Can Someone Explain the Criticism of Bendis' Avengers?

I have very fond memories of this run.

I took out trade paperback of first 6 issues out of library. It impressed itself so deeply on my psyche that I've not yet read another Avengers story since...so I reckon it saved me money, big time.

I later heard rumours that at some point it featured stuff like Ben Grimm acting as look-out while Luke Cage did the heavy hitting. Thank goodness I never read that.

(And generally a Bendis fan. Loved Alias, and his run on Daredevil, and like a fair amount of his other stuff.)

I fell for it again. the current Civil War storyline is beautifully drawn and little else.

[QUOTE=Michael Watkins;2020652]I fell for it again. the current Civil War storyline is beautifully drawn and little else.[/QUOTE]

Jeez, are we in another Civil War??

I sometimes feel that if Rip Van Winkle was a Marvel fan, he could wake up after 20 years asleep, pick up latest Marvel comic and never realise anything had happened during the long snooze.

[QUOTE=Michael Watkins;2020652]I fell for it again. the current Civil War storyline is beautifully drawn and little else.[/QUOTE]

Don't feel bad, happens to the best of us. I read the first two years of his guardians in trade (the ones I checked out from the library, I didn't actually buy it) and, well, the art is nice at least.

[QUOTE=gurkle;2017186]1. Bendis's run on Avengers was specifically designed to be the end of the old, traditional Avengers. Avengers Disassembled began by destroying the mansion, and rendering many of the longtime Avengers members dead (Hawkeye, Vision) or unusable (Scarlet Witch, She-Hulk). People who liked these characters, or the Avengers "tradition," felt the run was against them, because to some extent it was. Many people who dislike Bendis's run are simply fans of particular characters who don't like how he treated them. People are [I]still[/I] asking him on Tumblr if he hates Scarlet Witch, and it's been over 10 years.

2. Somewhat related, Spider-Man and Wolverine had never been Avengers and traditionalists felt that it was breaking that tradition for the sake of pumping up sales (which, again, is true).

3. Bendis's style and mannerisms don't lend themselves well to writing the kind of soap opera and hammy villains who are associated with traditional Avengers comics, so it was criticized for not being a "real" Avengers book. [I]Mighty Avengers[/I] was actually his attempt to prove that he could do a more traditional Avengers book, complete with thought balloons, but there is disagreement on how well that worked.

4. He was on the book for a long time and eventually he seemed to run out of ideas, as writers do when they're on a book for a long time.

I think that while [I]Disassembled[/I] was not good, [I]New Avengers[/I] was a good book up until it was interrupted by [I]Civil War[/I], and then the fracturing of the team and the constant events seemed to take its toll on the writing. But I do like it better than Hickman's. Even though Bendis was replacing the old Avengers, the consciousness of what the team was, and what it has been, hangs over the book and makes it an interesting examination of how you preserve tradition while moving forward.

And I also think that though the breakup of the old team could have been better handled, some kind of shake-up was due. The Avengers couldn't go forward with the same old members and the same old villains, and the characters Bendis got rid of probably had been in the book too long.[/QUOTE]

That exactly my problem with the book. I'm sorry wolverine and spider-man don't belong in avengers. There is reason why spidey was just a reserve member He always out of place. Then bendis comes along come and goes "I know better" Wolverine was in just about every x-men at one time and then in avengers books. Two of them too. Where beast was a member he wasn't with the x-men at the time. He was running in about 18 million places making people wonder if wolverine had clones. Treatment of Scarlet Witch, Vision, She-Hulk, Wonder Man, Hawkeye, Tigra, Wasp was horrendous and that short list of classic avengers get shaft from bendis. Civil War II FCBD makes me wonder if bendis even knows how to write She-Hulk properly or even like her. Though 0 issue seems to handle her decently. I mean I haven't one person come up with good reasoning behind what happens in FCBD issue. His style didn't work for the Avengers or X-Men. When he can't make something for his style he changes it to unrecognizable degree. What he started was a bad trend of writers using non traditional characters who have no business being in Avengers. Some characters I like (like deadpool) and some I don't (like Red Hulk). The people after him have continued a wrong trend which left me with Avengers Dead to me. I tried reading recent new avengers and was meh. A-Force is good but creative team keeps changing.
I always get annoyed when people say he keeps selling. Yeah he does with shrinking fan base of comics. Shouldn't companies move away from creators that obvious no longer bringing in the audience they once did? Try something else but no Marvel and DC just double and triple down on the stupidity.

[QUOTE=JackDaw;2020747]Jeez, are we in another Civil War??

I sometimes feel that if Rip Van Winkle was a Marvel fan, he could wake up after 20 years asleep, pick up latest Marvel comic and never realise anything had happened during the long snooze.[/QUOTE]

in this case, it's kind of false advertising. there was no warring in this issue.

[QUOTE=Supermutant2099;2020907]I always get annoyed when people say he keeps selling. Yeah he does with shrinking fan base of comics. Shouldn't companies move away from creators that obvious no longer bringing in the audience they once did? Try something else but no Marvel and DC just double and triple down on the stupidity.[/QUOTE]

The problem is he keeps selling because every book he writes is given some solicitation or a tag "the road to" or "beginning the mystery creation of that no one really asked for". Every story he writes is given a tag that makes it seem like the end all be all of the Marvel Universe.

Granted, he wrote Daredevil well. He did a great job with Ultimate Spider-Man. He did Dark Avengers well too. But the Avengers and X-Men are garbage. Go back and read the Avengers again and realize how terrible it actually is. Everyone thought he was going to revive the X-Men the way he revived the Avengers and he crapped out after what was it, three years? There are far too many people who refuse to admit that some writers are bad after a while. Look at how Dan Slott revived Spider-Man and all of a sudden everyone hates Slott and says "Doc OCk should have stayed Superior Spider-Man". Why? Did Doc Ock have the 50+ years of stories? He found a way to beat spider-man and suddenly everyone loves him and wants him to stay. When Slott brings Peter back, everyone wants Slott gone from the books. Its pathetic. And not only that, but when opinions against said writers are brought up, either 10 people come and attack the one post, or the post goes completely ignored.

[QUOTE=Michael Watkins;2020984]in this case, it's kind of false advertising. there was no warring in this issue.[/QUOTE]

It was pedestrian, but fine I thought. It set up the themes efficiently. There will, no doubt, be plenty of punching in the succeeding issues.

[QUOTE=xpyred;2020986]The problem is he keeps selling because every book he writes is given some solicitation or a tag "the road to" or "beginning the mystery creation of that no one really asked for". Every story he writes is given a tag that makes it seem like the end all be all of the Marvel Universe.

Granted, he wrote Daredevil well. He did a great job with Ultimate Spider-Man. He did Dark Avengers well too. But the Avengers and X-Men are garbage. Go back and read the Avengers again and realize how terrible it actually is. Everyone thought he was going to revive the X-Men the way he revived the Avengers and he crapped out after what was it, three years? There are far too many people who refuse to admit that some writers are bad after a while. Look at how Dan Slott revived Spider-Man and all of a sudden everyone hates Slott and says "Doc OCk should have stayed Superior Spider-Man". Why? Did Doc Ock have the 50+ years of stories? He found a way to beat spider-man and suddenly everyone loves him and wants him to stay. When Slott brings Peter back, everyone wants Slott gone from the books. Its pathetic. And not only that, but when opinions against said writers are brought up, either 10 people come and attack the one post, or the post goes completely ignored.[/QUOTE]

That whole trapping is not working as once was with Bendis. I liked Ultimate Spidey. I use to like Powers. Those are books he more suited for. Characters and books without baggage of continuity (Daredevil aside but we will get to that). When he gets those he falls into one of those writers who don't like sticking to it. That's the problems Avengers and X-Men. Making Iceman gay? Why cause he has bad luck with women? Then daredevil was fine till it starts falling into same trapping almost any daredevil run since Millar sims to always run into. Its been 100th time. Its boring. When it comes to Dan Slott and spidey? Any other time I would have loved to read his spider-man but it was after OMD. Yeah spider-man been dead to me. Forget superior spider-man awfulness. It wasn't the worst thing he has done.

[QUOTE=Iron Maiden;2017791]Bendis is very hit or miss for me. His dialogue ticks can be annoying and are became popularly parodied around the 'net. I liked Dark Avengers and Mighty Avengers but New Avengers not so much. Another thing was the overuse of the Hood did not exactly excite the readership. I liked his concept of the Cabal in Dark Reign but he really didn't exploit it very well. They never really did anything of much importance as a group.

But it's the padding that really gets old after a while. Take Invincible Iron Man for example. There are some plot elements that he has been teasing for 9 issues with no new developments. IMO that is far too slow in this day and age.

Then there is this hilariously bad dialogue...

[URL="http://s5.photobucket.com/user/IronMaiden99/media/MB%20comic%20Scans/Mighty%20Avengers/MA11_Doom_insults.jpg.html"][IMG]http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y195/IronMaiden99/MB%20comic%20Scans/Mighty%20Avengers/MA11_Doom_insults.jpg[/IMG][/URL][/QUOTE]



hahahaha that is so Doom. Those eyes get me overtime

So I just finished New Avengers: Civil War and the first arc of Mighty Avengers, I can see some of the criticism. It is starting to fall of the rails, why is Iron Man a giant tool bag now? I know this can be blamed on Millar and his characterization of every one in Civil War, but Stark is insufferable. I see how Civil massively derailed New Avengers, the dynamic was getting so good.. I do however, like Sentry's build up and him bringing his dead wife back to life. I also dislike the thought bubbles, it ruins the flow of reading for me and it takes me out of it, sometimes I would accidentally read it as actual speech bubbles.

Also Mighty Avengers 1st arc is choppy, page to page, it seems like we're going scene to scene without much explanation.

On to the arc...

I think of Bendis the same way I think of Aaron Sorkin. When I first discovered them, they used a voice I'd never heard before. I was a big fan (Bendis: Alias, Jinx, Goldfish, Torso, Powers; Sorkin: A Few Good Men, The American President, Sports Night, The West Wing). But the more I read and watched, the more I noticed the repeated dialogue and themes and it just wasn't my cup of tea (Bendis: Pretty much everything from 2004-now; Sorkin: Studio 60, The Newsroom). They didn't write to fit the material, they changed the material to fit the way they wrote. When reading a Bendis book, suddenly everyone is saying Oy, repeating questions back to each other, and generally not acting like the characters I remember (I know that last part is subjective). Go to youtube and watch some of the Sorkin supercuts that show his repeated use of dialogue. I'd love to have something similar created for Bendis.

I don't dislike the guy, I just dislike a majority of his work. That, again, is subjective. I usually enjoy a writer like Geoff Johns, who I perceive as someone who tries to move forward while embracing that past, rather than Bendis, who tries to move forward while disregarding the past (or changing the past to make it fit his needs).

I read and collected Avengers back in the 1970's when the title was probably at it's highest quality ever. But I eventually lost
interest, sold them, and didn't read another comic for 25 years. In 2010, for some reason I started thinking about my old comics
and began to remember the storylines. I went from thinking I might try to find some of the books again one day to the point of
it becoming something I had to do, so I found a comic shop locally with a decent selection of those books. I picked up some random
newer issues too just to see how much things had changed, and I liked New Avengers enough to explore it. When I went back and
read it from #1, I thought it was very enjoyable. The things that stick out to me now about Bendis' work didn't even occur to me
(dialog tics, mis-characterization, etc) back then. I pretty much devoured the entire run, along with Mighty Avengers, Dark Avengers,
and Seige, and the Finale. I really thought I liked it, but then I found CBR and all the threads going at the time trashing every aspect
Bendis' New Avengers. It only took a few days lurking before the negativity toward his writing caused me to start noticing all the things
people were complaining about. I sincerely doubt I've enjoyed anything to the level I did New Avengers because of that, too.

Basically, you will probably like all your comics better if you limit your time in the forums here.

At first, i hated the Bendis avengers, because all the things already described: bad treatment of classic avengers, specially Wanda, inclusion of wolverine and spiderman, etc. Now, after all is over, I can say there were some good things and some bad things. It will never be a favourite of mine like a Busiek, Stern or Thomas era, but it wasnt that bad. Anyway an example of the bad things are the Fear itself crossover avengers issues...the talking heads...ugh.

[QUOTE=JackDaw;2020638]I have very fond memories of this run.

I took out trade paperback of first 6 issues out of library. It impressed itself so deeply on my psyche that I've not yet read another Avengers story since...so I reckon it saved me money, big time.

I later heard rumours that at some point it featured stuff like Ben Grimm acting as look-out while Luke Cage did the heavy hitting. Thank goodness I never read that.

(And generally a Bendis fan. Loved Alias, and his run on Daredevil, and like a fair amount of his other stuff.)[/QUOTE]

About Ben Grimm: Bendis even went so far as to ask Hickman, his protege and friend who was writing the Fantastic Four at the time, if it was OK to use the Thing in the New Avengers. His addition to the team got a moderate degree of promotion, he had a variant cover, etc. But he had very minimal impact and was mostly wallpaper. I have to go back and find the story but that is absolutely true, he told Ben to be the lookout in one story while he took the rest of the team on whatever mission they had. There was another similar incident where he sat out a battle because Luke said he would be over his head or something along those lines. WTF...the Thing is stronger than Luke and had much more experience being on a team and leading one since he filled in when Reed and Sue took off on their own for a while.