The Bendis Debate

Do you like BENDIS!

  • Total voters
    51
compound said:
Yup! I also wanted to see just how much had been archived. You'll realize why very soon ;)
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I swear, that goat said she was 18!!

compound said:
Edit it? [a beat] Edit it? Dude, you take this waaaay too seriously.
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Much of comedy lies in the pacing. So it is with Bendis' dialogue parody. Especially when lampooning his rants.

You needed more word balloons. And less 'we people put up with your ****' and more 'you are a jerkwad'. It's not about the people being in a higher moral position but about the antagonist being spoken to and his self-righteousness.

Also the ending was too dismissive. You need to go with the whole, "Why pick on me? Why me?! WHHHHYYYYY?!?!?!?!?!" and some variation of "All I'm trying to do is... (get by/give something back/do what my father wanted)"
 
ourchair said:
Much of comedy lies in the pacing. So it is with Bendis' dialogue parody. Especially when lampooning his rants.
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I nominate to turn this into the Bendis Cliched Dialogue Simulation Thread, for the next 10 posts or so.
 
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plastikpulse said:
Let's do a Millar Cliched Dialogue Thread too.
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Hell let's throw in Ellis and Vaughan while we're at it.

Hell, let's do Austen too!


...

...

Nah, Austen's not worth it.
 
You see -- There is like -- A way he do the dialogue that is just... it's just so boring after you do it with everyone -- everyone.

Ok i did my part for the "Bendis Cliched Dialogue Simulation Thread" or BCDST
 
TheManWithoutFear said:
yeah...



I don't know...
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I just read the argument. That **** is ridiculous.

I can understand that lynching could have been considered a "pastime" years ago, but when you referred to snowball throwing by that name you were obviously not using it in that broad of a sense. It's one of those times when people get bogged down in the exact words you said rather than what you actually meant. That seems to be an "old standard" in interweb arguments when you can't think of something to say, along with pointing out someone's bad grammar.
 
So I've been reading a lot of Bendis lately.

I'm not sure why? I think it may have to do with the fact that his latest issues of USM and NA have been absolutely great.

So I've been going back and rereading some of his stuff. Avengers: Disassembled, House of M, Secret War, old arcs of NA.


For the record---I just reread HoM and despite how above-mediocre it was....I still love it and found it more entertaining than Disassembled, Civil War, World War Hulk, etc.


So yeah......






Plus....I also miss discussions like this.
 
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I am on record as having loved Avengers: Disassembled and just about everything that came out of it, especially New Avengers.

I also love House of M. Is it a great series? Not really. But something about it...I'm pretty sure it was my first exposure to Oliver Coipel's work, and he's one of my favorite artists. His art made the series for me.

A lot of things like House of M would actually be better without the ridiculous amount of hype surrounding it. I realize that they NEED to hype their books to keep sales up, but the reality is that few series like this are good enough to live up to the hype. It's easier to do this now because hindsight is always 20/20, but if you can read stories and remove the hype about them from your mind you can enjoy them a lot more. I do.
 
I honestly think Bendis is one of the major reasons I've stopped enjoying mainstream super hero comics.

Since USM #25, the best he's been - for me - is mediocre. Sprinklings of terrific ideas and set ups, but continually ruined by his own inability to create endings or craft anything unique. Everything he does is the same as what he did before - characters and plots simply change names and appearances, but they all work the exact same way, with each repetition being less insightful than the one before it. Having a body of work that delves into the same subject matter repeatedly is fine - Shakespeare and Dickens both had such careers. The thing is, that repetition has to be a varied one, but Bendis doesn't vary. He just repeats. And his stories continually read like this to me: "Something big is about to happen. Poof. There it went." No balls.

So, yeah, I can't stand his work. And because I used to love it, I think his fall from grace in my eyes has spread over to lots of other writers like Mark Millar and J Michael Straczynski.

I know a lot of people love this guy, but I think he's a dreadful writer. :(
 
I know that NA is great and I loved USM pre-carnage, but I cannot call him a great writer after the clone sage, that single arc has ruined a lot of things for me and I cannot get it out of my mind when re-reading USM.
 
You know, as a writer myself, it's easy to let the story go out of control, then try to wrap it up with a dues ex machina, or at least side plots with a dues ex machina.

The hard part of writing is knowing when you need to reign in your own story, and begin to wrap it up correctly, with an actual ending that affects people.

Civil War tried to do that, but failed in my opinion.

I actually have a line, and a character in Blairwood, who is a dues ex machina, for the sole reason that when he goes to activate his power and reset the past years events, someone shots him in the head and states, "There is no dues ex machina in this story bub."

Cause, I'm funny sometimes
 
Bass said:
I honestly think Bendis is one of the major reasons I've stopped enjoying mainstream super hero comics.

Since USM #25, the best he's been - for me - is mediocre. Sprinklings of terrific ideas and set ups, but continually ruined by his own inability to create endings or craft anything unique. Everything he does is the same as what he did before - characters and plots simply change names and appearances, but they all work the exact same way, with each repetition being less insightful than the one before it. Having a body of work that delves into the same subject matter repeatedly is fine - Shakespeare and Dickens both had such careers. The thing is, that repetition has to be a varied one, but Bendis doesn't vary. He just repeats. And his stories continually read like this to me: "Something big is about to happen. Poof. There it went." No balls.

So, yeah, I can't stand his work. And because I used to love it, I think his fall from grace in my eyes has spread over to lots of other writers like Mark Millar and J Michael Straczynski.

I know a lot of people love this guy, but I think he's a dreadful writer. :(
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You already know I fundamentally agree with you on Bendis' inability to live up to his own build up...

"And now for the next twelve issues, we will constantly remind you through ad copy that everything is building up towards Matt Murdock confronting his inner demons... which we will inevitably resolve in eight panels."

"And now for the next four issues Detective Deena Pilgrim and Christian Walker will move towards working out their problems... and by that we mean they will explode at each other's face for two pages and then make up!"

He tends to have storytelling promises that sound like they can be reasonably fulfilled by even the most average and unremarkable writers (and therefore, readers don't feel like he's promising the moon).

The problem is that he cuts corners in fulfilling those promises. He's actually pretty alright at exploring all sides of an issue --- the socio-political relationships between various government bodies, the image dilemmas facing decisions that must be made under close media scrutiny --- and the problem is that this over analysis kills himself.

I don't mean to say that writers should write below their intelligence, but I think it would be far easier to accept Bendis concluding his stories in such a downright pat manner if he looked at his superhero stories with less complexity. It's like, all that analysis, and your resolution is "She was working for HYDRA?"

Bendis' ENTIRE writing technique is like a Woody Allen joke. He obsesses and obsesses and obsesses in the manner stereotypically attributed to neurotic Jews, and in the end he chooses a panic-driven option. If he put less thought into the story situation, then the thoughtlessness of his decisions might seem I dunno, less annoying.

Also, Bass... I just wanted to know... was there ANY work of Bendis' that you actually liked or at least found noteworthy in some positive regard? I'm just curious because as you probably figured by now, I have very complex issues with whether or not I like Bendis.
 
Random said:
I know that NA is great and I loved USM pre-carnage, but I cannot call him a great writer after the clone sage, that single arc has ruined a lot of things for me and I cannot get it out of my mind when re-reading USM.
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Exactly how I feel. I put off reading his Daredevil but once I started I couldn't stop; I read through the entire run (save the last couple of issues) in less than a week. Same for Alias - I absolutely loved it. Those 2 are 2 of my favorite comics stories ever.

But as good as they were....Clone Saga and Mighty Avengers are equally bad. I'm astounded as to the range in quality of his work.

Ultimate Houde said:
You know, as a writer myself
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Don't let Bendis hear you say that.
 
Victor Von Doom said:
So I've been reading a lot of Bendis lately.

I'm not sure why? I think it may have to do with the fact that his latest issues of USM and NA have been absolutely great.

So I've been going back and rereading some of his stuff. Avengers: Disassembled, House of M, Secret War, old arcs of NA.


For the record---I just reread HoM and despite how above-mediocre it was....I still love it and found it more entertaining than Disassembled, Civil War, World War Hulk, etc.


So yeah......






Plus....I also miss discussions like this.
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Exactly.


House Of M was awesome in introspect.
 
I laughed outloud in the bookstore as I looked at the panel that had Hawkeye's return.

I checked my phone to make sure the internet hadn't broken again.


The first 3 issues of the mini were incredibly strong. Then it died down in the middle. But #7 and #8 were awesome. Especially when Mags confronts Pietro and is screaming "What have you done in my name?!?!". I don't know why it gives me chills.
 
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