Beyond The Panels #16: Brian Bendis And Why He Kind Of Sucks

So, House of M fucking sucked. We'll get more into that later.

Brian Bendis has basically been Marvel's top writer since he took over Avengers in 2004. It's been.... well, it's been long winded and boring and pretty much one of the worst periods in Marvel history. It's not entirely his fault, because he's good... sometimes and in very specific circumstances.

I started reading Bendis on Daredevil. The owners of my local comic shop raved about it, and there was a half price back issue sale, so I caught myself up to the current numbering (I don't think I got every issue he had written, but I got a bunch of them; I feel like I started on #24 or #25) and started getting it monthly and I enjoyed it. I was never really a fan of Daredevil- I always considered him way overrated. However, this was cool- him denying his secret identity and getting more and more unhinged by the whole thing. Alex Maleev's art was dark and gorgeous and Bendis's writing fit the tone- things were heavy, with bits of snarky levity every now and again to lighten things up. It was fun. Eventually, I began to notice that there was very little action in the book (and what little there was was kind of bad) and that as time gone on, I was less enthralled by the story and kind of bored, but I was invested, so I stayed on.

When he took over Avengers, I had high hopes and in his first story, Avengers Disassembled, it looked like everything was going to be great- it was action packed, dramatic, fun. I was a little pissed about him killing Vision and Hawkeye, but you have to break a few eggs and all that. New Avengers was announced and I saw the roster and I was excited for that. Wolverine an Avenger? Fuck, yes.

New Avengers committed the one cardinal sin that no Avengers book ever should- it's boring as fuck. Around the time New Avengers started, I was realizing that Bendis was shit when it came to writing action and that he sort of relied a bit too much on drama and quips. However, on New Avengers, I also saw that he had no idea how to write characters with their individual voices. Every character quipped like Spider-Man, except for his favorites- Luke Cage and Spider-Woman had individual voices, as did Wolverine. It took me a while to stop reading the book- it was issue 20 when I stopped- but that also had more to do with a job loss and no money for comics than it did for me smartening up and just dropping the book.

See, as a comic fan, I understand that you can't have wall to wall action every issue. I understand that you have to have drama, character development, and humor. I look at something like Chris Claremont on Uncanny X-Men and see a perfect balance of all of those things. The thing about Bendis is that I'm pretty sure he read those issues of Uncanny X-Men as well. I'm pretty sure he learned the same lessons I did, the difference being this- for whatever reason, he doesn't see a need for much action or individual voices in his books. He has his wheelhouse and it's overwrought talky boring bullshit.

If you like that, that's fine. Apparently a lot of people do, because Marvel made him their top guy, which is problematic for another reason- he ignores all continuity but the continuity he likes. Marvel is a company that has always been built on its continuity and if your top guy is ignoring it, then it's going to set a bad precedent for the rest of the company... which it has. Marvel continuity isn't really continuity anymore, unless it has to do with the next big event. Then it counts.

Bendis and action is also problematic. See, comics sort of need action. You can say that action in comics isn't extremely important because it's a static medium, but a good artist can draw things in a way that it gives you the illusion of movement- it makes it easier for your brain to fill in the gaps and such. Bendis has worked with a lot of these artists- Leinil Yu, David Finch, John Romita Jr, Olivier Coipiel, and Mike Deodato. These are some of the best action artists working in today's comic industry. They all draw dynamic, powerful action sequences. Until they work with Bendis, then it looks exactly like it is- static snap shots of action, nothing dynamic, nothing that you would call action packed. It's just pictures.

I'm not going to speculate on the whys of this, because without seeing one of scripts, I can't really say. I got second hand information from a comic artist who worked with him who shopped at a comic store I used to work at that he won't let the artist choreograph the action and pretty much requires that his panel descriptions are gospel, but that's just second hand. There could be a variety of reasons that the work of some of the best artists in the industry isn't up to par when they're working with him. Still, the point stands- if you're reading a Bendis book, there's going to be bad action in there.

His event books are pretty much trash. House of M, Secret Invasion, Age of Ultron, and Civil War II are all varying levels of bad (if I had to rank them least bad to worst, I'd go Age of Ultron, Secret Invasion, Civil War II, House of M), with Siege being the only one I'd classify as good and I would say I think that's because it's only four issues long- it doesn't fall victim to Bendis bloating it up with a whole lot of talky, boring, mostly anti-climactic bullshit. That's a Bendis event hallmark- too many issues, too much talking, too much "drama" that no one will care about. The action in the books is either bad or mostly non-existent. There are concepts that demand more world building and they get none. Nowhere is this more evident than the worst event book I've ever read, House of M.

Fucking House of M.

House of M is eight issues long, but it feels like twenty issues. Of those eight issues, you really only have about an issue and a half of important stuff. The rest is filler and it's not even good filler- it's long winded boring filler. I get that in event books like this one, you have tie-ins for the world building, but I don't buy tie-ins issues of books I don't usually buy. I just buy the books I already buy and the main series. If you sell me a book about an alternate world where mutants are dominant and Magneto runs shit, I want to get the full feel of that from the book I'm reading. Show me that shit. Don't tell me about it- Show me. Instead, we get a whole lot of Wolverine and Layla Miller (full disclosure, I do like both of these characters) wandering around giving heroes their memories back and meeting the human resistance, which I guess was a world building issue, but not the world building I cared about. This is supposed to be Magneto's dream world- I want more of that. I want it in the main book. That's what you sold me, not a long boring road trip comic.

Every hero that gets their memory back reacts in the same way- "I'M GONNA KILL MAGNETO FOR THIS!!!!!" This is pretty insulting to the reader- we know that's what they'd think, because they think Magneto is behind the whole thing, but it's also serves to make the shock of the reveal that it was actually Pietro more shocking.... which isn't really needed, because WE WERE ALREADY SURPRISED BY THAT. The whole book is a bait and switch- we're supposed to think Magneto did this. He didn't. You don't need to further that shock by making the heroes say that. Pietro had been on the side of angels for so long, it's weird to see him doing this, even for Wanda and it adds that creepy dimension to their relationship that Mark Millar went for in the Ultimate Universe that wasn't really there in the 616. Sure, when they were younger, he was overprotective of her, but their relationship had changed over the years as she grew more powerful. They even served on separate teams for years. Sorry for the tangent there. Anyway, we were going to be shocked regardless. It's not like there were clues to lead us in the Pietro direction, so to underline that everyone thought it was Magneto in this way feels to me like he thought us readers were too dumb to get that people would be mad at Magneto or how mad they'd be.

The strange thing to me about House of M is that I'm apparently in the minority with this opinion. A lot of people look back on it as a seminal event, one of their favorites. Maybe they read it in trade. Maybe they're okay with long winded, boring, talky bullshit. Maybe they haven't read it in years and really like the whole "No More Mutants" things and that fact that it actually mattered to the status quo. I don't know. I can say that I read it every year to make sure I still hate it. To make sure that I still feel it's the worst event I've ever read and you know what- it holds up. It holds up as the worst event I've ever read.

Another distressing thing about the book is that is was beginning of Marvel in general and Bendis in particular dismantling Grant Morrison's contributions to the Marvel Universe. The mutant population boom was a big thing in New X-Men and this book destroyed it. Bendis would go on to lame up Marvel Boy (The Protector? Ugh) and do away with cat Beast because.... his secondary mutation was killing him because..... reasons? It's all rather petty and I feel it's because Bendis knows Morrison is better than him and wanted to make sure his personal legacy was ascendant at Marvel instead of Morrison's. Of course, that's just one (super Grant Morrison) fan's opinion.

All that said, I really liked Dark Avengers. Bendis's style worked well with the book and Deodato's art can make nearly everything look good. The book singlehandedly made me a fan of Ares. I liked the portrayal of all the characters (although, Moonstone was never really that slutty before, but as I've said before, Bendis has never cared about any one's continuity but his own). His snarky dialogue style worked with a bunch of villains and his Norman Osborn was the best Norman Osborn I'd ever read- a bipolar dude, swinging between the poles of hero and villain. He made The Sentry into a creepy monster. I may dislike nearly everything else he did, but I'd definitely recommend Dark Avengers to anyone.

Eventually, because the universe sort of hates me, Bendis took over the X-Men and.... well, it started out pretty alright. Bendis, as I said above seems to be a fan of Claremont, so I figured he'd probably be able to do justice to the mutants and his action writing had gotten a lot better over the years. I felt he was a good fit- I remember plenty of issues of Uncanny and X-Men back in the 90s that were nothing but talking and I had enjoyed them. The problem came in that Bendis's imagination doesn't work very well with the X-Men... or really with anything that high concept. Bendis is best when he can stay as close to street level as possible. Get too far above that and the whole thing starts to fall apart. Brian Bendis made me do something that Chuck Austen couldn't make me do- stop reading most of the X-Men books (I still read Jason Aaron's Wolverine and the X-Men because it was amazing and a top five best ever X-Men run).

Look, if you like Bendis, that's cool. He's done good stuff. Even I can acknowledge that. Apparently, Infamous Iron Man was pretty great. I tried it, because if you put Doctor Doom in his own book, I'll read it. I could only last five issues before all the Bendis-isms pissed me off enough to stop- the mischaracterization, telling me things but not showing me things, the tease a fight then begin the next issue after the fight, and the waaaay too much talking. His tropes piss me off. His style pisses me off. I wish it was different, because so much of the important Marvel stuff of the last fifteen years has been written by him, but it's not- Bendis has made sure his stuff becomes part of the canon and for me, most of it is just plain bad. His new thing has been trying to get Tony Stark in a position to one day be Sorcerer Supreme which.... goddammit, is that dumb. Just so fucking dumb.

If you look at Marvel since he's become ascendant, there have been loads of writers who are waaay more talented than him- guys like Morrison, Remender, Brubaker, Hickman, Lemire- who Marvel let leave while continuing to throw money at Bendis. Guys like Aaron get overlooked for him. If we look at Marvel right now, a company that is easily at its lowest creative ebb in a loooong time you can lay all of that right at Bendis's feet. He was the top guy during the biggest bleeding of fans and talent the company has had since the 90s. In the end, the proof is in the pudding- Brian Bendis kind of sucks and because of him, the rest of Marvel kind of sucks now too.

Next Issue- I love The Wicked and The Divine. Next post, I'm going to talk about it. So, join us next time, here on.... 

Beyond The Panels!!!!!