Ice
Teh Sexy Monkey Queen
So Bendis....isn't he bald?
The Bendis Debate
- Thread starter TheManWithoutFear
- Start date
TheManWithoutFear
#1 reason not to join UC
plastikpulse said:
:shock: Dude, I'm nowhere near proMillar either but The Ultimates is annoyingly untouchable. You can't refuse it. It's just too good. Like people have said, Watchmen good.
Ice
Teh Sexy Monkey Queen
That means no hair, right?icemastertron said:
Bass
Nexus of the World
randomthoughts said:
I agree, it is a poor point, which is why I never made it. As I stated earlier, I was not comparing Watchmen or Alan Moore to Bendis. Someone stated "Nothing is universally loved nor universally hated" and I said "Who hates Watchmen" to point out that perhaps some things are universally loved.
What makes this worse is I just explained this like three posts ago. Please pay attention before criticising me for your own misinterpretations that I've already cleared up.
TheManWithoutFear said:
Compound is making a perfect point.
The idea of utilising continuity to tell stories is to build on previous stories and tell better ones, not create stories that are unreadable without prior knowledge.
Compound makes the point that Alias had stories that revolved around past events in the Marvel universe and that the stories were written in such a way that if you had no prior knowledge of those events, it didn't matter as the value and meaning of those events was set up and fully experienced within the confines of that specific story.
Compound then continues to explain that Avengers Disassembled and House of M revolve around characters and events in the Marvel Universe but the story is written in such a way that is has no meaning or value unless you already know these characters and these setting. It is unreadable except to fans, and remains so until you research the characters and events and read the original stories to put this single story into context.
The proliferation of the latter type of story is exactly why the Ultimate universe started (outside of movie tie-ins). The latter type of story turns away new readers, and are unreadable and inaccessible. Bendis continually jibes ****ty 90s comics and attacks regular continuity as being this big incomprehensible mess, yet in the last year, he has produced two 'events' which are exactly the type of stories he says he hates. He's a ****ing hypocrite. Same goes for Infinite Crisis which requires an entry in wikipedia to have any meaning.
As for the argument that unreadable, continuity-ridden messes of a stories are good because they make you look up older stories, three reasons why this is nonsense: 1- the only way this is good is if you work for Marvel as you're selling more comics as people are forced to by other comics to make sense of the seven they just bought - and that's bollocks since you'll turn away more people than you'll draw in. 2 - it's bollocks because these stories are not about anything meaningful, but they are stories about other stories, which does no one any good and is the definition of 'useless art' as it does nothing for anybody. It's just fanfiction. 3 - These types of stories would not be tolerated in film, television, theatre, novels, or radio. No way, no how. If they did, they'd fail instantly as people went on to watch something else. Only comics have this bull**** continuity crap. Even soap operas don't require you to see previous episodes to make sense of the one you're watching. Comics are the only medium where, when you give someone a complete story, you have to give them two or three others for them to make sense of it or explain it to them. That's simply not good enough. It has nothing to do with character history or complexity. Superheroes are not that deep or complex, despite what Bendis says as he cashes another paycheck for writing Captain America as a one-dimensional boy scout or Spider-Man as a whining teenage brat. Superheroes do not have an amazing history. Superheroes are thought of as modern mythology. The actual mythologies - Ancient Greece, Egypt, Norse, et al - all have not only more complex and deep characters, but more stories and cultures behind them - they have entire civilisations behind them. Superheroes do not come close. There is no integral reason specific to the Marvel or DC universes or the characters that inhabit that require this horrendous mess of unreadable continuity as has been proven time and time again by Morrison, Moore, Millar, Kelly, Ellis, even Bendis, and many others beside them. These stories... It's **** writing, and it's **** editorialising. It's this that makes comics appear as bollocks and I do not accept or tolerate the idea that it is 'good'. It is self-destructive.
Plastikpulse said:
Welcome, PP.
I can say Bendis doesn't deliver quite easily - first of all, depth of emotion out of a character isn't writing tears into their eyes and have them throw up during a nervous breakdown. Okay, maybe it is - the first time. But since Bendis likes to do this to every series he writes, it's become not only a cliche, but a lazy and fake attempt at sincere emotion. His characters rarely have two-dimensions let alone more, especially when he writes a team book. Captain America has one dimension - "good guy". The Sentry is "crazy". Luke Cage is "cool". Spider-Man is "funny". Wolverine is "grumpy" and so forth. Bendis is so concerend with making his superheroes 'realistic people' that he has living legends stutter under pressure and has them fight, talk, scream, yell, and act like teenagers in a tantrum. 'Realistic' doesn't mean 'normal', 'ordinary', or 'pathetic'.
As for the mutant titles 'needing' House of M - at what point did the X-Men need another reality-altering event that created mass confusion in its audience? Is Beast alive or dead or human or what? Which mutants don't have powers? What does this mean? Where is Xavier? What is Wolverine's past and what does it mean that he's remembered it? All it did was take a series that made a LOT of sense after Morrison's run (and in fact, Morrison did the concept of wiping out the majority of mutant kind in his first issue of his run and have it mean more than Bendis did in 8-issues of House of M) and make it a complete jumbled mess of missing characters. Grant Morrison decimated mutantkind in his first issue, restructered Genosha, created the future of mutanity, revealed Wolverine's past with brilliant insight, introduced a plethora of understandable and likeable heroes and villains, took Magneto to the end of the line as an antagonist, created a fully-working and true mutant sub-culture complete with fashions and designer drugs, discussed how that culture integrated and affect human society, soldified Xavier's school's structure and its students as well as Xavier's influence over mutant culture with the X-corporations, ended the story of the Phoenix, changed the roster and the relationships of the X-Men, invented secondary mutations and the extinction gene, turned the Sentinels into a terror, tied up all its loose ends, paid off ALL of the above, and he did it all of it solely in "New X-Men" - and I'm probably missing something else too. No tie-ins. No minis and no crossovers. You can pick up #119 to #154 and read nothing else and it all makes perfect sense. Morrison revitalised the X-Men. House of M took it 10 years backwards.
Bendis almost never delivers. He starts his arcs promising big changes and powerful resolutions, and instead, delivers mindless pap where the hero is saved when a god-like superhero or government agency steps in and saves his ***, so all his characters end up doing is watch someone else do their job.
Bendis is all about the story, but he seems unable to write any good ones. All he does right now is pump out unreadable bull**** and claims its because he's following the story. He's not. He's just padding it out to 6-issues each and every month and then not resolving it. That's not storytelling.
(Sorry Plastikpulse, I know you're new and I don't mean to sound like I'm attacking you. I do mean welcome and I hope you continue to post here and this doesn't drive you away. This is not soley directed to you, nor is it anger on my part. It's frustration and it's kind of meant for everyone to hear. I'm not trying to tear you down, so please don't act like I'm bullying you. I know it may sound like I am, but that's not my intention.
)
TheManWithoutFear
#1 reason not to join UC
Bass said:I agree, it is a poor point, which is why I never made it. As I stated earlier, I was not comparing Watchmen or Alan Moore to Bendis. Someone stated "Nothing is universally loved nor universally hated" and I said "Who hates Watchmen" to point out that perhaps some things are universally loved.
What makes this worse is I just explained this like three posts ago. Please pay attention before criticising me for your own misinterpretations that I've already cleared up.
Compound is making a perfect point.
The idea of utilising continuity to tell stories is to build on previous stories and tell better ones, not create stories that are unreadable without prior knowledge.
Compound makes the point that Alias had stories that revolved around past events in the Marvel universe and that the stories were written in such a way that if you had no prior knowledge of those events, it didn't matter as the value and meaning of those events was set up and fully experienced within the confines of that specific story.
Compound then continues to explain that Avengers Disassembled and House of M revolve around characters and events in the Marvel Universe but the story is written in such a way that is has no meaning or value unless you already know these characters and these setting. It is unreadable except to fans, and remains so until you research the characters and events and read the original stories to put this single story into context.
The proliferation of the latter type of story is exactly why the Ultimate universe started (outside of movie tie-ins). The latter type of story turns away new readers, and are unreadable and inaccessible. Bendis continually jibes ****ty 90s comics and attacks regular continuity as being this big incomprehensible mess, yet in the last year, he has produced two 'events' which are exactly the type of stories he says he hates. He's a ****ing hypocrite. Same goes for Infinite Crisis which requires an entry in wikipedia to have any meaning.
As for the argument that unreadable, continuity-ridden messes of a stories are good because they make you look up older stories, three reasons why this is nonsense: 1- the only way this is good is if you work for Marvel as you're selling more comics as people are forced to by other comics to make sense of the seven they just bought - and that's bollocks since you'll turn away more people than you'll draw in. 2 - it's bollocks because these stories are not about anything meaningful, but they are stories about other stories, which does no one any good and is the definition of 'useless art' as it does nothing for anybody. It's just fanfiction. 3 - These types of stories would not be tolerated in film, television, theatre, novels, or radio. No way, no how. If they did, they'd fail instantly as people went on to watch something else. Only comics have this bull**** continuity crap. Even soap operas don't require you to see previous episodes to make sense of the one you're watching. Comics are the only medium where, when you give someone a complete story, you have to give them two or three others for them to make sense of it or explain it to them. That's simply not good enough. It has nothing to do with character history or complexity. Superheroes are not that deep or complex, despite what Bendis says as he cashes another paycheck for writing Captain America as a one-dimensional boy scout or Spider-Man as a whining teenage brat. Superheroes do not have an amazing history. Superheroes are thought of as modern mythology. The actual mythologies - Ancient Greece, Egypt, Norse, et al - all have not only more complex and deep characters, but more stories and cultures behind them - they have entire civilisations behind them. Superheroes do not come close. There is no integral reason specific to the Marvel or DC universes or the characters that inhabit that require this horrendous mess of unreadable continuity as has been proven time and time again by Morrison, Moore, Millar, Kelly, Ellis, even Bendis, and many others beside them. These stories... It's **** writing, and it's **** editorialising. It's this that makes comics appear as bollocks and I do not accept or tolerate the idea that it is 'good'. It is self-destructive.
Welcome, PP.
I can say Bendis doesn't deliver quite easily - first of all, depth of emotion out of a character isn't writing tears into their eyes and have them throw up during a nervous breakdown. Okay, maybe it is - the first time. But since Bendis likes to do this to every series he writes, it's become not only a cliche, but a lazy and fake attempt at sincere emotion. His characters rarely have two-dimensions let alone more, especially when he writes a team book. Captain America has one dimension - "good guy". The Sentry is "crazy". Luke Cage is "cool". Spider-Man is "funny". Wolverine is "grumpy" and so forth. Bendis is so concerend with making his superheroes 'realistic people' that he has living legends stutter under pressure and has them fight, talk, scream, yell, and act like teenagers in a tantrum. 'Realistic' doesn't mean 'normal', 'ordinary', or 'pathetic'.
As for the mutant titles 'needing' House of M - at what point did the X-Men need another reality-altering event that created mass confusion in its audience? Is Beast alive or dead or human or what? Which mutants don't have powers? What does this mean? Where is Xavier? What is Wolverine's past and what does it mean that he's remembered it? All it did was take a series that made a LOT of sense after Morrison's run (and in fact, Morrison did the concept of wiping out the majority of mutant kind in his first issue of his run and have it mean more than Bendis did in 8-issues of House of M) and make it a complete jumbled mess of missing characters. Grant Morrison decimated mutantkind in his first issue, restructered Genosha, created the future of mutanity, revealed Wolverine's past with brilliant insight, introduced a plethora of understandable and likeable heroes and villains, took Magneto to the end of the line as an antagonist, created a fully-working and true mutant sub-culture complete with fashions and designer drugs, discussed how that culture integrated and affect human society, soldified Xavier's school's structure and its students as well as Xavier's influence over mutant culture with the X-corporations, ended the story of the Phoenix, changed the roster and the relationships of the X-Men, invented secondary mutations and the extinction gene, turned the Sentinels into a terror, tied up all its loose ends, paid off ALL of the above, and he did it all of it solely in "New X-Men" - and I'm probably missing something else too. No tie-ins. No minis and no crossovers. You can pick up #119 to #154 and read nothing else and it all makes perfect sense. Morrison revitalised the X-Men. House of M took it 10 years backwards.
Bendis almost never delivers. He starts his arcs promising big changes and powerful resolutions, and instead, delivers mindless pap where the hero is saved when a god-like superhero or government agency steps in and saves his ***, so all his characters end up doing is watch someone else do their job.
Bendis is all about the story, but he seems unable to write any good ones. All he does right now is pump out unreadable bull**** and claims its because he's following the story. He's not. He's just padding it out to 6-issues each and every month and then not resolving it. That's not storytelling.
(Sorry Plastikpulse, I know you're new and I don't mean to sound like I'm attacking you. I do mean welcome and I hope you continue to post here and this doesn't drive you away. This is not soley directed to you, nor is it anger on my part. It's frustration and it's kind of meant for everyone to hear. I'm not trying to tear you down, so please don't act like I'm bullying you. I know it may sound like I am, but that's not my intention.
In 20 or less could you sum that up? I'm not reading that.
Bass
Nexus of the World
"The Bass option."
TheManWithoutFear
#1 reason not to join UC
Oh that's just total bull**** then.Bass said:
Ice
Teh Sexy Monkey Queen
RE-HE-HE-HEEEEALLY?Bass said:
Bass
Nexus of the World
Brian Michael Bendis said:
I could've sworn the words 'emotional, meangingful, and important' were what House of M was what is was said to be, along with "long-lasting changes". I found these first three things to be far more important than the latter, and it wasn't any of those.
Also, two threads online bashing Watchmen - I think it's more likely these threads were someone going, "I hate Watcmen" and the other fifteen million posts in the thread going, "You're an idiot for having an opinion that's wrong, loser n00b". I also think two online threads 20 years after its released doesn't compare to 20 years of being called the greatest graphic novel of all time (it's not even allowed to be a comic) while House of M had even finished before people were bashing it - granted, the Internet wasn't around 20 years ago, but I doubt as soon as the internet appear the long-held silent hatred for Watchmen was allowed to explode onto the 'net. No.
Is it universally loved or not? It is loved by a greater sized majority than the majority that elected pretty much every single US president.
And great - now I've done that ****ty point of comparing Bendis to Moore that I said I wasn't going to do. Curse you Ice. I put a hex on you and yours.
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ourchair
Well-Known Member
You should ask DC if this can be put on the back of the book's dustjacket for 'quotable praise for Watchmen'.Bass said:
plastikpulse
Member
- Joined
- Oct 28, 2005
- Messages
- 21
Bass, how can you say Bendis never delivers? That's ridiculous! There are some stories that are better than others but I've never seen Bendis drop the ball. I mean, he didn't come up with anything cool like 'secondary mutation', that was brilliant. I tried reading Grant Morrison's run on X-Men and I just couldn't take it, he ruined everything and just muddled everything up. The X-titles were such rubbish after all of that. I think that Bendis tells amazing stories and he's not just writing crap to pad out a story arc.
Victor Von Doom
Fist of teh Internets.
plastikpulse said:
"Mark"...... :wink:
Are you trying to get a bigger rise outta Bass???? :lol: As if his well written page long post wasn't enough.
I'm just gonna sit back and wait.........
plastikpulse
Member
- Joined
- Oct 28, 2005
- Messages
- 21
Yeah, I might be trying to get a rise out of him. I just can't see how someone would say Bendis doesn't deliver? It's mind-boggling
Victor Von Doom
Fist of teh Internets.
plastikpulse said:
But it's a fact of life kid.....nobody bats 100 outta 100. Sometimes he makes good (ex.-House of M #7....and even #8 ).............sometimes he gives us crap (ex.-USM Superstar arc).
It's like saying a movie director doesn't make bad movies........like Ridley Scott. The man who brought you "Gladiator" and "Aliens" also brought you "GI Jane" and "Kingdom of Heaven". Sometimes things just don't work out.
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MoS
Well-Known Member
plastikpulse said:
Because I read Disassembled, that's how...
plastikpulse
Member
- Joined
- Oct 28, 2005
- Messages
- 21
It's true that no one can produce gold all the time. I think Bendis does a descent job of giving high quality stories most of the time. The Dr. Strange thing was weird. Which arc was Superstars? I have all of USM but don't remember the titles. And I thought Disassembled was good, the Avengers needed a good shake up. That story made me not hate the Avengers.
MoS
Well-Known Member
plastikpulse said:
"Gold"? It was just... dross
plastikpulse said:
So you didn't like the title in the first place and approved of having it torn apart? Not in that camp with you. I needed a MUCH better reason for a relaunch than a muddy red 4 issues of murder and out-of-character confusion followed by a ridiculous deus ex machina non-ending ending. Every Avengers writer in the history of the title has picked the team he wanted to write, and everyone else seemed able to do it without gratuitously killing characters off but rather just writing them out.
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plastikpulse
Member
- Joined
- Oct 28, 2005
- Messages
- 21
Yeah, a slow fade is a fun ending too. I never really liked the Avengers because I always found the characters so boring and the teams so sterile and unexiting. I hoped in on Avengers Forever for a while because I love Carlos Pacheco's art but the Avengers were just too much for me. My opinion is that I liked what Bendis did to them, kind of took them off their untouchable hero platform and made the people, and I liked that.
RUFUS!
Well-Known Member
i like bendis writing, i read USM, DD & NA...i think he dropped the ball on Disassembled but other than that :rockon:
