Bendis Avengers Appreciation

[XPac]

It's the opposite, he tarnished all these characters, made them worse. Sentry, Ares, Marvel Boy and The Hood were all more interesting before Bendis touched them. It's like he was a kid in a candy store because he liked the original story but like a kid not understanding why he likes stuff, he produced to trip away everything that was interesting about them. Marvel Boy is not early Captain Marvel green-clad boyscout, under Morrison he was Namor only even more crazy and a one man super-weapon. He invaded the planet and declared war. Sentry was a disturbed man where you didn't even if he was a super-hero or if it was in his mind, who couldn't be a super-hero because it could unleash a great evil. Going back and trying to give an origin is missing the point. Even worse making him a boring Fabio wannabe. Hood was such an interesting take on a lowly characters trying to make big. He was like a dark Peter Parker. All that charm was washed away when suddenly the guy controls every criminals. Being the Avengers, Bendis should have used the Crimson Cowl instead. Or Taskmaster.

Also Cage and Spider-Woman were not lucky either. It became his pet characters and it felt like shoved on everyone's throats. Hell he didn't even write them well either. For characters he is supposed to like, i'll take the Azzarello take on Cage.

Again, regardless of how people feel he used the characters, I would still argue the fact that he used them GREATLY increases the odds of them being used by someone else.

He put a spotlight on characters that the casual reader probably didn't even know existed.

As for Cage... he's already in the Avengers cartoon, and at least has a MUCH greater chance of showing up on TV and movies because of Bendis usage of the character. He became a real break out player in the MU, leading not one but TWO teams at the moment. If you don't personally like it then you don't like it... but his stock rose.

[Zen-aku]

Ares and Sentry were both completely intolerable before bendis wrote them

people already hated the sentry, Bendis new that and used him as a great deconstruction of super heroes.

and Ares became a huge fan favorite for allot of people

and the hood works better as a straight up villain we have enough fence sitters as is

to say they were ruined is just wrong

[Deep_Sleeper]

I tried a couple of Avengers stories before Bendis and thought they weren't really for me. There was something about it that didn't appeal to me. Maybe this is what Avengers fans liked and it kind of sucks that this was taken away from them by Bendis, as he was the reason why I started buying and reading Avengers comics in the first place.

His inclusion of Spider-Man and Wolverine, while strictly for marketability and spotlight, made the comic feel fresh to me. Yeah, he could have used previous Avengers that hadn't graced the line-up for a while and done it that way, but Bendis' mission was to make the book more marketable and appealing to a bigger group. Those first few storylines of New Avengers were so fun to read. I just read them a few days ago (from issue 1-20) and they were great.

His decision to add in low-key characters like Luke Cage and Sentry were very much the kind of left-field choices that made the book awesome. Then he started just evolving what it meant to Avengers...he had them fall, rise, then be tarnished and then polished to be new celebrities.

Marvel had been planning for a long time for the Avengers to become the leader of the pack. It started off with Joe Quesada and it transitioned to one of Quesada's best finds to bring this about. The ultimate payoff was the movie being so amazing.

Bendis has done a lot to get me to read the Avengers. Once again, it's kind of unfortunate that it has come at the expense of classic Avengers fans not liking his version. Hopefully, with the prominence of the Avengers, there will be a book that everyone can learn to love.

p.s. I liked Ares before Bendis, but I am so glad he included Ares into Mighty. I became a big fan of the character after Bendis. I was actually sad to see what happened in Siege (another Bendis story that I really liked), but sometimes you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette.

[babybro]

In case you guys didn't notice, this is an "appreciation" thread, not a thread to air out you greviance towards bendis, if you have problems with bendis writing, take it to the other avengers threads, otherwise it's considered trolling. With that said, Bendis is my favorite writer under Marvel, and his new avengers continues to be the only team book
I pick up from Marvel. I'm very sad to see him go, he did so much for luke cage, taking the character who was basically under the radar and started one of the biggest pushes
for the character in the last decade. Before bendis, I never would have expected to see him on cartoons, toys, actor campaigning to use him. I give bendis so much credit
and I'll continue to enjoy his work on ultimate spider man :-)

[Paladin King]

Bendis' creator-owned work on Powers and his run on Powers were, along with Y: the Last Man, a big part of what brought me back to comics. Those two books, along with Alias, are among my favourite comics of all time. As a result of this, I'll buy anything he puts his name to.

Overall, I don't think his Avengers work was his strongest stuff. There were ups and downs and I think he stayed a little too long, but when he was on, he was on. I absolutely loved Dark Avengers, for instance. I never really cared for the "big" Marvel books and Dark Avengers was one of the first that I really enjoyed.

[XPac]

Bendis' creator-owned work on Powers and his run on Powers were, along with Y: the Last Man, a big part of what brought me back to comics. Those two books, along with Alias, are among my favourite comics of all time. As a result of this, I'll buy anything he puts his name to.

Overall, I don't think his Avengers work was his strongest stuff. There were ups and downs and I think he stayed a little too long, but when he was on, he was on. I absolutely loved Dark Avengers, for instance. I never really cared for the "big" Marvel books and Dark Avengers was one of the first that I really enjoyed.

Yeah, I do think Dark Avengers was probably his best Avengers book.

Shame the Utopia stuff got jammed in there.

[jackolover]

I see an end of an era approaching. Up until Bendis started writing Avengers, I had long tired of the approach that Avengers were limited to the one Masion, with the same characters and the same villains. I lamented the loss of the Avengers because they had tired from the perpetual formula of the same villain appearing and no one knew the difference. With Bendis' arrival, he immediately reformatted the sequences and gave a new look to teams as he created more and more of them. NA, MA, DA, MA, avengers Assembled. Nothing was left for too long as he changed them from Caps, to Tony's to Osborn's to Luke's.

The biggest difference in the Bendis era has been the use of down time in his stories. A lot of the time Avengers were seen rushing into a crisis and the characters were basically ignored. You can't say that with Bendis. Bendis gave a lot of time to people to develop relationships with each other. It became a little annoying to some readers, but it was the interplay between characters that lifted the team closeness and made them less annonomous. I liked how Bendis showed the Avengers making mistakes, like Clint Barton during Dark Reign, and Dr Strange losing his title as Sorcorer Supreme. That was probably the biggest development of Stephen Strange in his whole career.

But the diamond in Bendis' jewel box was the Dark Avengers. He can turn a bunch of unrelated, villains into a team of high achieving heros, led by the character Bendis decided should be the torch bearer of the Dark Reign, Norman Osborn, and elevated Norman into the stratosphere of villaindom, which I don't think anybody would have attempted if not for Bendis.

[ChristmasFanatic]

I love Bendis, just like someone said here, I stopped collecting comics in the mid 90s. Got interested with Civil War, but fully returned cuz of Bendis' Avengers.

He doesnt do same ol' formula just to appease certain fans. He do what he do cuz it is his style, its how he wants it to be.

That said, I cant wait for the Ultron Wars!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[jackolover]

I was originally dubious of Bendis. I honestly thought he couldn't write team books, (after Ultimate X-Men), and gave him no chance of lasting on the book. A few times it looked like Bendis was flat with his ability to keep a team book interesting. But Bendis persisted, and with his New Avengers and all those Secret Invasion tie-ins, he proved that there was more to an Avengers book than just beating Ultron. You could write detective books in amongst the glorious heroics, which I didn't think possible, yet I was proven wrong.

[tesh_karde]

I genuinely enjoy Bendis' Avenger run. He's definitely done a ton of stuff, brought back a ton of characters, and shown facets of newer characters that we likely would not have seen without him. One of my favorite parts of his run was when Yu joined New Avengers, post-Civil War, and the team was on the run. Those were some great comics. I think Bendis definitely has a place in the pantheon of great Avengers writers, despite what message board nay-sayers may type.

[ChristmasFanatic]

I genuinely enjoy Bendis' Avenger run. He's definitely done a ton of stuff, brought back a ton of characters, and shown facets of newer characters that we likely would not have seen without him. One of my favorite parts of his run was when Yu joined New Avengers, post-Civil War, and the team was on the run. Those were some great comics. I think Bendis definitely has a place in the pantheon of great Avengers writers, despite what message board nay-sayers may type.

God, I love those stories, that goes parallel with Mighty Avengers(who were pro-reg). lol. Without Bendis, its Avengers vs. Ultron or Kang or Doom X100000000000000000000000.

[DiceRoll]

God, I love those stories, that goes parallel with Mighty Avengers(who were pro-reg). lol. Without Bendis, its Avengers vs. Ultron or Kang or Doom X100000000000000000000000.

Um...what? Didn't he write the Avengers fighting them anyway?

[XPac]

Um...what? Didn't he write the Avengers fighting them anyway?

That was sort of the neat thing about Bendis writing both New and Mighty during that period... he got to do 2 different things.

Mighty was doing more "conventional" classic Avengers stuff.... fighting Ultron and Doom. New Avengers dealt with a lot of the new elements Bendis incorporated into the franchise... the Hood, the Hand, the Skrulls, etc.

And he still managed to tie it all together. That was definately a fun era for me.

[XPac]

On formspring Breevort said the calculated that Bendis will have ended up writing about 232 issues of Avengers.

Wow.

http://www.formspring.me/TomBrevoort...12729568980723

[Venom Melendez]

I enjoyed Bendis run Avengers, i don't care what anyone says. There are some things i didn't like, but i enjoyed most of it.