The Four Color Media Monitor

IGN's upholding Bendis as a "great" writer, when truly, he's not, and has written a list of 5 Marvel books/characters whom they think he should write next. But if he did, he'd only dumb them down, as he has with Avengers and X-Men. They dishonestly tell everybody:

The question is, what's next for Bendis? We know he recently signed another exclusive contract with Marvel, but after penning lengthy, influential runs on the Avengers and X-Men franchises, helping birth the Ultimate Universe, and reinventing characters like Daredevil and Luke Cage, where do you go next?

He should just drop the contract and just go back to his not-very-interesting creator owned books. Were his runs long? Yes. But influential? No, they were not. They were pretty unimaginative, turning the Avengers into something less elaborate, yet IGN blatantly obscures all that. And after recommending Bendis write Peter Parker, they say:

Sure, Dan Slott has been doing great work on the Spidey franchise for years now. But what is there left for Slott to accomplish after the heights of Superior Spider-Man and Spider-Verse? It's time for a little fresh blood in this franchise and a new sets of challenges for Peter Parker to wrestle with.

There was never anything great about Slott's work, and nothing was accomplished except turning Doc Ock into Spidey. And no mention of Mary Jane Watson in the article either, I see. That's long been off the table for many of the comics journalists, who never had any serious objections to One More Day. Otherwise, they would've urged everybody to boycott Spidey until that part's set right, and better editors/publishers were hired too. And, they'd be willing to admit the post-OMD scene's been awful.

Bendis was also interviewed this week by the Cleveland Plain Dealer, whose article begins by telling:

Comic book writer and Cleveland native Brian Michael Bendis remembers a time when Marvel wasn't atop the pop-culture universe.

And even today, with all the big movies, they still aren't on top of the pop world. Save for some premiere issues and other stunt-related books, their sales are very bad, and still were after he came aboard.

"When Marvel hired me, they had actually just declared bankruptcy," recalls Bendis. "They had sold the movie rights of Spider-Man to Sony and sold X-Men to Fox to pay the bills."

"When I first visited the company, there were filing cabinets in the office with Post-it notes saying 'Sold.' I thought I was writing the last Marvel comic book."

Fortunately for Bendis, he became a big part of the solution. Bendis and other new Marvel creators like Joe Quesada, David W. Mack and Garth Ennis injected new life into some of Marvel's biggest franchises.

Bendis was given the keys to Spider-Man, Daredevil and, later, The Avengers, helping lay the foundation for the boom that was to come. Marvel began producing its own films beginning with 2008's "Iron Man" and signed a deal with The Walt Disney Company a year later. Sales of comic books skyrocketed.

And gradually sank down to dismal levels. His books too. By the end of the last decade, they were even worse off than the previous one, and that hasn't changed with the rising prices. Bendis was not part of a solution, only a short-term one for boosting sales temporarily, which he did by wrecking some of Marvel's best cast of characters like Scarlet Witch. I'd say Daredevil also suffered thanks to his joke of writing.

And what life did Ennis inject into the MAX titles he wrote like the Punisher's? None. He only exploited it for more left-wing biases than he'd ever used before. Again, sales did not go up the way they claim, and their failure to note any figures just compounds their cowardice. The interview later says:

You also recently signed a new contract with Marvel.


Usually I don't make a big parade when I re-sign a contract. It's kind of no one's business really. In this instance, I'm at a crossroads where Jessica Jones is going to debut later this year and Powers is going to debut next month. When I announce I'm leaving the X-Men franchise or this or that, it becomes, "Oh he's leaving." I'm not leaving Marvel and I'm not leaving comics. It's very important to me almost on a religious level to let people know that I'm not leaving comics. Comics was always the goal. Comics was the thing I loved the most. I wanted people to know where my head was at.

It's very sad he won't leave. He may love comics but he does not love superheroes. So he's not telling where his mind's at.

Marvel is getting ready to publish its new "Secret Wars" comic book series in May. It seems like it's going to be a superhero free-for-all.

Anything could happen and almost anything is happening. It's like a one-time deal where you can go bananas. I can say that we're taking full advantage of the freedom of the series.

What a joke. They only have "creative freedom" because people like him are part of the establishment and interior culture that declares many better folks unwelcome at their doorstep.

The idea of Spider-Man joining The Avengers goes back to when you created "The New Avengers."

It's funny because when I got The Avengers, my biggest contribution right away was that we took Spider-Man and Wolverine and put them on the team. The idea was why isn't The Avengers a big bag of the coolest stuff ever? Wolverine is in X-Men. Why can't he be an Avenger? That was very controversial among the fans at the time. People were screaming and yelling, saying Spider-Man is a loner. Then I sat back and enjoyed how much people wanted him on The Avengers after the movies came out. It's the same people screaming at me 10 years ago. That felt good, like we made our point.

The only point they made - a very poor one at that - was that flagship heroes are a draw, not talented writing, which he decidedly lacks. I don't buy what he's telling about receptions after the movie debuts either. A guest role is fine, but shoving Spidey and Wolvie so obviously into the Avengers is contrived and forced, particularly the way they preceded it with turning Scarlet Witch into a madwoman. At the end, talking about a visit he'll be making to a conference:

What's your speech going to be about?

It's mostly me reading a list of people who did me wrong in college. No. I spend a great deal of my time in education and I have a book out called "Words for Pictures" that really focuses on what I'll be talking about. It's going to be about the realities of what's coming next. You think when you graduate it's going to be a no-brainer and you're going to pop into your dream job. Then it starts to seem impossible and you don't know what you're going to do next. I'm going to talk about the positive things that come when you stick with your dreams.

Those dreams were more like negatives. And what about all the people he's wronged in his modern career? Those don't even matter to him.

Labels: Avengers, bad editors, Daredevil, dreadful writers, Fantastic Four, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, msm propaganda, Spider-Man, X-Men