Is the Bendis Era of Avengers Worth Reading?

[K7P5V]

I enjoyed it but found it had diminishing returns the longer it went on. High point for me was his use of Spider-Woman and Luke Cage.



Finch is certainly a gifted artist but it bugged me during this run that all the faces look the same.

Yeah! Seems to be a common complaint among many artists nowadays (and not just Finch):

[Nomads1]

Honestly, I'm not really a fan. However, I'll try to be as unbiased as I can to help the OP.
Most who were fans of the Avengers before Bendis tend not to like his run. Most who weren't Avengers fans before Bendis, tend to like his run (as with everything, there are exceptions, however, there is that tendency). Bendis dropped many of the staples of the franchise (the mansion, the charter, the not kill rule, the traditional enemies, the mix of big guns with B, C, and D listers with quite a bit of potential, etc...) and replaced it with a slew of Marvel's best sellers (weather they made in-cannon sense or not to be Avengers) and some of his personal favorites, some new villains and status quos and (with tons of help of Marvel editorial) made the Avengers the central linchpin of the whole MU, linking one major event to the next. His writing style was unique, at the time, especially his approach to dialogue, which many found more realistic than what you usually had at comics then, and he was always partnered with the company's top shelf artists and some of the best talent in the industry at the time, which, undeniably, greatly benefited him.
IMHO, Bendis' pacing is not good. He is great at set-ups, but, for me, his climaxes fall flat. He tends not to care much for continuity, many times continuity that he himself established. I can trace most of his greatest ideas (Dissassembled, Wanda's descent into darkness, Secret Invasion, House of M, the Cabal, etc...) to the work of other writers before him, however, he always gives different spins to them (I'll let to each and everyone to decide if this spins result in better stories than the originals or not). He did seem to have a cycle of stories established in his mind from Dissassembled to Seige, however, it's noticable that he stayed on without a game plan afterwards (or, at least, without such a tight game plan as the one before).
Bendis' run is probably one of Marvel's most reprinted runs, in various formats. My suggestion, find a format you like, buy the first volume (there are some formats which are quite affordable), and decide for yourself if you intend to continue. If you have relatively little knowledge of comics in general, it's quite possible you'll find it very enjoyable. After all, it was a run designed to bring new readers to the fold.

Peace