Originally Posted by
gurkle
1. Bendis's run on Avengers was specifically designed to be the end of the old, traditional Avengers. Avengers Disassembled began by destroying the mansion, and rendering many of the longtime Avengers members dead (Hawkeye, Vision) or unusable (Scarlet Witch, She-Hulk). People who liked these characters, or the Avengers "tradition," felt the run was against them, because to some extent it was. Many people who dislike Bendis's run are simply fans of particular characters who don't like how he treated them. People are still asking him on Tumblr if he hates Scarlet Witch, and it's been over 10 years.
2. Somewhat related, Spider-Man and Wolverine had never been Avengers and traditionalists felt that it was breaking that tradition for the sake of pumping up sales (which, again, is true).
3. Bendis's style and mannerisms don't lend themselves well to writing the kind of soap opera and hammy villains who are associated with traditional Avengers comics, so it was criticized for not being a "real" Avengers book. Mighty Avengers was actually his attempt to prove that he could do a more traditional Avengers book, complete with thought balloons, but there is disagreement on how well that worked.
4. He was on the book for a long time and eventually he seemed to run out of ideas, as writers do when they're on a book for a long time.
I think that while Disassembled was not good, New Avengers was a good book up until it was interrupted by Civil War, and then the fracturing of the team and the constant events seemed to take its toll on the writing. But I do like it better than Hickman's. Even though Bendis was replacing the old Avengers, the consciousness of what the team was, and what it has been, hangs over the book and makes it an interesting examination of how you preserve tradition while moving forward.
And I also think that though the breakup of the old team could have been better handled, some kind of shake-up was due. The Avengers couldn't go forward with the same old members and the same old villains, and the characters Bendis got rid of probably had been in the book too long.