The Four Color Media Monitor

Brian Bendis told IGN Comics about his upcoming work on X-Men, and does his usual pretend act:

“Sometimes I get a reputation for torturing the characters, but it’s because I love the characters so much that I want to put them in the most extreme situations to see how they respond and see where the heroism lies,” added Bendis. “It’s very easy to write a simple story where the good guy beats up the bad guy and does the right thing, but testing heroes and pushing them to the wall and changing their comfort zone is something that appeals to me as a writer.”

Absolutely pathetic. If he truly loved the cast of Avengers he's written, he wouldn't have a]made such a nasty allusion in Disassembled to the time Hank Pym smacked down Janet Van Dyne in 1981, b]turned Scarlet Witch crazy in a terrible allusion to John Byrne's abortive run on West Coast Avengers, c]written Ms. Marvel telling after she'd been stopped that she "hates" her, d]coughed up that awful story where the Hood assaulted Tigra, e]killed off Janet Van Dyne in Secret Invasion, and f]forced Cyclops into a position where he'd end up slaying Charles Xavier. Speaking of which, Bendis says about Scott Summers:

Bendis said that Scott Summers is another character he’s enjoying writing, since he’s dealing with two different versions – the current epitome of villainy in comics and the young, idealistic version that will discover he’s going to become “everything he’s fighting against.”

He continued, “How these characters change from meeting each other and being here is a very complicated idea with many, many flavors and I’m thrilled that it’s an ongoing series that’s going to let me look at this from every conceivable angle.” The writer said that the other X-Men will be looking at the young Scott Summers and kinda-sorta blaming him for what happened to Xavier, even though he’s not really done anything wrong. [...]

Bendis also brought up an interesting point in regard to the Cyclops situation. “The world at large… nobody knows that Cyclops killed Xavier. That is not public knowledge. But it happened in front of a lot of people. It happened in front of all of the Avengers and all of the X-Men. It’s going to take on a Rashomon-style quality. A lot of people saw it, but everybody saw a different thing.” He explained that some might consider that Xavier offered himself up for martyrdom, while others might see it as though Scott really had no choice but to do what he did.

I'm not impressed one bit. The funny thing is how this "battle behind closed doors" enforces the insular angle they've been taking with much of their universe for nearly a decade now. And what good is the time travel story if the past selves of the heroes can't or won't do anything to prevent this whole fiasco from occurring? It brings to mind the Green Lantern story Ron Marz wrote towards the end of his 1994-2000 run where Hal Jordan's past self was thrust into the present to co-star in an adventure with Kyle Rayner, but in the end nothing was really done to try and repair the horrific results of Emerald Twilight where Hal slew thousands of GL Corps members. This direction Bendis is taking sounds more like it'll end up as a lot of cliched bickering and division among the X-Men and other heroes without even doing anything to actually turn present day errors around.

And if that's the way he's going to go, then he's got no true love for the heroes he's writing.

Labels: Avengers, dreadful writers, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, violence, women of marvel, X-Men