Re: Captain America series discussion (SPOILERS!)
B. Hypocritical - Bendis has been working over the entire 616 Universe for years now and I've been giving him props for it since but now Brubaker does it and he's the good writer and Bendis is ****?
I don't think people dis Bendis' work because of how inter-connected it is; they hate it because he does things like kill off Alpha Flight in a single panel, and replace Nick Fury with an unintersting character with no prior backstory. In short, there are certain moments when he has shown blatant disregard for the history of 616, in his efforts to make things more integrated.
I'll be the first to admit that he initially did a good job of integrating Daredevil's story firmly within Marvel continutity, with the appearances of all the significant non-mutant NYC heroes, throughout the course of his run.
Likewise, when
Secret War began, I was still very impressed with his attempts to tie everything together.
It was really "Disassembled" onwards when things started to go awry.
The beauty of Bendis' early approach to integration -- and now Brubaker's -- is that it feels like each *individual* books feels firmly rooted in a shared universe, if you know what's going on in the other titles, but they still read perfectly well, on their own. I prefer it that way. So that readers can appreciate it, at several levels.
Initially,
Pulse felt that way, but eventually it became so dependent on familiarity with other books' plots, it lost its value as a title on its own. That's a crucial ****-up, by anybody's standards.
Brubaker's work hasn't reached that point yet, and hopefully never will.
