody.I mean, I can have anybody and all I do is kill people. And I swear, I can get any girl I want. Imagine the ass he’s missing out on because he’s married to you. And look at you. Do you even own a brush? Or a mirror?

This is great, ghoulish stuff, perfectly in character for everybody, despite how ugly those characters are. The issue’s only weird element comes not from the writing but from the artwork. Artist Mike Deodato has been doing the best work of his career on “Dark Avengers,” and that continues here (even the bare-bones horizontal sequence in which Bullseye kills Mrs. Sentry is a homage to the similar linearity other artists have used in some of Bullseye’s more famous murders in other comics), but every so often there are panels that were constructed entirely on a computer, and the contrast between them and Deodato’s regular work is jarring.



The issue segues perfectly into the big-scale goings-on in “Siege,” Marvel’s breakout hit (sales are running at almost three times Marvel’s own exuberantly pumped expectations), in which all Hell is breaking loose during the aforementioned Osborn invasion of Asgard. This issue features more fantastic Oliver Coipel artwork, and it’s a great thrill-ride, despite multiple oddnesses in the storytelling (one minute Thor is furiously fighting the Sentry, the next he’s calmly standing over a defeated Norman Osborn, for instance, and a newly-returned Iron Man (Tony Stark) is able to remotely shut down Osborn’s own super-armor even though we were specifically told many, many issues ago that Osborn had all the Stark-technology suits replaced with his own armor and weapons-tech).



We get some absolutely great, glad-you-waited-for-it moments, the best of which is certainly comes from the fact that writer Brian Michael Bendis remembered which Marvel character should have the payoff moment of finally decking Norman Osborn (and he gives that character a perfect line while doing it, a ‘real person’ line instead of a comic book slogan)(and there’s the fitting little image of Captain America putting a calming hand on his shoulder the moment after). And of course Coipel’s action-sequences are spectacular, especially the fight – such as we see of it – between Thor and the Sentry. When Coipel draws Thor hammering the Sentry with lightning, you can practically feel it (and he’s one of the only working artists who could have convincingly portrayed what happens to the city of Asgard in this issue). But for me, the neatest such little moment passes so quick you almost don’t notice it: in the midst of the melee, Captain America and his former WWII sidekick Bucky are bantering, just as they did in the Jack Kirby-drawn comics of seventy years ago. I smiled.



Oddly, the issue is almost as full of missed moments too – after all, this is the issue where Thor, Captain America, and Iron Man are reunited on the same side after years of separation, alienation, and heartbreak, and yet in this issue they just take up fighting the bad guys with nary a word or look exchanged. I presume such payoff moments will come later, but considering the fact that five pages of this issue are a text-only backup feature, I wonder that room couldn’t have been found to work in just a single panel or two in the main issue, showing how these three react to seeing each other again.



But picky comics fans can’t have everything (!), and this issue delivers a lot, including a slam-bang cliffhanger that sets up what promises to be a very exciting conclusion. You can read all about that here when it ships to comic stores, I'm guessing  sometime in August.

Comics! Secret Invasion: Dark Reign!

Well, the mega-crossover-event that has convulsed the entire line of Marvel Comics for the last few months, the "Secret Invasion" storyline, is now over. For those of you who quite rightly abandoned the whole mess early on, it goes something like this: the evil shape-changing alien Skrulls find a way to flawlessly mimic several dozen Earth people (including several superheroes and super-villains) in preparation for a full-on invasion of Earth. Innumerable plot complexities follow, and in the end Earth repels the invasion - with two big pieces of fallout: first, Tony Stark (aka Iron Man) resigns as head of the uber-governmental agency S.H.I.E.L.D., and second, arch-bad guy Norman Osborn (whom my generation knew as the villainous - and thoroughly dead Green Goblin) gets the job and becomes, essentially, the most powerful man in the world.

Once he gets the job, he does what any reputable super-baddie would do: he convenes a table-full of the world's other super-baddies, raises his glass, and says, "Gentlemen - to evil!"

Not really, but damn close enough. He summons a choice roster of guests: Emma Frost, the mind-reading mutant White Queen and current leader of the X-Men, Doctor Doom, deposed ruler of Latveria and long-time arch-nemesis of the Fantastic Four, some gun-toting loser named The Hood (apparently, he's the new leader of the underworld gangs once ruled by the Kingpin), Loki, the now-female (formerly male) evil Asgardian god, and Prince Namor the Sub-Mariner. And he makes these guests an offer he hopes they can't refuse: in exchange for 'hitting' whatever he wants hit, no questions asked, he'll use his newfound power to give them whatever they want - Doom wants to be restored to power in Latveria? Done! Emma Frost wants to keep her fellow mutants out of concentration camps? Done! The Hood wants his thieves and drug-runners to operate free of restrictions? Done! Loki wants to rule Asgard? Done!



Yah, the whole thing screeches to a halt right there, doesn't it? I know, I know - I noticed it right away too. But let's limp on a little anyway and come back to it later.

Anyhoo, Norman Osborn is nothing if not thoughtful. He tells his guests "We all know that our best moments have been private ones ... while our defeats have been very public. I say, instead of pushing against that fate, we embrace it. Let's keep our wins quiet. Let's keep our victories between us. Let's do it in a way that works to our strengths."

It's not a mutual admiration society he's gathered, however, and The Hood points out the natural problem: "OK, but say when it's time to pay the goblin, and we tell you to go @#$% yourself, because that is, historically, what we do ..."

Osborn has a response ready: he gestures to a shadowy figure in the doorway, his "friend," and threatens that anybody who doesn't play ball will get a dire visit from that individual. He asks Emma Frost to read his mind and verify that he's telling the truth, and she does, but neither he nor she nor writer Brian Michael Bendis feels compelled to blurt out the "friend"'s name, so we never find out who that person is. All we know is that Osborn thinks it's someone who could threaten even a Norse god. The meeting breaks up shortly after that implied threat, with nobody in formal agreement with anybody else about anything.

The comparison is explicitly obvious, of course. This one-shot issue is supposed to be a mirror image to Bendis' 'Illuminati' series of a year ago, in which the secret leaders of the good guys gather around a table to cut deals and exchange gossip. 'Illuminati' and 'Dark Reign' have two things in common: Prince Namor, who's on both rosters (this is fascinating, despite the fact that Maleev here draws Namor as a bald, unshaven homeless man), and .... a fairly large degree of implausibility.


With the heroes, the implausibility wasn't quite so bad, but with the villains, it rises to nuisance level. Doctor Doom, for instance, doesn't just want Latveria back - he wants the world, and he doesn't want to share it with the likes of Norman Osborn. And as powerful as Doom is, he's even more arrogant (and fearless) - there isn't a character in the Marvel universe who could be invoked as Osborn's mysterious 'friend' who would intimidate him into cooperation. And Emma Frost doesn't just read minds - she also controls them, which would again be bad news for this 'friend.'

And that brings us back to Loki. The Asgardian god with the ability to turn Norman Osborn and everybody else in the room into toadstools - and the ability to flawlessly mimic them, should she/he ever feel like doing so. This Loki says she wants to rule Asgard, and Norman Osborn tells her they want the same thing - but what the heck could he do to even begin bringing it about, except maybe cast an absentee ballot? And what possible coercion could he bring to bear against a god, to keep her in line?

I'm worried that there's only one answer to that question: another god. I'm worried that Osborn's mysterious 'friend' is Thor (or worse, much worse, Odin). I'll just have to pray I'm wrong.

A slew of new titles and story lines are going to spring from this one-shot, and if Marvel's success rate recently is any indication, they'll all suck like a kid on a crazy-straw. The basic concept is fascinating: what if the bad guys were running the show for a change. And the story lines that should result would be great. We shall see.

Comics! the end of the world as we know it!

A banner week in comics! Everything from little tidbits to continuity-shaking mega-events was on hand at the Android's Dungeon. The mouth-breathing virgins at that venerable establishment were all a-twitter over it, in much the same way the rest of us start heart-afluttering when Hippolyta strides into the room (we suspect Hippolyta herself would never under any circumstances stride into the Android's Dungeon, so we'll never see the two worlds meet, alas).

Starting out on the tidbit side would be the latest issue of Conan, a rollicking good time with magnificent artwork and a glowering Cimmerian who's always perfectly in character. Robert E. Howard would very likely have been irked beyond measure by the legendary rendition of his character made by Roy Thomas and John Buscema, but he'd have flat-out LOVED this new run, which bids fair to being the best adaptation of the character yet done in any medium (things are equally good over in Red Sonja, in case anybody's interested).

Also on the tidbitty side is the first issue of 'Legion of Monsters' - we here at Stevereads know nothing about this thing, having encountered it by chance, but half of this particular issue deals with the retro Marvel horror character Werewolf by Night.

Only this is a Werewolf by Night for the Midnighter generation - he's no longer a victim as he was in the '70s. No, he not only controls his transformations but revels in them. In this issue (drawn by Gred Land, whose weirdly photographic work we confess we're liking more and more), our hero saves a comely young female werewolf from her superstitious townspeople, and even though it's only eight pages or so, you want more when it ends. Half the issue is taken up with a rather by-the-numbers Frankenstein's monster story, but we here at Stevereads call for a monthly Werewolf by Night title, drawn by Land and while we're at it, written by this issue's scribe Mike Carey.

Moving out of tidbit range, we find the lastest issue of The Amazing Spider-Man, written with unusual delicacy by J. Michael Straczynski and drawn with career-high skill by Ron Garney.

The story so far: Spider-Man has broken from Iron Man's fascistic ranks and taken his wife Mary Jane and his Aunt May into Motel 6 hiding while he figures things out. Of course since his identity is public his movements have been tracked - although in this case rather improbably only by the incarcerated Kingpin (not the government, which presumably can afford more tracking gadgets than are available at the prison commissary). Kingpin has put out a hit on Peter and is family, so half the issue shows Mary Jane and Aunt May in an assassin's crosshairs.

In the meantime, Straczynski is presented with the unenviable task of needing to tell his story without revealing any of the dramatic revelations over in the concluding issue of Civil War.

He pulls it off wonderfully. Nothing in this issue feels forced or avoiding, especially the Daily Bugle newsroom scene that should have been the weakest in the issue. The neglected central figure in this whole Civil War storyline is J. Jonah Jameson, and he doesn't get the moment he deserves in this issue, but the sequence is very strong anyway, as is the rest of the issue.

'The rest of the issue' boils down to one thing and one thing only: when Peter Parker gets back to his Motel 6 to comfort Mary Jane and Aunt May, his spider-sense tells him something is wrong. He lunges to save Mary Jane and succeeds, only to realize that Aunt May has been shot.

This is a watered-down version of what should have happened - clearly, the whole Civil War storyline SHOULD have huge personal consequences for everyone involved. Identities are known; dependents are known - it shouldn't just be the Kingpin who's making hay off all this.

Nevertheless, it's Aunt May who gets shot this time around. That specific thing has never happened to the venerable lady before, and although Spider-Man #200 upped the ante for Aunt May peril, this is the logical extension of that.

This issue ends with Aunt May gutshot - if she's to live, she'll need extensive immediate medical attention. The writers of Civil War have made it completely impossible for Peter Parker to GET her that aid, without being promptly hauled off to jail. We'll see how - or if - they resolve it in the next issue.

Fortunately, all is not lost at Marvel. As will almost certainly be the pattern for the next few years, Marvel gets to tell its GOOD stories only in alternate places - in the Ultimate continuity, or, in the case of the 'Illuminati' mini-series, the past.

The second issue of 'Illuminati' is a potent little delight. The premise, as all of you will no doubt remember, is this: the movers and the shakers of the Marvel universe (minus the Black Panther, Doctor Doom, and Magneto, much to the detriment of the idea) get together regularly as a sort of Ex-Com board meeting. Our cast is Reed Richards, leader of the Fantastic Four, Iron Man of the Avengers, Prince Namor of Atlantis, Professor Xavier, leader of the X-Men, Doctor Strange, Master of the Mystic Arts, and Black Bolt, king of the Inhumans. Namor is the closest we come to any kind of partisan bickering, although writer Brian Michael Bendis does a wonderful job of it (a wonderful job that SHOULD be ongoing in monthly titles for HALF of these characters ... how shameful is it for Marvel that they have no ongoing title for the Sub-Mariner, Doctor Strange, OR the Inhumans? DC is thinking about giving an ongoing title to Ibis the Frickin Invincible, but Prince Namor goes a-begging?).

In this issue Reed Richards shares with his fellow Ex-Com members his quest to find all the gems of power that outfit the Infinity Gauntlet, the better to make sure they never fall into the wrong hands. Bendis does a curiously un-subtle job of making the point that ANYBODY'S hands would be the wrong ones for that amount of power, and that's not his only failing so far - true, his Reed Richards and his Iron Man are note-perfect, but he clearly has no idea what to do with either Doctor Strange or Black Bolt (about whom it's not even made clear the question of language - without Black Bolt's interpreter present, has any roster of hand-gestures been agreed upon? Does anybody know what he's trying to say, ever?), and his Professor X is a curiously tentative figure.

Still, Jim Cheung's artwork is fantastic as always, and apart from the Doctor Strange mini-series currently underway, this is the best book Marvel's currently publishing.

Over at DC, the sheer number of really, really good titles is, well, a little embarrassing. Those of us who've been reading comics a long time remember vividly an extended stretch - a very extended stretch - in which Marvel comics were almost uniformly good and DC comics were almost uniformly bad. Times change, it seems.

There's the first issue of the 'Brave and Bold' relaunch, for instance, featuring the positively last appearance of that perennial retiree, George Perez. His artwork here is as legendarily, even weirdly detailed as always, illuminating this inaugural team-up between Hal Jordan and Batman.

Alas, Mark Waid's writing ain't quite so legendary. The main problem with an otherwise nifty issue is that (excepting one wonderful scene with our two heroes gambling in Vegas) everybody in it SOUNDS exactly the same, most certainly including scrappy working-poor test pilot Hal Jordan and aristocratic Bruce Wayne. But the artwork is the selling point here in any case, and Perez as usual doesn't disappoint.

Also from DC is the latest issue of Wonder Woman, written by Allen Heinberg and drawn with superb artistry by Terry Dodson. After three issues of Diana Prince-style futzing around, this is the issue where the one true Wonder Woman finally returns, and for all his tendency to nod and wander, Heinberg handles the moment wonderfully. Oh, don't mistake: this still isn't good enough, not by a long mark. The whole premise of '52' and like titles is that for an entire year the DC universe went without the three titans at its top: Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. The journeys each of these three underwent in that year should by rights be the stuff of comics legend, and yet they've been uniformly botched, leached of the epic significance they might have had. But at least as of the next issue of Wonder Woman, the whole question will be behind us, and we'll be free to concentrate on the traditional character again.

And speaking of traditional characters, the current run on Green Arrow continues to be the gold standard by which the character will be measured. Writer Judd Winick and epochal artist Scott McDaniel continue to give us the best rendition of Green Arrow yet made.
The current issue guest-stars Batman, which is both enjoyable and taunting (as some of you may know, we here at Stevereads stand by our conviction that McDaniel could be the greatest Batman artist of all time), and the dialogue is winningly sharp - the villains who draw our two heroes into separate conflicts refreshingly admit outright that they never expected to actually WIN against two of DC's A-list heavyweights. This is definitive work.

As is the current run on Robin, surely the best that character has ever received (apart, that is, from his occasional appearances in the old Scott McDaniel run on Nightwing). In this latest issue, all Tim Drake wants to do is successfully go out on a date with a beautiful girl, and his evening keeps getting interrupted by Batman and the super-villain of the week. It's funny stuff, rendered just so by Adam Beechen's expert writing. This 50-year-old character has never been in better hands.

But none of this really matters, not this week, not in the shadow of the most important - in every neutral reading of that word - comic of the year. No, Marvel's Civil War #7 must command any comic-book discussion this week, no matter what our mighty Hippolyta says.

And true to form, it's an unmitigated disaster. The entirety of Marvel's Civil War storyline has been one long exercise of poor judgement, a What If story cranked up on black market steroids. Any hope that the fascists-v.s.-freedom fighters plotline could be resolved with any degree of coherence, let alone satisfaction, has been dwindling for months, to the point where the main motivation for reading issue #7 was to see just how big a frickin train wreck it would be.

The answer? Pretty damn big. The bulk of the issue is devoted to the gigantic battle between Captain America's forces and the fascist, gulag-operating forces of Iron Man. This battle rages back and forth - Hercules uses the fake Thor's fake hammer to crush the fake' Thor's fake head, Prince Namor and a bunch of Atlantean warriors join the fray on Cap's side for absolutely no reason whatsoever, the Vision disrupts Iron Man's armor (a trick he must have picked up from Kitty Pryde, but nevermind), and just when it looks like Captain America's side might be winning, a group of oridary working joes tackles him for absolutely no reason whatsoever. This causes Cap, for absolutely no reason whatsoever, to SURRENDER and order his troops to stand down. The issue ends with him in jail, the gulag in full operation, and Tony Stark in charge.

In other words, the bad guys win.

Somewhere out there, Stan Lee is spinning in his grave.

And the worst part of it all is that this isn't the Ultimate continuity ... it ISN'T some What If hypothetical. This IS the Marvel Universe now. A universe in which the government not only controls the superheroes (doling out assignments, hiring and firing, cutting a weekly paycheck) but jails anybody who doesn't play along. A universe in which Venom and Bullseye work for he government and Captain America is in jail.

Howls of contempt for this conclusion have echoed from one end of the Stevereads intern-pool to the other, and rightly so. The combination of how terrible this whole Civil War storyline was handled and how title-by-title strong DC currently is has actually created the temptation to ignore Marvel comics altogether. We'll see what next week brings.

Comics! New Avengers and Illuminati!

Every so often, I like to give the good folks at Comicopia a treat and actually show up in person, instead of using Elmo or my archnemesis Pepito as catspaws. Like the rest of you, the staff at Comicopia rejoices in a little Steve face-time, so this week I indulged.

I passed on all the crap Pepito will surely snatch up, and I passed on all the good stuff Elmo will get. Instead, I walked out with only two issues, but boy! Were they choice!

The first is the latest issue of New Avengers, which features the return of both the Scarlet Witch and Hawkeye (who's returning from the dead for the what? Fourth time in two years?). The issue is written by Brian Michael Bendis and drawn with amazing deftness by Alex Maleev, and it's really, really good.

Part of the reason for that is the low-key nature of the proceedings. There are no skintight costumes here, no posturing, none of the one-note emoting that so turns my young friend Sebastian off of superhero comics ('Everyone's always gritting their teeth,' he once lamented. 'I don't think I've EVER gritted my teeth. It looks appallingly painful.')(One refrained from pointing out that he's also never levitated the Brooklyn Bridge - Hell, he can scarcely levitate himself out of bed before 2 in the afternoon - which feat might call for a little teeth-clenching). Maleev's artwork is reposed but not static, making it the perfect furniture over which Bendis can drape his dialogue.

Finding himself alive yet again, Hawkeye does what any sensible superhero would do - he goes to Doctor Strange for a mystical checkup. The good doctor pronounces him very much alive and tells him he has no idea where the Scarlet Witch currently is. Hawkeye decides to go looking, and eventually he ends up on Wundagore Mountain, where he helps a young woman whose bag has been snatched - and who turns out to be the Scarlet Witch.

Only she calls herself Wanda Maximoff and appears to remember nothing of her previous life. Finding himself confronted with an insanely hot old friend who has no memory of their friendship, Hawkeye does the only sensible thing: he sleeps with her (I mean, he's been DEAD, for pete's sake! And really, when's he going to get a chance like this again?).

The issue leaves everything, er, hanging, but no matter - in itself, it's a sweet little delight. Our only plea here at Stevereads? Let's not kill off Hawkeye again, ever, OK? Any good storyteller should be able to find another way to goose up a plot, and besides - you don't want people to start giggling, like they are over Grant Morrison's killing off Jean Grey every three months over in X-Men.

The second issue of the week was the first issue of Illuminati, also written by Brian Michael Bendis and drawn by the great, the mighty Jim Cheung. This mini-series will follow the doings of a secret cabal of Marvel's movers and shakers, who meet in private to oversee the entire super-folk community. There's of course everybody's favorite clandestine control-freak Iron Man, there's X-Men leader Professor X, there's the ever-volatile Prince Namor, there's Black Bolt of the Inhumans, there's Reed Richards, here without the knowledge of the rest of the Fantastic Four, and there's Doctor Strange.

They meet in secret, they make high-level backroom decisions, they don't tell anybody about it. The whole concept was set up in a wonderful issue of New Avengers (or was it Young Avengers? Young New Avengers?) earlier this year, and I guess we're supposed to think it's mainly Iron Man's paranoia that holds the whole thing together.

As for me, I'm a little confused about the membership. Professor X, yes - leader of a super-hero team and de facto representative of all mutants. And Black Bolt's an easy call, since he's the ruler of an entire populace of super-powered beings (although I have no idea why Bendis excludes Medusa, since she's not only Black Bolt's queen but his interpreter)(well, that is to say I have no idea BESIDES Bendis' quite evident sexism .... I guess I mean to say HE puts forward no explanation, other than Namor's out of the blue pronouncement 'No wives! I refuse to discuss this with wives!')(actually, that wasn't Namor's exact quote - but a free book goes to anybody who can tell me who DID say those immortal lines!). Iron Man ditto - he represents the Earth's most powerful superhero team. But why Doctor Strange? Not only is he aloof from most super-hero goings on, he's also mostly aloof from this friggin plane of reality. Why would he even be interested? And what about Namor? Unlike everybody else here, he's not exactly bright. True, he rules Atlantis, but so what?

I guess what I'm getting at is this: why no Thor? Not only is he a powerhouse in his own right, but he's an Asgardian god, fer cripes sake.

I think Bendis' rationale is secrecy. Who in the Marvel Universe can you picture keeping secrets from his nearest and dearest? That clearly rules both Thor and Hercules out, but it suits Namor right down to the ground.

And besides, I'm not complaining! Bendis has a wonderfully sure grasp of how to write Namor, and it's a positive joy to see Cheung draw him - and everybody else. This is a crisply, beautifully drawn issue, and I look forward to all the rest.

So if I'm not complaining about that, you all ask, what AM I complaining about? Wellllll .... since you ask! I DO have one or two quibbles with this otherwise wonderful issue. For instance, although the two-page spread where Black Bolt destroys the Skrull ship with a spoken word is certainly COOL to look at, it does raise the question of how the Skrull king, who's sitting about five feet away when it happens, could still be alive to show up on the issue's final page - instead of a thin smear of sonically-smushed poo.

But these are only small quibbles with what is in fact a spiffy first issue! The comic book snobs among you (you know who you are) should hie thee hence at once and pick it up!

And speaking of which, what would a comics entry be without another QUIZ for all and sundry to fail miserably? So here it is:

PRIOR to this whole 'House of M' business, how many times has Hawkeye been missing and presumed dead? Anyone care to name the circumstances?

and:

Even going by Bendis' somewhat selective criteria for inclusion in his Illuminati, there's an obvious candidate who's been inexplicably left out. Any guesses? And if guessed correctly, any explanations?