Do you feel if tom king and bendis have a similar style?

[theoneandonly]

Would you feel any difference if bendis took over from tom king over Batman? (not that he should) I think both of them have a very similar style of writing and incorporate common elements like decompression, attempt to portray gritty realism etc. Anyway I didnt like tom kings run and was undecided about bendis Daredevil run so maybe I am seeing patterns common to both that aren't so pronounced to others. Anyway what do you feel?

[Caivu]

Eh... not really? King's Batman has a heavy element of romanticizing (in addition to the grit) that I've never really seen in Bendis's work.

[Talon1load]

Nope, Bendis has done some stuff that I like (Ultimate Spiderman & New Avengers). King can't even write a coherent or complete storyline.

[MajorHoy]

If by "similar" you mean "I don't normally buy stuff either of them write", then, yeah, I guess so.

[DragonPiece]

They both do a lot of repetitive dialogue..besides that, no.

[Pohzee]

I've never read Bendis's work, so I can't speak from experience, but Tom King has said that he was inspired to go into comics while listening to Bendis on a podcast, so I'm sure he has taken inspiration from him.

And people often parody their repetitive dialogue.

[millernumber1]

They both do a lot of repetitive dialogue..besides that, no.

But Bendis does repetition for quips/comedy/rhythm, while King goes for poetic (which, I guess, is also rhythm, but there's a very different quality about it)/recontextualization.

[CryNotWolf]

No, they don't. They share some rather superfluous similarities in dialogue structure, but that's it as far as I can tell.

[Dzetoun]

No. I am not even sure their dialogue is all that similar. Bendis is heavily influenced by various kinds of detective noir, particularly very stylized stagecraft that is sometimes almost a verse form. King is more in debt to trauma psychology and the way repetition and circular speech patterns are like red flags marking an unexplored mental land mine (which also tends to be a plot point, one reason his dialogue sometimes comes across as ham-handed).

[Panfoot]

The both have very specific quirks, King's use of repetition(though I feel like it's not as common in his Batman run recently, he does still use it with good purpose in Mister Miracle) and Bendis's very specific character speech patterns(of which most of the characters he writes tend to have), but that's it. King understands pacing and everything in his stories ends up having a purpose that serve the story or character development, while Bendis's work goes on forever and just tapers off into other directions with no good payoff and forgotten plot elements(like how during his pre CW2 Iron Man run, an issue ended with Tony, Rhodey, and Peter Parker all unarmed in a warehouse with an exploding bomb...and then the next issue continued on with Tony and Rhodey with no acknowledgement of that ever happening, or also in his CW2 era Iron Man run when Tony finally captures Doom and ask him whats going on, it's not revealed to the reader in that issue...and hasn't been mentioned since).

[Dzetoun]

The both have very specific quirks, King's use of repetition(though I feel like it's not as common in his Batman run recently, he does still use it with good purpose in Mister Miracle) and Bendis's very specific character speech patterns(of which most of the characters he writes tend to have), but that's it. King understands pacing and everything in his stories ends up having a purpose that serve the story or character development, while Bendis's work goes on forever and just tapers off into other directions with no good payoff and forgotten plot elements(like how during his pre CW2 Iron Man run, an issue ended with Tony, Rhodey, and Peter Parker all unarmed in a warehouse with an exploding bomb...and then the next issue continued on with Tony and Rhodey with no acknowledgement of that ever happening, or also in his CW2 era Iron Man run when Tony finally captures Doom and ask him whats going on, it's not revealed to the reader in that issue...and hasn't been mentioned since).

Indeed. In terms of plot (although not pacing) a better comparison might be between Bendis and Geoff Johns. It isn’t an exact or fair parallel, as I think Johns is as much the victim of shifting editorial mandates as his own decisions, and Bendis for his part shows a deeper sense of character and relationship dynamics than Johns does (or maybe it would be better to say that Bendis emphasizes character whereas Johns is a master of mythology). In any case, the strange fate of Pandora in the New 52 comes to mind, as do the multiple plot threads introduced in Forever Evil and then never pursued.

[Mia]

10 or so years ago when Bendis was on Daredevil. I would have been super excited for him to take over Batman. But not anymore, his writing has taken a serious nose dive. All his characters talk with the same voice and he writes people out of character to service a story. After his recent run with the X-books I've just essentially sworn off anything he's attached to.


I bought the first King Batman trade because of his work on Grayson and I like Finch's artwork. And I couldn't even get half way through it. It was boring. DC should hire a better writer for Batman. Someone who gets that Batman is genius. Not just a tv action hero.