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

[KC]

I really liked it, although I know that is a minority opinion among X-Men fans.

[Sutekh]

So, reading through other's reactions to this, I realize that I must totally misremember what Bendis actually worked on, and what he threw at the wall and abandoned, leaving other writers to develop. So much of what I regard as passable from 'his era' turns out to have been written by later writers, developing ideas that he never bothered to do anything more than plotz steaming on the ground and giggle before running away.

I did not think it was possible for my opinion of his tenure to get lower.

[GeneTitan]

My opinion is the same now as it was back then:
Bendis' uncanny sucked. Nothing happened, the characters "voices" were off (everyone sounded the same) and the dialogue was too wordy.
However, I actually enjoyed "All New X-Men." Bendis actually made me like the O5.

[Alan2099]

My opinion is the same now as it was back then:
Bendis' uncanny sucked. Nothing happened, the characters "voices" were off (everyone sounded the same) and the dialogue was too wordy.

Copy and paste this to just about anything Bendis has ever written.

[H-E-D]

Bendis Uncanny was great until you hit the point where editorial clearly truncated his plots.

[Celestialbodies]

Bendis is such a curious case for me and it seems readers. He has the right ideas, it's in his execution where things fall apart. I think ANXM and UXM did a lot to revitalize a plateau franchise which had a consecutive series of writers with no real plan for the property as a whole outside of a select few characters.


While the gimmick behind his run didn't and still doesn't make much sense, I think he made a number of character relevant and his run reintroduce Jean to a newer audience which as a fan I appreciated.


As a whole, I liked his run I just think towards the end of both series he didn't have a plan on how tied all the ideas he had been juggling together in a way that made sense.

[davetvs]

Bendis is such a curious case for me and it seems readers. He has the right ideas, it's in his execution where things fall apart. I think ANXM and UXM did a lot to revitalize a plateau franchise which had a consecutive series of writers with no real plan for the property as a whole outside of a select few characters.


While the gimmick behind his run didn't and still doesn't make much sense, I think he made a number of character relevant and his run reintroduce Jean to a newer audience which as a fan I appreciated.


As a whole, I liked his run I just think towards the end of both series he didn't have a plan on how tied all the ideas he had been juggling together in a way that made sense.

I agree with this. Bendis really is interesting because he's so polarizing. I personally loved Avengers Disassembled into House of M into New Avengers, but there are so many people who passionately hate that run and rant about it to this day. His run on X-Men is also polarizing as this thread attests, but then, he's responsible for the creation of Miles Morales and Ironheart, two great modern day characters who've actually crossed over into public consciousness.

[Havok83]

I agree with this. Bendis really is interesting because he's so polarizing. I personally loved Avengers Disassembled into House of M into New Avengers, but there are so many people who passionately hate that run and rant about it to this day. His run on X-Men is also polarizing as this thread attests, but then, he's responsible for the creation of Miles Morales and Ironheart, two great modern day characters who've actually crossed over into public consciousness.

Were you a fan of Avengers before New Avengers? Ive found that that tends to play a big role in how his run was percieved. I wasnt an Avengers fan before NA, but I loved that series and the changes Bendis did made me jump on board. IMO he revitalized that line and did to it what Morrison did for the X-men

[davetvs]

Were you a fan of Avengers before New Avengers? Ive found that that tends to play a big role in how his run was percieved. I wasnt an Avengers fan before NA, but I loved that series and the changes Bendis did made me jump on board. IMO he revitalized that line and did to it what Morrison did for the X-men

I wasn't, they were always Generic Super Team #1 to me before Bendis took over. I never read any of the classic Avengers runs, and I never would because it just doesn't interest me. Bendis made me an Avengers fan, and a huge Scarlet Witch fan. Conversely, I already loved/was reading X-Men, but even then Morrison's run is my absolute favorite and so many people hate that too.

[Saithor]

The less said about Agengers Bendis the better. He nukes the team, derailed a lot of them including Wasp, Hawkeye and especially Scarlet Witch who he decided to turn into “Powerful women be crazy”, he introduced the Sentry, and decided to turn them into just another street level hero group because that is all Bendis ever writes.

[DarkMagnus]

I hate the Gay-out scene of Jean and Iceman it was offensive and could be done better.

Even if he get Emma and Magik voice kinda fine. He didnt do much as he did for Mags or Cyke in his run

The Battle of the Atom event was lackluster and meh

[ARkadelphia]

The less said about Agengers Bendis the better. He nukes the team, derailed a lot of them including Wasp, Hawkeye and especially Scarlet Witch who he decided to turn into “Powerful women be crazy”, he introduced the Sentry, and decided to turn them into just another street level hero group because that is all Bendis ever writes.

Quoted
For
Truth

[Gray Lensman]

And that was literally the problem with it, because it simply catered to the perception many straight people have that its a reasonable assumption to treat anyone saying they're bisexual as 'bargaining' or 'unwilling to commit to/accept being gay' rather than being innately predisposed enough to viewing it as a valid identity in its own right, that they're willing to even entertain the possibility that the person or character might have a point about themselves. It feeds into and perpetuates and validates the idea that the kneejerk impulse of reacting to someone who is exploring their sexuality or identity and saying 'I could be bi' by default assuming this person is wrong or self-deluding.....that this impulse, this reaction is the normal or correct response. Rather than assuming that well okay, this person is more likely to have a better sense of themselves than I have of them, so let's hear them out as to why they think they're bi instead of gay like I was assuming.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not upset that Bobby's gay instead of bi, but that label should have come from him. It is never anybody's place to respond to someone suggesting they might be bi by telling them they're wrong. Even a telepath only has her own frame of reference to work off of, and someone's identity should not be decreed based on someone else's frame of reference.

As I've always said, my big issue with the way Bendis wrote Bobby coming out was he had the character for YEARS and never made the slightest effort to suggest there was something more going on under the surface with Bobby until his literal last two issues with the character. Years where Bobby could have been laying groundwork for the reveal, exploring his identity on his own terms, and in all that time Bendis showed zero interest in using the character for anything but generic fight scenes, jokes, and to be a dumbass essentially, and then shoehorned in this change to the character's status quo in the very last two issues writing him, that forever cemented Bendis as being credited by plenty of people for making one of THE most impactful character developments Bobby's ever undergone.....

All without Bendis ever actually having to use his character or do any actual character development or growth with him in the several years time he was writing Bobby.

THAT'S the part I'll always resent, because he made Bobby a backseat passenger in what'll go down in comic book history as pretty much the most sizable shift in the character's overall direction, granting him no agency in the storyline that was ABOUT him. And that's one hundred percent on Bendis, not Jean, and so I'm not mad at Jean about it, I just think its annoying when writers write stories about a gay character's sexuality where the gay character has the least to do in the story itself. Nope, that bar is way too low for me. Like yeah, maybe without Bendis' clout we wouldn't have gotten gay Bobby, but there was literally nothing stopping Bendis from using his clout to make Bobby gay while actually giving him the dignity of a starring role in his own coming out narrative. It didn't have to be one or the other, Bendis just....didn't care enough about the story he was writing with Bobby to invest more time and energy in it than a few pages across two whole issues, and while other peoples' mileage may vary, that prioritization or lack thereof will always mar that particular story and character development for me.

First, sorry about the time between your post and my response - I was on the road, working 12 hour shifts, followed up by a travel disaster that added an additional 6-7 hours on my return home. Then I wanted to decompress from that.

I have to admit I am not personally familiar with bi-erasure outside of being aware of the concept. I think I have known more people who were gay/lesbian than bisexual, and the conversations were always more about general acceptance than anything else. I'll take the word of someone who has experienced it over my own limited exposure.

As far as dropping the revelation suddenly rather than letting the story breathe and take some decent time, I hate to say I can understand Bendis' possible mindset there. Look at the teased, and start of a slow burn attraction between Teen Scott and Laura in the same comic, that had the plotline yoinked away on short notice. (I still say that if you sub in Scott for Warren for the two issues it takes for THAT to happen, or Warren for Scott for the entire build-up, the story looks like a coherent whole) Having had a major shift unceremoniously ripped away from him once, I wonder I Bendis was unwilling to take the chance of it happening again.

It doesn't make it any better, mind you. It just makes it easier to understand why it was done the way it was done, and forces editorial to shoulder some of the blame for how it turned out rather than saddling one person with all of the bad parts.

[Thirteen]

I liked a bit of Bendis' UNCANNY X-MEN run:
Best character work for Cyclops that I've read in an age. Scott with anti-hero qualities made him interesting. I also applaud his elevation of Illyana to the big leagues and cementing her as the breakout character that she's long deserved to be.

[Ultimate Captain America]

Loved it. Teen Jean was the best character of all the X-Men franchise by the time.

Still, Ultimate X-Men was better.