What do you think of Bendis' X-Men stuff now?

[LordUltimus]

Since it's been nearly a decade since Bendis left X-Men, I thought it'd be good to bring it up. What do you think of Bendis's work on X-Men now?

[Exodus]

Since it's been nearly a decade since Bendis left X-Men, I thought it'd be good to bring it up. What do you think of Bendis's work on X-Men now?

I really disliked it. Bringing the O5 back never made sense within the universe. The first issue were fun and ok but afterwards it was such a sh*itshow. Uncanny was worse. Honestly, I suffered a lot during his run. for me his entire run was as awful as Austen's run. But at least Austen had some trashy funny ideas.......

[Rift]

All things considered, there were elements. Sometimes things happened. Tempus was cool. And I've seen worse - including from Bendis himself.

Aside from the stupider ideas, I try to block out, it's just kind of there for me.

[JB]

I guess I'm mostly indifferent about his work because it almost never comes to mind, for anything particularly good or bad.

[Diammandis]

it was fine, still a little miffed on how he wanted to "humble" Emma but other than that his work was serviceable at best

[Steroid]

Since it's been nearly a decade since Bendis left X-Men, I thought it'd be good to bring it up. What do you think of Bendis's work on X-Men now?

For me it's just a run that exists that I never care to read again. I can't point to one thing I truly hated but also can't think of a thing I liked either.

[NewMutant]

One of the worst periods in X-History.

[BobbysWorld]

As with pretty much all of his stuff, I think he manages to add or create new additions like various characters I really like (though usually only when written by other writers, lol) but I find his runs themselves almost completely forgettable. Like I think if Jigsaw abducted me to star in the next Saw movie and the only way to get out of his puzzle room alive was by naming a Bendis written plot point that's any more specific than 'the 05 came to the future' or 'Bobby came out', like.....I would probably die.

[Ambaryerno]

Bendis's run on X-Men reminds me a lot of some of the movies riffed on MST3K:

Every now and then you'll hit on a concept that might have actually been interesting, but fell flat because of poor execution SOMEWHERE in the creative process.

[Kingdom X]

I have a weird sense of nostalgia for the run since it’s the first ongoing that I picked up as a comic book reader as it was coming out. I actually liked new characters like Tempus and Triage. Even then I was kinda like, “why do the 05 ALL need to be here, when 4/5 of them are still alive and this franchise has dozens of unused characters”. I liked the beginning of All-New and the end of Uncanny (which actually would have been a nice transition into Krakoa). A lot of the middle bits are VERY forgettable.

[Dante Milton]

My opinion hasn't really changed since then. ANXM was a potentially interesting idea for a mini that went on way too long and didn't end up mattering for most of the cast. Uncanny had a great cast and premise that was mired by the post-Schism infighting and Bendis' inability to properly characterize the cast and end a story arc in a way that wasn't incredibly disappointing. It had it's moments though, I liked Kitty's response to the "Call me Alex" speech, the Ben Deeds and girls' night out issues of Uncanny, and although the execution was pretty poor I appreciate that he used his clout to out Iceman.

[MythicalChicken]

Since it's been nearly a decade since Bendis left X-Men, I thought it'd be good to bring it up. What do you think of Bendis's work on X-Men now?

I re-read a chunk on prime and what worked:

magik, the new x-kids, watching Emma actually teach for once, and even Scott bless his heart all worked really well.

I much preferred Scott’s team to the hot mess with the 05 at Xavier’s, all of which was cringe AF.

I still hold bendis accountable for being the corporate hack to build up the avengers at the X-men’s expense, and the x-run did little/nothing to make up for it.

[Krakoa]

The thing I most appreciated about Bendis' run was that he continued Scott's evolution instead of walking him back to his typical status quo. He introduced some good ideas, like everything he did with Magik, helping move her from her amazing Wells/Gillen depiction into the more heroic version who is now so popular and connecting her to Doctor Strange in a way that's still true. Visually, I loved Uncanny X-Men's new costumes. The new kids were great as well, and we desperately needed some new mutants when that was the whole point of AvX's ending. The O5 to the present idea was novel and actually very fun and helped bring Jean back to prominence, and the writing of Jean was great (I don't blame Bendis for them overstaying their welcome after his run).

All-New X-Men had a little too much synergy with Bendis' other titles (GOTG, USM) that it lost track of itself sometimes.

I think the biggest problem was just that the run wasn't going anywhere. Somewhere around the incredibly long Last Will and Testament of Xavier arc the book completely lost steam and went nowhere. There's a line after Scott closes the school where Emma asks what they were even training the kids for and yells "What was the revolution?!". As a reader, I have the same question.

And execution aside, I will forever be happy Bendis outed Bobby. Bendis is the kind of creator who can push his weight to make that kind of thing happen (just like he does to create diverse characters) and I'm glad he put it out there and then let others tell the story in more depth.

Also, damn his run had some great art.

Bendis' best scenes were the downtime moments. Some particular favorite moments of his run that still stand out to me are:
- The first arc in general, with Cyclops vs. the Avengers
- Bendis using Kitty to dunk on Rick Remender
- The Emma/Teen Jean relationship
- The issue where Emma trains Ben Deeds to use his powers
- The scene in #600 where Magik and Colossus reconcile
- The scene in #600 where the two Bobbys talk

(Speaking of #600 -- the ending of that issue is feeling pretty relevant right about now...)

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Separate from his time on the main books, Bendis also wrote 2 arcs of Ultimate X-Men, one of which contains a fantastic, haunting one-off issue about a mutant whose powers kill his entire hometown.

[Bunch of Coconuts]

Ranked right above Austen, for me, which is bottom-barrel.

I missed a good chunk of things not long after M-Day, though, and came back to comics right before AvX, so I might have missed something I'd rank in between them.

[Gray Lensman]

Great setup, some great moments, then he got lost and meandered his way to a finish that aspired to be, but didn't quite reach underwhelming.

Bendis should only be allowed to do first issues of anything. Maybe the first arc, but nothing more than that - the man has too short of an attention span.