Agreed, and why was she so suddenly afraid of the SENTRY or Bob??? Especially when she knew it was all the Void? In the first two original Sentry volumes Lindy was head strong, totally not afraid of the Sentry but understood his conditions. In Bendis run she is suddenly in fear of her life... Strange.
Yeah what he did was a total disaster and I say this as a big Sentry fan. He took a big dump on the characters mythos that I don't even think the character will ever recover from. Its so bad that I think Bendis should have NEVER brought Sentry into the mainstream stories.
He maliciously destroyed the Scarlet Witch's character, one of the most noble - and - necessary - heroes, who had existed since the early '60s. She has never totally been able to be redeemed. Fans of the X books will never see her as anything other than evil and unnecessary in the comics.
A total character assassination, that perhaps the MCU will overwrite. I think so.
I hated Disassembled because while an easy transition could have been made to his "New Avengers," he decided instead to blow everything up with little regard to the characters people had grown to love over the years. That said, I did read New Avengers for a time, and enjoyed it until it became obvious Bendis's strength/shtick is fairly limited and only goes on so long before it descends into annoyingly repetitive motions. Probably the worst of these is killing characters just for the sake of killing characters. Disassembled could be traced back to his work on the original White Tiger in Daredevil, then seen again in his treatment of Alpha Flight, Echo in Moon Knight, and more than likely again in Civil War II.
I think the bigger problem is that, with a few exceptions, Bendis honestly doesn't want to write superhero comics. I think he wants to write comics similar to his early work, like Jinx or Torso or Goldfish, the things that put him on the map. His perfect superhero book is probably Powers, which links the two worlds. But when it comes to comics, nothing sells like superheroes so Bendis resigns himself to that genre, infusing it with the tropes of the more hardboiled crime books he'd rather be writing, resulting in what we've seen played out time and again in his superhero work.
I want to jump in here better then deeper in the thread but before I say anything to it. I must say I noticed a whole while ago that Bendis and Hickman seems to work together.(really they know each other so well?!)
Bendis derailing of characters and dissembling of whole teams made Hickmans story possible in the first run with out it Hickman's story wouldn't had happened at least not in this form.
I think there are 2 different points Hickman and Bendis jumping make traditionalists either angry or they feel to give up because it isn't 'their' stuff anymore in the long run , in the short run some people just fell trolled. I think I read somewhere that Bendis know this and his response was that he likes bad response the same way he likes good responses because it increase his sales (or something like that). He said he learned that when he wrote for a newspaper.
In the end everything he does he does do on purpose. (more sales).
The other thing(like xpyred said) is those deformed or derailed characters get strangely a lot of fans . What I get out of it is in the past those characters would have been part of a What IF story with one issues. I understand it can be a lot of fun to have such a character over a longer time. The problem with this is after some time the new trades of the character become fix and the 'old character' fade away so there is nothing to compare to and the whole thing becomes boring but the damage stays to some extend.
In sum Marvel's marketing and Bendis are only focusing on short time bursts of sales not on what happens in the long run.
Which is sad Marvel was once called the house of ideas but most of the ideas they have these days are on the marketing side and not on the creative book side or others said. When Marvel was at the end of the 90`s 90% creative work of the authors and 10% marketing it is these days 10% creative work of the authors and 90% marketing. At least this is my view on all this, for the most why I had in the past Marvel favored over DC. It vague but the Kirby Universe which Marvel had had much more depth to it because heroes were no just heroes but also champions of life(for the most part) which mean they were part of something bigger which could be seen sometimes in cosmic stories which produced in itself endless stories. When you look at Alex Ross Earth X you see what I mean he took it just a bit further(and yes a lot denser) and Marvel other authors keep coping his ideas for nearly 20th years.
I just got to Secret Invasion, and I believe this is where Bendis would have finished his run if he wasn't the architect of Marvel at that point. It was explained that the Skrulls were the ones behind Disassembled, House of M, and Civil War. I do give Bendis the benefit of the doubt and that there was a long term plan, and not just short term gains. It does, in my opinion, explain a lot of the mischaracterization of certain classic characters.
Do you think looking back to the in story explanation is enough to justify the way the Avengers were handled? It did build a pretty epic story up to this point.
I am now moving on to Dark Reign.. so excited!
I really enjoyed Bendis on Ultimate Spider-man. He was really exceptional in a world all his own where he could twist and spin characters to his hearts desire.
When he jumped to 616, I really disliked his writing. It felt like he had no idea who he was writing and just moved generic pieces however he wanted to tell his story. Everyone was out of character or completely disregarding all continuity.
It's been a LONG time since I reread them, but here are just a couple of examples that stuck in my mind over the years.
1) Spider-man and Wolverine joining the Avengers. Spidey never had time for them or liked his solo act (Though a reserve if he was needed), and Wolverine was already in what? 4 books at the time and no particular attachment to Avengers. It was a weird decision.
2) Luke Cage going costume-less. You're an AVENGER now, wear a costume. Luke Cage was always about name recognition anyways.... he was one of the FIRST Superheroes to take out ads in the phone book. Walking around in street clothes sucked.
3) the REASON they asked wolverine on the team... Cap once disbanded the Avengers over voting whether to kill Supreme Intelligence... yet Iron man convinced Cap that Wolverine was needed to 'Do what they wouldn't'...
4) Carnage... Carnage was treated as a life sucking parasite that shriveled up his victims. That was the ULTIMATE Carnage... it wasn't 616 Carnage.
Things like that frustrated me to no end with Bendis. Not even counting his questionable dialogue... but just the general characterizations of his main heroes and villains. Even if he cant' read every appearance... he should at least be able to check out a Wikipedia page or an official handbook of Marvel Universe entry before writing people.
Lets not forget how he did it.
Wasp: You used to have kids right?
Wanda: I remember now! Time to go crazy!
Everyone else: Man, bitches be crazy, no?
Regardless of how well it fit with established canon (not at all), it's completely underwhelming. Bendis wants the credit of an epic story, but without doing any of the work that's required. His spy stories lack attention to details (Secret War and Secret Invasion), his character driven stories lack logical characterization (Avengers Disassembled, Hood) and when he thinks he has a clever scene, no internal logic can stand in his way (see his recent resurrection of Dr. Samson).
More often than not, he wants the credit of writing an epic story without doing the actual work.
Bendis' style reminds me very much of a fanfiction writer. He has pet characters (Jessica and Luke) that he'll dote on but not develop, he has characters he dislikes and will take opportunities to bash (Tigra), uses semi popular characters despite having no idea how (Sentry the best example, but Hood and Marvel Boy are close seconds) and switches plot focus like he has ADD (Secret Invasion, 'built up' since Avengers Disassembled, ended in a freakin' summary page so that Dark Reign could start).
I doubt we'd even be talking about Bendis anymore if he didn't have the ability to grab popular characters to keep his titles afloat (see the end of his Avengers run)
I'm going to defend bring Spider-Man in as a regular member here. They had asked several times before to join, and once he realized that there was a $1000/week stipend (thirty years ago) he wanted in to solve his poor college student problem. It didn't work because at the core of the matter, his personality doesn't fit a group setting. Over time, as his life changed and he became more of a full time hero (because having three solo series didn't quite do it....) joining the team works. Editorially it doesn't because its hard to do because of all the solo ongoings, and the mandate that he focus on Peter Parker so much. Batman doesn't have this problem.