DC fans, how do you feel about Brian Bendis?

[Overhazard]

My feelings toward Bendis are complicated. He does have his strengths. If it's out of continuity or something noir, he can handle it no problem. He has a difficult time with character voices though, and it really showed in his X-Men run though maybe he was burned out then. I really don't like his dialogue. I think Bendis, much like Stephen Moffat, comes up with good ideas, but his execution leaves a lot to be desired. The most glaring example to me is Miles Morales. A bi-racial spider-man is a great idea, but the execution was awful. He gave him a origin, powers, then crossover after crossover until Secret Wars with very little character development. Archie had a Mega Man book at the time, and Ian Flynn put more character development into him than Bendis did with Miles. I genuinely want to like Miles, but I can't, and it bugs me.

Apparently he's found his stride at DC, if so, good for him. I still wish he wasn't writing the legion though. It's not the diversity that bothers me, he'll bring them a lot of attention, but I don't know if he's capable of balancing a team like the legion and capturing character voices without making everyone sound the same. I also hope there aren't a lot of panels of the legionnaires sitting around eating. He did that a lot.

[Roliver Queen]

The only work I was familiar with prior to DC was the horrible Civil War II comic. But i went into both his Superman runs with an open mind. So far the main Superman run has been enjoyable. Definitely more engaging than Tomasi's run, which I stopped after a few arcs. Action Comics kinda dragged at first with all the Event Leviathan set up. But now its gotten much better. Event Leviathan has been a hit or miss. I think its something that'll read better a whole vs waiting for it. Maybe when its done and i read all of it, i'll make a proper assessment on if it was worth all the hype.

I'm not a big fan of how him and Synder have ignored Green Arrow's continuity just to satisfy their use of him in their events but thats another topic for another day.



He's alright to me.

[Frontier]

So far from what I've read...

He has a stronger handling on Superman's voice then you would expect but he still has those Bendis-isms that either make it or break it for you.

[Jackalope89]

I don't understand why aging Jon is supposed to be a bad thing... He will be the leading character of LOSH. That's much better than being a supporting role of Superman.

He was a co-lead in Super Sons. Plus, Bendis basically erased the Jon people loved for his own wooden version that is now yet another teen hero. Not a single Jon fan asked for or wanted this.

[Blue22]

For as much shit as I talk, I don't hate everything Bendis has done. I appreciate him bringing Young Justice back (and it's actually pretty damn good). I appreciate Naomi. I appreciate wanting to bring Lois back to her roots and exploring things with the Superman mythos that don't get to be explored very often.

But....

A lot of my issues I had with him at Marvel, followed him to DC. Despite what he says, he still lives off of shock value and almost completely ignoring other people's work. He progresses his plots and creates drama by having characters make the worst possible decisions (to the point where they're behaving out of character), and a lot of his ideas that he wants to stick tend to be....really bad until he's off a book and other writers take over and fix things. He played a big role in why I gave up on Marvel comics for a while and now he's playing that same role in DC. Bendis is an idea guy but half of his ideas are bad and the half that are good, need to be done by other people or else he'll fuck up the execution. He did it with X-Men, he did it with Civil War II, and now he's doing it with Superman.

But his biggest strike for me was ruining the kid who quickly replaced Conner as my favorite Super. He thinks he's helping Jon by putting him in the limelight with Legion and building him up to replace Clark as Superman. But in doing so, he's taken away every single unique and interesting aspect of the character. Jon being so young, knowing how to both be a kid and still be very mature for his age, was one of the best things about him. There was a certain charm to his character that's lost when you age him up. And Bendis didn't replace that charm with anything. He's just trying to make him Clark 2.0 in every possible aspect. Jon didnt need tweaking. He was a great character before and now everything special about him is gone.

[Liasoid444]

I like his voice for Superman, but his voices for Superman's supporting cast and other characters is bad. Also I think in the Legion Millennium book he had the Kamandi story before the OMAC story and that change doesn't sot well with me at all, if it was a change.
His Young Justice I feel is just ok. Not bad but not particularly good either

[Blue22]

I think my only issue with his YJ is just how uninteresting the new members are. Not a single one is particularly compelling. I would have been alright with this only featuring the four original characters

[dietrich]

He writes a shit Damian Wayne. i wish he'd stop using him.

I love what he's doing with Drake though. Excellent redesign. Fans ride him too hard but he's not that bad. batman Uni is a good read.

[Blue22]

I wasn't gonna touch on that but yeah. I've seen some bad takes on Damian Wayne in the past but Bendis writes him like his only exposure to the character is from Wikipedia. I hadn't seen a character written that badly since Carol Danvers in Civil War II (which, coincidentally, was also written by Bendis) or just about every major character in the Mutant/Inhuman war.

[krazijoe]

Crime Noir he is really good.
Super Heroes, he is ok.

[Sacred Knight]

Was perfectly fine with him before his Legion plans were revealed. I had liked his Superman stuff previously, and one of the things I liked most was him putting Jon on the much-needed back burner after Rebirth shoved him down our throats. But then it was revealed it was all part of a plan and Bendis brought him back with a fervor that even eclipses the original Rebirth era. And even fans of the character hate it, much less people like me who can't stand the character entirely. And now with the 5G stuff--wholesale but particularly pertaining to Superman--which is really hard to not attribute to his guiding hand, has put me over the edge. I consider this a new Marvelization of the DCU, and its not wanted.

[LordUltimus]

I don't understand why aging Jon is supposed to be a bad thing... He will be the leading character of LOSH. That's much better than being a supporting role of Superman.

People don't want him to be the leading character of LOSH. That'd be like Superman taking on the role of Batman and that being a good thing because Batman sells better.

[BatmanJones]

I only know his DC work. So far I think he's been okay. I've read about people loving and hating him but so far I haven't had occasion to feel either of those ways. I'd rate him somewhere between mediocre and fine. I like Event Leviathan best so far but that's almost entirely because of the art.

[Kaijudo]

I've found his short tenure at DC to be stronger than 90% of what he did at Marvel. His Superman work is more on par with his creator-owned work.

[Badou]

Before coming over to DC I followed his X-Men work and outside of the art teams he had on those books I found his X-Men run to be one of the worst X-Men runs I ever read. So he came over to DC with really low expectations, and since then he has even fallen short of those expectations. I don't think any of his DC work has been good or memorable, and him tearing up and ignoring continuity to implant his own which is his style hasn't been worth it so far. He still gets generally strong art teams and I think those have been carrying his stories so far.

His Young Justice book has been so forgettable after all the hype before it started, his Superman run has been a disaster with how he has written Clark, Lois and Jon in that book, and his Action Comics run was in my opinion his strongest DC work and something fans of his could point to as being "good" has completely fizzled out with this Leviathan story event which turned into such a massive disappointment.