I hear plenty of people talk shit about Bendis' run on Gotg, Iron Man, and X-Men. I hardly ever hear anyone complain about his long run on Avengers
Is it actually decent, or at least not as shit as the more current books he's written or is it just that it's been long enough that people don't really care about the impact he had on that series?
Dark Avengers is really damn good.
The other series are mixed, post Siege are probably his weakest.
I liked the early stuff with Ronin & such.
>I hardly ever hear anyone complain about his long run on Avengers
Then you must be new here. That run was where the term "Bendis-speak" came from.
It was pretty bad, and we don't discuss its badness because we did that to death as it was coming out. It's too soon
There were issues focused literally on the avengers eating Chinese takeout
It's entertaining I like it. Not great not bad, very readable.
NA1-Siege - Decent to terrible
You can tell Bendis had a plan with where he wanted the book to go and it was published during a boom for Marvel that gave it a lot of attention and press. Stories flowed into each other seamlessly. From Disassembled to Civil War to Secret Invasion and finally Siege it all felt like one whole story and was at the very least an entertaining ride.
Post Siege - Horrible
Then it all went to crap. Bendis had something he wanted to lead into (Ultron War) but delays kept pushing it back and his books began spinning their wheels to the point of irrelevancy. When the finale came it was just a horrible mess of a story that didn't fit with what everyone else was doing at the time and just stuck out like a sore thumb.
I liked it.
Bendis detected
The first issues is just set up and it kinda works?
But then iit's pure Bendis shit as it, nothing really happens, everything drags and he is super lazy to write certain characters (Sentry being the best example).
It's kinda corny how much of a meme boogeyman you've turned him into. Yeah the last several years has been rudderless, but there was some good stuff for a while.
It`s pretty good until you reach the end of Siege. That`s the point where he not only obviously ran out of good ideas, but entered this period of self-indulgent garbage that he`s been in ever since. Coasting on name recognition and the idea that no editor will ever say no to him or require him to put in any effort.
But the stuff up to that point? Avengers, Alias, Daredevil? That's the good shit that earned him the name recognition he later abused.
>Civil war era bendis avengers
Eh
>Secret Invasion era
Spinning their wheels, dragging the shitty storyline.
>Siege
People adore Osborn in it, but was it really that good? The way the whole issue was solved by magic asgardians stones out of nowhere and that Sentry got a power boost out of nowhere without any further explanation other than "Osborn found another secret formula" was incredible hacky, it makes the whole thing feels completely shit in retrospect.
You can even argue that the road to it is ok, butt the point and the conclusion of the story is shit.
I liked the avengers hanging out. The team was cool.
It was meh, even Dark Avengers... I can't believe he used Moonstone as a whore instead of a manipulative whore.
adding to this the first 2 volumes of Mighty Avengers after Siege was good.
>
>I hear plenty of people talk shit about Bendis' run on Gotg, Iron Man, and X-Men. I hardly ever hear anyone complain about his long run on Avengers
Did you only start reading comics this decade? Because up until he started writing GOTG and X-Men, Avengers was considered the low benchmark of his work, even though it had its fans. Lots of people complained about Avengers Disassembled when it was published. Once Bendis did X-Men and GOTG and Age of Ultron and CW2 and Iron Man, people realized that yes, he could do far worse than his Avengers run.
Not that user, but I wouldn't say his Avengers run was good. In fact I remembered heavily disliking his Disassembled back when it was out and not liking the first three arcs of New Avengers at all. But I did go back and read it about a decade or so later. Disassembled was still terrible as a story, and a lot of his Avengers was still weak in parts but from New Avengers all the way to Siege it actually felt more like he had some idea of getting an overarching story, even if the execution was often times terrible. This is more than I can say about post-Siege, where it felt like there was a bad, noticable decline in his work even by Bendis Avengers standards.
>his books began spinning their wheels to the point of irrelevancy
It can't be stressed enough that this DID NOT HURT HIS SALES APPRECIABLY. The fact he could get away with multiple issues of people just sitting around a table and eating brunch lead to the modern era of Decompression where it's common to take a single issues worth of plot and cram it into 6 - 12 floppies. ( Image related is from his Iron Man run. )
I appreciated the idea of bringing back thought bubbles but his execution was terrible. I will always support thought bubbles as a method in comics though.
I think his idea for the Carolvengers run by stark was a good idea. But it was badly done.
And i hate how to ignored all the repair Slott and Gage did to Hank Pym. Totally ignored it to make all the avengers hate him
>It can't be stressed enough that this DID NOT HURT HIS SALES APPRECIABLY.
I think it depends on how you define it.
Here's New Avengers sales from 2008/2009:
03/08 New Avengers #39 - 103,046 ( -1.1%)
04/08 New Avengers #40 - 117,201 (+13.7%)
05/08 New Avengers #41 - 109,185 ( -6.8%)
06/08 New Avengers #42 - 108,495 ( -0.6%)
07/08 New Avengers #43 - 108,751 ( +0.2%)
08/08 New Avengers #44 - 106,385 ( -2.2%)
09/08 New Avengers #45 - 103,326 ( -2.9%)
10/08 New Avengers #46 - 99,513 ( -3.7%)
11/08 ---
12/08 New Avengers #47 - 95,703 ( -3.8%)
12/08 New Avengers #48 - 95,688 ( -0.0%)
01/09 New Avengers #49 - 94,291 ( -1.5%)
02/09 New Avengers #50 - 106,831 (+13.3%)
03/09 New Avengers #51 - 95,340 (-10.8%)
And here's the Post-Siege relaunch of Avengers all the way to the end:
05/10 #1 - 170,682
06/10 #2 - 98,788 (-42.1%)
07/10 #3 - 87,410 (-11.5%)
08/10 #4 - 87,333 ( -0.1%)
09/10 #5 - 82,411 ( -5.6%)
10/10 #6 - 73,258 (-11.1%)
11/10 #7 - 89,758 (+22.5%)
12/10 #8 - 67,056 (-25.3%)
01/11 #9 - 64,867 ( -3.3%)
02/11 #10 - 63,924 ( -1.5%)
01/12 Avengers v4 #21 - 54,803 ( -4.1%)
02/12 Avengers v4 #22 - 52,683 ( -3.9%)
02/12 Avengers v4 #23 - 52,222 ( -0.9%)
03/12 Avengers v4 #24 - 52,242 ( +0.0%)
03/12 Avengers v4 #.1 - 52,164 ( -0.1%)
04/12 Avengers v4 #25 - 65,664 (+25.9%)
05/12 Avengers v4 #26 - 67,744 ( +3.2%)
06/12 Avengers v4 #27 - 68,885 ( +1.7%)
07/12 Avengers v4 #28 - 63,169 ( -8.3%)
08/12 Avengers v4 #29 - 61,653 ( -2.4%)
09/12 Avengers v4 #30 - 58,609 ( -4.9%)
10/12 Avengers v4 #31 - 62,495 ( +6.6%)
10/12 Avengers v4 #32 - 56,204 ( -10.1%)
11/12 Avengers v4 #33 - 53,336 ( -5.1%)
11/12 Avengers v4 #34 - 57,315 ( +7.5%)
The sales weren't "bad", but there was a notable decline given that Bendis used to sell better. Mind you, 2008/2009 was them getting off Secret Invasion and then doing Dark Reign, but still, 2010-2012 had Fear Itself and AvX.
It was better than Mighty Avengers.
>ignores all Slott did for Pym
>ignores Slott wanting to have Spider-Man reveal his identity to the Fantastic Four first and just goes ahead and has him reveal to the Avengers
>ignores what Slott's doing in Venom Inc and does his own take on Black Cat reforming
I hope you don't mean Slotts Might Avengers cause that was golden
Bendis ignoring Slott isn't a pattern, it's just he ignores everyone. It pisses me of as a pymfag though.
But there was no Mighty Avengers after Siege. Unless you mean Ewing's run
The funny thing is, I went and reread that NeoGaf thread that leaked Civil War #1's plot outline. The leaker said this:
>This is something that might get "fixed" though as the script has numerous times where Bendis asks Breevort to do research for him.
Which now makes me wonder, is it Bendis ignoring people's work, or does it go back into the "editors not doing job" thing?
Both. It is both their jobs to understand the characters and where they are at
I like to think that Bendis writes so many wordswordswordswordswordswordswords that the editor can't be arsed to actually read the damn things.
>editors shouldn't be asked to read
Editors in novel publishing companies have to read thousands of pages of wordswordswordswords. Why do comic editors get it easy?
>I think it depends on how you define it.
I'm going more by image related. The folks running the show ( and, one assumes, crunching the numbers ) didn't think it was a problem.
That obviously changed over time, though: his x-men run was cut short and it was basically two years of "nothing fucking happens" outside of the first few issues ( when the O-5 came from the past into the present ) and the very end when Tean made Bobby gay.
I know, personally, I thought Secret Invasion was a good idea ( with wasted potential, but I blame Editorial just like with Secret Wars ); Age of Ultron was infuriating ( poorly written and then immediately reconned via Time Travel Shenanigans; which he did again with Last Will And Testament of Charles Xavier/Battle for the Atom ); and I didn't even bother to read Civil War II it was such a naked cash-grab with the synergy title and the plot was blatantly ripped off from the TV show Minority Report ( no, not the MOVIE, the tv series that they made based on the movie that got shit-canned after like 4 episodes with the one psychic dude who got "flashes" and the chick cop he buddied up with to stop crimes before they happened ).
Sorry I meant after CW.
Secret invasion was cool for the tie ins. It could have been a lot better and should have cause it is a ripe idea. But i forgive some of the flaws cause it brang in the dark age. And i really enjoyed that
>You're gay.
Mugga I was just making fun. Of course both the writer and editors should be at the top of their game. Though to respond more seriously to I would say it is the editor's job to keep the writer appraised of what's going on in other books. Yes, the writer should have a general idea of what's going, but at the end of the day their duty is to WRITE, which can be a taxing job depending on how many books you're working on. The editors collectively function as the go-between writers as well as the final say in what can or can't be published, so the burden of continuity ultimately falls on them.
Marvel continuity has always fallen heavily on the writers since Shooter.
Sure, but ideally the editors should make it easier on them, rather than just saying "fuck it."
Really though I've never been a fan of characters appearing in multiple books concurrently unless they're specifically crossing over with another book and the writers are coordinating.
I could see how it wasn't an immediate problem; Brevoort said that somewhere around May 2011 (since that's when the CA article about it was written). At the time they were still beating DC in sales, and Bendis' Avengers was still in the 60,000s. Austen's sales was around the 50,000's so I assume that Marvel thought Bendis was doing it okay because it was higher than that at the time.
But it really should've been a warning sign for them.
>I thought Secret Invasion was a good idea ( with wasted potential, but I blame Editorial just like with Secret Wars )
There's some good ideas from Bendis events but they're hobbled with horrendous execution. And I almost want to blame editorial, but I remembered that time when Brevoort showed notes that he sent to Bendis where he had to tell him that the X-editor needed Bendis to correct his characterization of Agent Brand.
> Age of Ultron was infuriating ( poorly written and then immediately reconned via Time Travel Shenanigans; which he did again with Last Will And Testament of Charles Xavier/Battle for the Atom );
Age of Ultron was at that point probably the worst thing I'd read from Bendis. I could understand defending his New Avengers run, but I couldn't understand someone defending that piece of crap. I think someone did, though, Chad Nevett maybe?
But then Civil War 2 came along and was much worse.