I'm getting sick of Bendis' dialogue style

T

The Overlord

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I'm getting sick of Bendis' dialogue style. I liked it back in USM and Daredevil, it fit the tone of the series. But it doesn't work in the Avengers, everyone sounds the same, everyone sounds like an ironic, snarky, hipster who makes quips. These larger then life super heroes facing down Earth shattering threats, not the cast of Friends talking in a coffee shop. That's maybe how Spidey should sound, but that doesn't work with an arrogant, pretentious, egomaniac like Dr. Doom. Dr. Doom calling Ms. Marvel fat is very much out of character for him. At this point it seems like Bendis pretty weak when it comes to making these characters unique, its not good characterization.
 
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The Overlord said:
I'm getting sick of Bendis' dialogue style. I liked it back in USM and Daredevil, it fit the tone of the series. But it doesn't work in the Avengers, everyone sounds the same, everyone sounds like an ironic, snarky, hipster who makes quips. These larger then life super heroes facing down Earth shattering threats, not the cast of Friends talking in a coffee shop. That's maybe how Spidey should sound, but that doesn't work with an arrogant, pretentious, egomaniac like Dr. Doom. Dr. Doom calling Ms. Marvel fat is very much out of character for him. At this point it seems like Bendis pretty weak when it comes to making these characters unique, its not good characterization.
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+10000 Internets for you, my friend.

It was fine until we realized that he pretty much can't write any other way. And since he seems to be on every other book, it gets old even faster.

He sucks. Bad. I'm really hoping he can get back to the tone and style he had on Daredevil with Moon Knight because he seemed to do better with it, but I'm not expecting much.
 
I've just been reading his current runs on Avengers and New Avengers and while it's still pretty bad, his handle on diverse dialogue seems to be getting gradually more tolerable.
 
E said:
+10000 Internets for you, my friend.

It was fine until we realized that he pretty much can't write any other way. And since he seems to be on every other book, it gets old even faster.

He sucks. Bad. I'm really hoping he can get back to the tone and style he had on Daredevil with Moon Knight because he seemed to do better with it, but I'm not expecting much.
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I think Bendis is not a bad writer, like say Jeph Loeb, but he is an extremely limited one. He is writing style works with solo urban vigilant heroes like Daredevil and Ultimate Spidey and Jessica Jones. You take him out of that box and he flounders. He shouldn't be writing team books or bombastic super hero stories about alien invasions or Norman Osborn attacking Asgard, other writers have a way better handle on that. I think Bendis would be better off getting an Icon title where he can create his own characters and do what ever he wants with them, rather then making the Avengers all sound like ironic 20 something hipsters.

I think I'm starting to like DC better then Marvel, even though I have alway preferred Marvel since I was a child. Mainly because I like Geoff Johns writing style better then I like Bendis' and Bendis is almost everywhere in Marvel nowadays.

Zombipanda said:
I've just been reading his current runs on Avengers and New Avengers and while it's still pretty bad, his handle on diverse dialogue seems to be getting gradually more tolerable.
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Maybe, but it seems to me like there are many writers out there are that are way better at giving characters more unique voices. Waiting for Bendis to play catch up in terms of unique characterization doesn't seem as appealing as reading the works of something who does have a handle on this already.
 
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The Overlord said:
Maybe, but it seems to me like there are many writers out there are that are way better at giving characters more unique voices. Waiting for Bendis to play catch up in terms of unique characterization doesn't seem as appealing as reading the works of something who does have a handle on this already.
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A very fine point.

It's too bad, since I do think Bendis can get very clever about making statements about how the mere existence of superhumans has a dramatic impact on media, politics and the like, and has a keen sense of how the zeitgeist has changed over the past century.

If he could just get past his 'samey snarky hipster dialogue and his incapacity to develop meaningful endings (instead of copping out all the time like he's done on even 'signature work' like Daredevil and Powers) he'd graduate to the level of a much better writer.
 
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ourchair said:
A very fine point.

It's too bad, since I do think Bendis can get very clever about making statements about how the mere existence of superhumans has a dramatic impact on media, politics and the like, and has a keen sense of how the zeitgeist has changed over the past century.

If he could just get past his 'samey snarky hipster dialogue and his incapacity to develop meaningful endings (instead of copping out all the time like he's done on even 'signature work' like Daredevil and Powers) he'd graduate to the level of a much better writer.
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I'm beginning to think Bendis would work better if he was paired with another writer at Marvel who is better at writing unique characters then he is. Perhaps someone like Matt Fracation, Dan Slott, Mark Waid, Jonathan Hickman, Ed Brubaker, Peter David, etc.

Bendis has come up with some interesting ideas with the Avengers: the Hood's gang of super villains, Secret Invasion, Dark reign, etc. The problem is the execution on these ideas often falls flat, so while the idea is interesting, the story is not. If he is paired with another writer, then perhaps this writer can help smooth over some of the flaws in Bendis' writing style.
 
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To be honest, haven't we had this conversation in various threads about a hundred times now?
 
The Overlord said:
I'm beginning to think Bendis would work better if he was paired with another writer at Marvel who is better at writing unique characters then he is.
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I think Mark Millar fits that description, and Ultimate Fantastic Four wasn't very good.
 
E said:
I think Mark Millar fits that description, and Ultimate Fantastic Four wasn't very good.
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I wouldn't pair Bendis with Millar though, Millar also sometimes has problems giving a character a unique voice as well, though he isn't nearly as bad as Bendis is on this front. I think pairing him with some of the writers I mentioned would yield better results. You need to pair Bendis with someone who is really good at the things Bendis is not good at, pairing him with someone with a similar flaw doesn't quite work.

Zombipanda said:
To be honest, haven't we had this conversation in various threads about a hundred times now?
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There is a big difference between having an issue discussed within a thread about something else and having a thread dedicated to just that issue. No one can say this thread is going off topic by discussing just this, for example. Besides there always be some repetition on the net, how does that make this thread less valid?
 
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The Overlord said:
I wouldn't pair Bendis with Millar though, Millar also sometimes has problems giving a character a unique voice as well, though he isn't nearly as bad as Bendis is on this front. I think pairing him with some of the writers I mentioned would yield better results. You need to pair Bendis with someone who is really good at the things Bendis is not good at, pairing him with someone with a similar flaw doesn't quite work.
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I'd worry that you'd just be wasting the other writer's potential by having him babysit Bendis.

It's always struck me that Bendis' particular cadence for speech is his strength. He's not a master of subtlety and he's not a master of plotting. His best material is actually the stuff that relies on his David Mamet speech patterns. Ultimate Spider-Man was (is?) a strong series because the snappy back-and-forth made sense for snarky teenagers and for intimate family interactions. Powers works (or so I've been told) because of the back-and-forth between the genre savvy detective partners.

He's a good writer who's unfortunately limited in his style to a fairly narrow type of story. That's the case for plenty of fine writers. The problem isn't that he's not broad enough. It's overexposure. He should stick to the type of stories he's good at telling: relatively small-scale, glib character drama. He's good at that.

Having Bendis write a big team book or event series is like having Wes Anderson write a blockbuster disaster movie.
 
Zombipanda said:
To be honest, haven't we had this conversation in various threads about a hundred times now?
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An identical thing has happened a hundred times in this community, and yet it took many posts to notice. Recognition of 'same-ness' is not this community's strong point.

That's an even BIGGER indictment of Bendis' lack of originality, since we unanimously HAVE noticed! :)

(If I just threw in a few 'Oy' s and a bunch of unrelated asides, this comment could BE in a Bendis comic!)
 
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fenway said:
An identical thing has happened a hundred times in this community, and yet it took many posts to notice. Recognition of 'same-ness' is not this community's strong point.

That's an even BIGGER indictment of Bendis' lack of originality, since we unanimously HAVE noticed! :)

(If I just threw in a few 'Oy' s and a bunch of unrelated asides, this comment could BE in a Bendis comic!)
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That's why this community is so small and why Joe kalicki get's banned from the Bendis boards. This site is like the antithesis to fanboy websites everywhere. We have logic and reason.
 
Zombipanda - I admire your tuchus

j Agamemnon - My TUCHUS?

Zombipanda - Yes. That.... I so admire that.

j Agamemnon -You have got to be kidding me. Of all the things to admire about me (amd my tuchus IS and admirable tuchus) - of all the things to admire about me, you admire THAT?

Zombipanda - Yes. That. So. very. that.

j Agamemnon -Oy. Just shut up. What about these aliens?


Zombipanda - Let's keep blasting alien butt with our superpowers. (I mean - when aliens show up, what good are these superpowers if you don't use them to, y'know, blast their butts?)

j Agamemnon -Butts? Alien butts? Again with the tuchus! What is it with you?

-BOOOOOOM- (artist, please cram 3 pages of action here into one panel, as I have used a LOT of space on 'Tarantino-lite' conversation)


j Agamemnon -Phew! That was awesome! That was awesome squared! That was awesome to the power of awesome! I destroyed the front side of the alien forces and you handled the back side!

Zombipanda - You said 'back side'

j Agamemnon -Oy vey

E - Get a room, you two - anyone see where Jessica Drew went? Now THERE's a back side!

*artist of lesser ability - please put in a flashback that is AT BEST tenuously related to anything going on here. this will keep artist of greater quality on book for a longer period of time.

*Flash forward and end with a close up of Spider-man, Wolverine or both.

*Pad book with a new section called 'An anal History of the Avengers' that will mock the readers' stories from their childhood.

End



signed - BMB
 
Beautiful...send it to post.

Also, oddly enough Jen says I have an amazing tuchus. And I just got spell checked by firefox. It thinks I want to spell Tucson.
 
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