Who should Marvel push to replace Bendis

[Username taken]

For starters, I'm a massive Bendis fan. I started reading Avengers after disassembled (and I suspect that's the case with many readers because that book and Dark Avengers were massive sellers for a very, very long time) and I actually got back into Marvel comics with his work alongside the likes of Millar, Brubaker, Morrison and JMS (on Supreme Power, I disliked JMS on Spider-man).

Without doubt, Bendis shaped modern Marvel and influenced the larger industry as a whole with his "de-compressed" story telling which has pretty much become a staple of superhero comics today. The impact of Bendis leaving Marvel can't be understated because this means the biggest name draw writers and artists in comics today are at DC (Snyder and Johns are guys that can pull sales on name recognition alone and artists like Finch, Daniels, Lee, Hitch can move sales). In recent times though, Bendis seemed to be experiencing some creative burn out and he doesn't have the spark he used to have. His recent Marvel work hasn't been like his earlier work and a lot of it has been pretty "slow". His moving to DC is probably best for him as it presents a new challenge.

However, this kind of leaves a vacuum at Marvel and I'm curious who you guys would like to see be an "architect" at Marvel. Bendis wasn't yet a big name writer when he started his amazing run on Daredevil before Avengers and i would love to see Marvel give another writer a big push. Right now, it seems Jason Aaron is playing that architect role (but I strongly suspect that Aaron will jump ship to DC sometime in the future because he's always stated he's a life long DC fan and he actually got his break there). Personally, I would love to see Saladin Ahmed get a high profile book at Marvel. Black Bolt has been amazing and is Marvel's best book at the moment. Another guy I would love to see get a higher profile is Charles Soule, his work thus far has largely been excellent (although Astonishing X-men is slowing down) and he's a guy that could do some amazing work on an Avengers title.

[Tiamatty]

Kelly Thompson deserves a bigger role. Jem & the Holograms was a critical darling and a brilliant series (and the Misfits mini was outstanding even by those standards), and her run on Hawkeye has been very well-received. She's got the chops. Marvel needs to give her more opportunities to show them off.

Saladin Ahmed's been killing it on Black Bolt, so I'd definitely be down with him getting a bigger project, too.

[Tofali]

Whoever it is better have an exclusive contract with Marvel and has stayed with the company for a couple of years.

[Charlie_1981]

Whoever it is better have an exclusive contract with Marvel and has stayed with the company for a couple of years.

Dan Slott?

[Star Saber]

It certainly feels like Jason Aaron is their man right now, he's certainly graduated from doing fringe titles like Ghost Rider and random specials/minis to writing several of Marvel's key titles such as the X-Men, Wolverine, Doctor Strange and Thor.

While Slott has been a mainstay - it certainly seems he's content just doing Spidey. Marvel hasn't let him run any of their Marvel Universe event books from what I recall, something they've let Aaron do twice now with Original Sin and Marvel Legacy.

[Cowtools]

Jason Aaron seems like an obvious choice, given that he's already written some events for Marvel, and his books are decent sellers. The fact that he's actually good at balancing character, continuity and spectacle is a bonus for us readers.

If Secret Empire had been as good as it could have been, and hadn't garnered such a negative response from casual readers, I would have picked Nick Spencer as someone to take over Bendis' role as overseer of street level and 'kooky' comics. Now I don't force much of a role for him at Marvel unfortunately...

[Shinglepants]

I think there is a potential problem in that a lot of the writers left at Marvel are not "comic book" writers per se. It seems like a side gig for many. For example, Coates Black Panther book has been well received and I bet Marvel would like to chuck more at him but he’s never going to commit to a Bendis/Aaron/Hickman Work load.

For me, outside of Aaron who is undisputedly the top guy now, I think Duggan and Spencer will be at the forefront of Marvels thinking.

I’m a big fan of both Al Ewing and Hopeless and I hope to see them get a push and more important books.

Also, let’s hope Donny Cates delivers the goods!

[runguy]

They really need to resign Hickman to a exclusive otherwise I would go with Aaron