There should be some kind of universal sign for people who really and truly don't like dancing - like a flower in the lapel sort of thing (a wallflower?).
Poor ol' Bishop. Poor ol' sweaty ol' mullety ol' mopey ol' Bishop. Has anyone ever had a good plan for the postmillenial paramilitary policeman?
(Ah. Just remembered: I never got around to reading District X)
Hm. Maybe they'll do a Bishop manga if the Wolverine manga does well (and maybe pigs will start delivering yoghurt door-to-door).
//Oo/\
So, Cyclops not knowing what a Celestial is - subtle hint that he's really an unusually ignorant Skrull, or just a writer who assumes there are no fans left over from the 1980s and nobody reads back issues?
(Yes, I'm almost certainly overthinking this)
Given that the Dreaming Celestial serves absolutely no purpose in the story, other than for Cyclops to look at him and not recognise him, I strongly suspect it's intentional. It would also explain why he's acting out of character in X-FORCE.
I'd like to think you're right on the Cyclops=Skrull. But I think it's more likely to be that they actually think X-Force (and the not-dissimilar stated premise for Young X-Men) is a good idea. And don't know Cyclops lived on a Celestial-built Ship for quite some time, and the six/seven issue Judgement War arc in X-Factor climaxed with him & Jean blasting the hand off a Celestial.
I can only hope that the real Cyclops turns out not to need a visor like the Skrull one. I mean, if you want to import developments from Whedon's run, might as well take the good stuff instead of Kitty's death.
Anyone (who also follows the wrestling sections) remember that time that WWE hired a continuity editor to go over their story-lines and then fired him in quick order when he pointed out too many errors...
Think the same thing would happen at Marvel (and DC to be fair)?
I like to dance a lot, but not the kind of communal dances that Fry's talking about here. I did several years of ballet and modern dance as a kid, and rock/disco dance just seems boring by comparison. Breakdancing, not so much -- breakdancers use their whole bodies -- but when there's breakdancing going on, nobody minds if you don't join in.
I drifted away from Strangers in Paradise after the wedding issue (I'm not sure why, though I think on some level I felt that Moore had hit a peak he couldn't possibly surpass, and everything after that would be a disappointment). I hadn't heard about Echo until I saw the review on Savage Critics -- I must pick it up. It might give some idea of what Moore's going to do when he takes over from Joss Whedon on Runaways.
You've never read Stray Bullets?? I hadn't heard about that new Lapham project, but Stray Bullets is 100% classic, up there with Bone, Love and Rockets, and coincidentally, Strangers in Paradise, in the pantheon of funnybooks. It may remain uncompleted for years to come, but the story that exists is a brilliant study of human nature, and you should check it out sometime.
Wow, Vaughan did that Wolverine issue? Haha.
Also, all this Cyclops-as-a-Skrull talk is scaring me a bit: what if they use this to 'explain away' the Scott/Emma relationship?
Well, that's the problem with the whole Skrull storyline, isn't it? It's basically a huge retcon vehicle and no story element is safe. Somehow, I don't trust Marvel to not make a huge fuster-cluck out of it...
"Also, all this Cyclops-as-a-Skrull talk is scaring me a bit: what if they use this to 'explain away' the Scott/Emma relationship?"
Well, then they will finally have gutted the entirety of the Morrison run. I'm surprised they didn't do it years ago, to be honest.
Ah Christ, if they made Cyclops a Skrull, it'd be taking the piss out of pretty much every story he featured in this decade.
Perhaps this has something to do with Senor Mephisto? Scarlet Witch? A Superboy punch? Ugh.
The Cable series was adequate, even if it offered us nothing new. I hope the development that Cable went through in C&D isn't ignored and we get some sort of information on the state of his powers. It'd be kind of cool if the Maddox dupe showed up somewhere and we got an explanation of exactly how he survived Gambit and Sunfire's attack.
I can see where this is headed. Cyclops is a Skrull, and while out-of-character, sets up an X-Men death squad (X-Force). When X-Force finds out that Cyclops is a Skrull, they hunt him down and kill him. The rest of the X-Men are unaware that Cyke was a Skrull (or even that X-Force exists, I don't know, I haven't been reading... yet) and chaos ensues.
Too obvious?
Depends when they decide he was swapped over, really, doesn't it? They could be using this in essentially the same way that Grant Morrison used Cassandra impersonating Professor X - he used her to make various changes necessary for his story which would have been questionably out of character for Xavier.
Yeah, I'm hoping if they go with the Skrullclops (see what I did there?) option, the switch is really recent - I'm thinking just after the end of Astonishing X-Men and just before the establishment of X-Force (which, since I haven't even looked beyond the cover, I may be being unfair to. Thank goodness I've got you to tell me what to think. Not that that's why I read reviews, or anything). But that's just one fanboy's opinion.
But would a Skrull impersonator have given up the baby?
Also, it troubles me (but doesn't surprise me) that we, as readers, react to these storylines by looking towards the "easy" out first, ie: Skrull imposter, satanic intervention, etc. There's very little faith anymore in the story itself sans retcon gimmicks. Of course, Marvel and DC dug their own graves there, but still, it's sad, isn't it?
I'm a bit more surpurised that nobady commented on how the ending of Astonishing X-Men has been given away! At least now we know why Kitty was nowhere to be seen during Messiah Complex.
"Also, it troubles me (but doesn't surprise me) that we, as readers, react to these storylines by looking towards the "easy" out first"
This seems funny to me. The Celestial scene leaves only two possibilities:
1) the writers don't know what they're doing, b/c Cyclops has more experience with Celestials than anyone else in this title
2) the writers know what they're doing and they're deliberately dropping a subtle hint.
#2 seems MORE charitable to the writing, definitely not taking the easy way out. Having gone with #2, there's any number of possible in-story explanations, of which "Skrull" makes sense because people being replaced by Skrulls is a major Marvel story arc for the last year or so, to culminate in an impending linewide crossover. So...what's the problem?
"Well, that's the problem with the whole Skrull storyline, isn't it? It's basically a huge retcon vehicle and no story element is safe."
Well supposedly Secret Invasion has been in the works since 2004, with certain writers, specifically Bendis, having known about it and been working toward it, which hopefully means it won't be so much a "retcon vehicle" but a "hey look at all this hinting and planning we did that you didn't notice/though we'd screwed up with"-vehicle.
But I'll be sorely annoyed if BKV's Dr Strange mini gets attributed to a Skrull (as it's widely speculated Strange has been replaced).
Not quite, Marc-Oliver. Beast is still in his cat form. I am absolutely astounded that they haven't changed that back yet.
Martin Smith, I'm similarly astounded that you have such faith in Marvel. They say they've been planning this since 2004, I say they're liars.
Didn't the Sleeping Celestial just turn up in a recent Hercules too?
Also, "these stories were crap because there were Skrulls involved" really doesn't make those stories any less crap.
"Not quite, Marc-Oliver. Beast is still in his cat form. I am absolutely astounded that they haven't changed that back yet."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Sage evolve Beast into his current form in Claremont's first arc of X-treme X-men, and then Beast found his way into Morrison's team book? Granted, this is just nitpicking...if they turn Cyclops in a Skrull imposter, I'm going to be royally pissed unless they do it properly.
Nothing in Astonishing or even up to Messiah Complex would make any sense otherwise. Maybe the Cyclops currently in Uncanny is the real deal, but the one in X-Force is an imposter? Possible, since the team is currently taking a break right now...they might not be in full contact.
That was just Claremont trying to smooth the transition to something Morrison was already doing.
Kelvingreen - Martin's right in this case. Bendis has been very clear that he's the architect of Secret Invasion and has been building to it since the very beginning of New Avengers. It was originally intended to be a New Avengers only story and then editorial realized that it has the potential to be a company-wide cross over and had him expand it.
> Not quite, Marc-Oliver. Beast is still in his cat form. I am absolutely astounded that they haven't changed that back yet.
They were going to post-HoM. Whedon vetoed it.
Hey Paul, did you do a sales column for January? I can't seem to find it.
Rob: there was a glitch in the data from ICV2 Paul bases his charts on. Corrected figures where released a week or so ago, so Paul's column should be published soon.
Bendis may be saying that he's been working on "Secret Invasion" since 2004, but I see no reason to believe him.
And the second point still holds. Even if he was planning a big reveal four years later, that still doesn't excuse a bunch of woefully incomplete stories.
Kelvingreen - I'm more apt to believe him simply for the fact that he's been hinting since the start of New Avengers that something was going behind the scenes that he was dropping hints about, i.e. the unseen organizer of the prison break in the very first issue. And no one is saying that any stories are crap because of skrulls, where are you getting that from?
The sales column for January will be up soon. We weren't going to bother with the original version of the chart, since it was complete nonsense from top to bottom. (It even listed two books that didn't ship until February, which was a pretty obvious sign that something had gone wrong.)
Oh, and incidentally, the glitch was with Diamond, not ICV2.
New Avengers has been plodding along for what 4 years now and nothing of note has actually happened.
There was a prison breakout.
They went to the savage land.
They spent ages introducing the most uninteresting character.
They went to Japan.
Alpha Flight were killed offpanel.
Civil war.
They went back to Japan.
Skrulls.
Compared to what Busiek managed to cram in to the same time frame it's rather pathetic.
> Hey Paul, did you do a sales column for January? I can't seem to find it.
It's up now - http://pwbeat.publishersweekly.c...january-2008-2/
Rory, see Rob's post. We've had a number of half-arsed storylines that have gone absolutely nowhere, with no hint, either in the comic, or from Bendis himself, that there was any sort of resolution in mind. Then three months or so ago, up pops Bendis saying that the stories aren't incomplete, no no no, he's merely been cleverly building up to a story he's had planned since 2004, yes siree.
Sorry, I just don't believe him. Where you see carefully lain hints, I see plot holes that he's only recently devised a (lame) explanation for.
The implication is that we haven't had four years of half-arsed stories and plot holes, because those "flaws" can all be explained away by the work of Skrulls behind the scenes.
My point is that, whether Bendis really had this plot in mind when he started or not (he didn't), those were still half-arsed stories and plot holes, and the Skrull explanation doesn't fix that. Just as a character complaining about the quality of the plot doesn't make that plot any better.
When you say "No thanks," they hear "Please drag me to the dance floor against my will - I will have a wonderful time really and will be eternally grateful." Somehow it never seems like the appropriate time to tell them to get lost...
*Feels guilty and shuffles off in a downcast manner, knowing that all desperate hopes of ever seeing Paul dance have finally been shattered....*
Rory: Bendis has been very clear that he's the architect of Secret Invasion and has been building to it since the very beginning of New Avengers. It was originally intended to be a New Avengers only story and then editorial realized that it has the potential to be a company-wide cross over and had him expand it.
I do believe Bendis when he says this (unlike kelvin), but the fact that Secret Invasion grew out of a New Avengers storyline from 2004 doesn't make it any less of a (potential) retcon bonanza in 2008.
All it means is that Bendis and co. came up with new stuff to 'retcon' (wonky characterizations, say) to go along with the stuff they always wanted to retcon.
no one is saying that any stories are crap because of skrulls, where are you getting that from?
I think this stems from Bendis/Marvel failing to realize that A) readers cannot see, as they do, the big picture they're building towards, and B) 3-4 years is too damn long to keep people in the dark.
Seriously, what did they expect? Fear not, True Believers! This pile of seemingly poorly-written stories will make sense come 2008!
Bendis may be saying that he's been working on "Secret Invasion" since 2004, but I see no reason to believe him.
And the second point still holds. Even if he was planning a big reveal four years later, that still doesn't excuse a bunch of woefully incomplete stories.
Eh, I've had lots of problems with New Avengers, and it always irks me when people say it's the first good Avengers run, but I believe Bendis did have this planned. The early NA issues made points of saying SHIELD was controlled by some nefarious faction that was also controlling Hydra and AIM, and it was mentioned by Iron Man or somebody during the first arc that several of the inmates on the Raft were supposed to be dead(in-universe). So clearly some of the continuity problems were intentional.
So I give Bendis the benefit of the doubt when he says he was setting this up. Is the idea that he had a point and took years of poorly written stories to get to it that hard to believe? :P
As you said, it doesn't make the bad stories good. But I don't think that's what Rory and Mitchell were trying to say. I think their point is that when a writer like Brubaker makes a blatant continuity error in a current issue(and please, let's not pretend he didn't know about Secret Invasion when this was written), it's likely he is doing it intentionally.
I don't always have faith in Bendis, but I have plenty in Brubaker.
Didn't the Sleeping Celestial just turn up in a recent Hercules too?
BTW, I'm trade-waiting with Incredible Herc, but after Gaiman's Eternals mini, the Celestial is now a permanent landmark by Golden Gate Bridge that people travel around the world to see. So it's actually nice to see other writers acknowledging it.
Seriously, what did they expect? Fear not, True Believers! This pile of seemingly poorly-written stories will make sense come 2008!
Exactly!
The early NA issues made points of saying SHIELD was controlled by some nefarious faction that was also controlling Hydra and AIM, and it was mentioned by Iron Man or somebody during the first arc that several of the inmates on the Raft were supposed to be dead(in-universe). So clearly some of the continuity problems were intentional.
Perhaps, but that still doesn't mean that Bendis had any idea how to wrap those storylines up until someone suggested Skrulls to him about six months ago. Call me cynical. 
Is the idea that he had a point and took years of poorly written stories to get to it that hard to believe?
Fair point.
I think their point is that when a writer like Brubaker makes a blatant continuity error in a current issue(and please, let's not pretend he didn't know about Secret Invasion when this was written), it's likely he is doing it intentionally.
Oh perhaps. I don't know about Brubaker (and no one mentioned him until you just did), as I've not been reading his books. But from the perspective of the last four years of Not Avengers, I just find it hard to believe that all the cock-ups and unfinished stories in that book are part of a plan they've had in place for years. A plan they've had in place for the last six months though? I can believe that.
I'd tend to agree that NEW AVENGERS, read as a whole, doesn't read like a book that was heading anywhere in particular. It lurches from one seemingly unrelated story to the next. If there's any sort of plan in there, it's remarkably well disguised - especially in comparison to Bendis' other series, which tend to have a much clearer sense of direction.
I think that's it exactly. Bendis isn't (or wasn't) a bad writer; if he has a plan in mind, it's pretty clear that there's a plan there. With Not Avengers, it's been so aimless for four years that all this sudden talk of a long plan is rather unconvincing.
Kelvingreen -I'm not commenting on the quality of the stories as that has nothing to do with whether or not secret invasion was a recent plan or not. Personally, I don't think secret invasion will be particularly good and I haven't thought New Avengers or Mighty Avengers have been particularly good. My only point was that Bendis has stated since issue 1 of the New Avengers series, in interviews, that something was going on behind the scenes that he was building to. He's also stated that Secret Invasion has been pushed back repeatedly because of company wide cross-overs. So I have no problem believing that a lot of the stories didn't really go anywhere because he was treading water trying to figure out how to waste time until he could get back to his original story. The first two story arcs (prison break/savage land & Japan) had clear indications of going somewhere, whether or not you liked them or thought they were good stories is different matter entirely.
Fair enough. You believe him, I don't. Settled.
Oh perhaps. I don't know about Brubaker (and no one mentioned him until you just did), as I've not been reading his books.
The discussion was about the latest Uncanny X-Men issue, which Brubaker wrote. There was speculation that a scene which conflicts with continuity was done on purpose by Brubaker to hint that Cyclops is a Skrull. Diana said that it seems unfair that we're giving Brubaker the benefit of the doubt instead of thinking he screwed up. Martin(who I called 'Mitchell' for some reason, sorry) said that the writers have known about Secret Invasion for awhile, so it's not hard to believe Brubaker was dropping hints.
Then you started talking about Bendis. ^^; So while nobody may have said Brubaker's name, the discussion was about him originally.
I do agree that Bendis might have had something different(or incredibly vague) in mind when he started NA. But clearly the Secret Invasion plan has been in place for longer than six months. I'd assume it was at least worked out when Bendis started the arc with Skrull Electra, which was already being released before Civil War's delayed finale.
Aha, yes, we were talking about Brubaker. My mistake.
Arguably, Bendis'(Bendis's? Ugh.)assertion that he's been planning the Skrull story since 2004 ought to be believed *because* of the atypically slouchy structure of New Avengers. The only (and repeatedly stated) organizing concept of NA has been that Things Are Weird And Wrong. Seriously, some character makes a variation on this statement in every single NA story arc.
Y'know, justified or not, it's hysterical to find fans mainly just calling the creators liars. The next step in this deteriorating relationship should be time capsules, I think; creators can make sure to seal their plans in a time-release vault/mail letters to themselves/whatever in order to prove to fans that they actually always intended for things to go this way.
Then the fans can start having them checked for forgery...
I was actually thinking about this during my rather boring day at work. Had New Avengers been allowed to get on with it's story rather than have to do house of M, then kill time in between house of M and Civil War then the whole secret invasion would have probably been over by volume 4 or 5, not getting started at the end of volume 6. The sentry arc seems to scream "I'm treading water!" and then the whole collective thing was a "I can't start my secret invasion thing till after civil war which will be starting after this arc so I've gotta kill more fucking time!!!". Thats just how it reads to me. If you cut out the 'filler' then you have 3 arcs that are actually building to secret invasion: Breakout, Secrets and lies, Revelation. I really do think thats it's all been getting screwed over by all the line wide crossovers.
It might not be much of a defence of Bendis's Avengers run, but I would say that there have been long runs on Avengers in the past which have been utterly awful and had no long-term point to them, whether hinted at from the start, potentially made up after the fact, or otherwise. In fact, I would say that pretty much the last twenty years or more of Avengers comics have been like that. Actually, maybe the last thirty years...
So whether or not Bendis has really had a four-year plan - and I can believe that he has, and that it's been disrupted by other events, since Avengers is a much higher-profile and central-to-the-universe book than anything else he writes - well, I still think his Avengers comic is more fun than anyone else's has been in a very long time.
(If anyone preferred Busiek's run, okay, I can understand that, but I personally thought that Busiek's stories were well-intentioned and but rather pedestrian rewrites of all the Avengers stories he read when he was a kid. Bendis's stuff at least seems like it's looking for new things to blow up.)
Oh yeah, there's been crap Avengers in the past, and Bendis' is certainly not the worst, but it is quite bad. The title hasn't been much good since probably the start of Busiek's "Kang War" arc.
That said, Bendis' first arc was pretty good, I thought, but since then... I'm not sure doing exactly the same ninjas/Ronin story twice in the space of eighteen months could be considered "looking for new things". 
Seriously, some character makes a variation on this statement in every single NA story arc.
True, but my question is whether Bendis definitely had Skrulls in mind when he had that mysterious guy hire Electro, or whether it was just a vague mystery that he was hoping to fill in later when he came up with an idea.
"Arguably, Bendis'(Bendis's? Ugh.)"
I also find it horrible to look at. Unfortunatley, it's also correct. You only drop the second s if it's the possessive of a plural. Or Jesus, for some reason. And whatever else Bendis is, I'm fairly certain he's not the Lord of the Dance.
I'm still bitter that Strunk & White discourages the use of the word "gotten."
As any good descriptivist will tell you, there's a lot of nonsense in Strunk & White.
Well yes, it's American English after all, which is by definition incorrect.
Sorry, blatantly unnecessary worm can openage there.
English as a whole is a pretty nonsensical language that has trouble following its own rules.
"English as a whole is a pretty nonsensical language that has trouble following its own rules."
Not as nonsensical as German, believe you me, if by nonsensical you mean irregular.
Generally, I'd like to think that linguistic rules are useful as long as they aim to describe the standards. Once they try to prescribe them, though, they stop being useful.
In other words, as long as you don't have a good grasp on the standards, stick to them. Once you do, you may break them at your leisure.
Ha.
Anyone defending Bendis' (sorry, I just can't type "s's" without backspacing) ability to "plan ahead" should take a look at this and tell me who's standing left of Cap:
http://www.comicscontinuum.com/
s...ewavengers2.jpg
Bendis excels at making readers think there's a grand plan at work, mainly because his pacing is so decompressed that he can wedge storylines in while claiming he was going there all along. We can also think of the discrepancies in the Ronin storyline in this context...
I give up. Who is it?
It looks like Dr Strange, and they (badly) covered him up rather than redrew him as Ronin for some reason.
Well, my impression so far is that Bendis is unable to plan even from one issue to the next if he's got more than two characters to juggle.
But who knows, maybe he's going to surprise me.
kelvin: Actually, American English tends to be considerably more conservative than British English. Of course, it's not worth working yourself into a bloody tizzy over, innit?
Diana- That's Ronin, who's design changed slightly between that poster and the first issue being published.
Taibak, fair point, er, dude!
Rory, not quite, as Ronin didn't even appear until, what, #11? And then the design was more than "slightly" changed.
Anyway, as I understand it, Bubble-Head is supposed to be the same character that became Ronin, but they hadn't finalised the design by that point.
My guess is that they hadn't even finalised the name at that point either, because a guy in leather with a fishbowl on his head doesn't really evoke the right kind of imagery associated with the name "Ronin".
And of course, they hadn't finalised who was going to be in the suit at that point either.
So it doesn't say much for the planning, on any level.
And that dovetails nicely into the whole Ronin fiasco, when Bendis over-teased the rather obvious twist that it was meant to be Matt Murdock - and when everyone figured it out, Ronin spontaneously grew breasts and became Echo despite, you know, the whole deaf thing.
I still say Bendis is this generation's Chris Claremont: hugely influential despite a lot of obvious (and annoying) writing quirks.
Kelvingreen - Ronin didn't appear in the comic until issue #11 but he was on a cover of issue 1.
Yes, fair point. I'd forgotten that he/she was on the Quesada/Hitch cover for #1, so they'd finalised the design at least by that point, even if they hadn't sorted out who was in the suit.
Taibak, yes, I'd agree with the Claremont comparison.
Earlier I said that I figured that the secret invasion would've been over by now had it blah blah blah... I just realised something else... The whole point of New Avengers not seeming to go anywhere mostly due to interferrence from other stories, while may not be deliberate, it has been explained away (in an interview I think) that the reason the invasion is working is cause the heroes have been so busy with other stuff that they haven't been able to get to working out whats wrong, even though they know something is.
Anyone defending Bendis' (sorry, I just can't type "s's" without backspacing) ability to "plan ahead" should take a look at this and tell me who's standing left of Cap:
No offense, but an artist's early design for a character in a series doesn't really reflect the writer's intent for a story arc.
And that dovetails nicely into the whole Ronin fiasco, when Bendis over-teased the rather obvious twist that it was meant to be Matt Murdock - and when everyone figured it out, Ronin spontaneously grew breasts and became Echo despite, you know, the whole deaf thing.
Well, the deafness is irrelevant; by the time the character appeared in the comics, it was definitely meant to be Echo. That was why Ronin couldn't understand what Iron Man said, had long black hair, etc. And why it was revealed that Ronin was Echo in a book by Tom Defalco that was published before Ronin even showed up in New Avengers.
The chest is pretty obvious, though. I agree that the character/costume was definitely designed with Matt Murdock in mind. But that doesn't mean Bendis is unable to plan ahead, as you say. It means he obviously did have a plan and changed it.
It certainly doesn't support Marc-Oliver's idea that he's some bumbling oaf who's just making up random stuff as he goes along. ^^;
Matt, this is where I think the writing falls down, because in reading Not Avengers, the heroes have had plenty of opportunity to do something about the invasion, but haven't, because Bendis has had them shouting at each other about it, rather than actually, you know, actively doing anything.
Kevin, regarding the early design for Proto-Ronin, I think you're right to an extent. I doubt Bendis had much control over how that character looked. That said, since the concept at that point was to be Matt Murdock in disguise, the bubble-head design isn't exactly evocative of that.
So we've either got Dave Finch making an enormous blunder and thinking that the best design for a martial artist character is some kind of scifi wetsuit, or we've got Bendis not having much idea of what exactly he's going to do with Murdock.
kelvingreen... yeah man, I also think NA has gone nowhere fast, was just stating that the reason for it HAS been explained away. I only started reading NA after I read the first (on the net released)page of #32 during a bendis interview about the secret invasion and thought it sounded like a cool story, and since I'm a wolverine fan, and the idea of a marvel all-stars team sounded good I went out and got all the volumes. Even in trade it's been a slow read. Like I said much earlier, if you take volumes 1, 3 and 6 then it reads fast, the rest seems to be time filler while having to acknowledge other events.
"It certainly doesn't support Marc-Oliver's idea that he's some bumbling oaf who's just making up random stuff as he goes along. ^^;"
Ah, I don't think that's what I suggested - I'm quite convinced Bendis does plan ahead. He just doesn't seem to be very good at executing those plans on titles with an ensemble cast.
Quite why that is, I've no idea. Maybe he tends to change his mind along the road, or maybe he just feels a story doesn't need to be consistent from one month to the next - let alone over the course of a few years - as long as people remember the broad strokes. Or maybe he's just sloppy and doesn't care about the details.
I don't recall that sort of thing happening with, say, POWERS or DAREDEVIL, but the more complex and sweeping his books get, the more trouble he seems to have to keep it together.
^Maybe it's because the star-studded New Avengers roster is affected by every big event in the Marvel Universe?
I mean, you mention POWERS and DAREDEVIL, but those books are pretty self-contained (particularly POWERS) compared to a book with Spider-Man, Iron Man, Wolverine, and Captain America in it.
Also, to anyone who reads it: how's Mighty Avengers doing? Is Bendis doing a better job on that?
Well, out of the three big event stories which have affected NEW AVENGERS, two were created by Bendis himself. So if that's the reason for the lack of consistence, it rather supports my point. (And I thought the CIVIL WAR tie-in issues have actually been his best work on the book, incidentally.)
My suspicion is that he simply doesn't have the patience or the attention span required to write large ensemble casts or big events. Based on that, I guess I'm expecting SECRET INVASION to be a bit of a train wreck.
It hasn't actually been stated that Kitty is dead, just that Colossus "lost her."
What that actually means remains to be seen. And possibly remains for a very, very long time, given the scheduling of Astonishing.
Michael, Mighty is, if anything, even worse. I don't know why they decided to put out a title for those who didn't like Not Avengers, and then get the same guy to write it.
Marc-Oliver, it does seem that he has a problem with his attention span. He's not always been as awful as he is on the Avengers books. Or House of M.
And I agree, the Civil War tie-ins were hands down better than anything else he's done on NA, but then they were essentially solo character pieces.
Also, to anyone who reads it: how's Mighty Avengers doing? Is Bendis doing a better job on that?
Well, I think the pace of Might Avengers was damaged by Frank Cho's lateness. I felt the first story dragged, but that may have been due to the long gaps between issues. It may be that the Ultron story reads better in one sitting.
But the main complaint of New Avengers -- that nothing happens -- doesn't apply to MA. Bendis' dialogue ticks are still present, but the events are suitably large for the Avengers. A real sense of "How are they going to get out of this one?" (Unlike, say, ninjas.)
In fact, I quite liked the last issue. Not that I thought Doom and Iron Man were going to be stuck in the past, but I thought Bendis did a good job of creating unease around the Sentry's mental state. And Bagley's art is always an asset. (How did Marvel let DC get him?)
Bendis had some problems with plot setup and follow-through on Daredevil, too. I vividly recall the "King of Hell's Kitchen" arc ending with the revelation that Matt Murdock had been a crimelord's attorney. The story of that crimelord, "The Golden Age," had no such stuff in it; Matt refuses to work for Alexander Bont straightaway.
Likewise, "The Widow" arc is built around a massive plothole. If the Avenegrs aren't allowed into Bulgaria in the beginning, which sets off the whole plot in the first place, why and how are they raiding the country at the end and taking in one of its top-ranked intel people? (And let's not get into the painful ad hoc reveal that the villain is the original Red Guardian, despite his being quite dead for decades and having an utterly different personality in his only other appearances.)
" I can only hope that the real Cyclops turns out not to need a visor like the Skrull one. I mean, if you want to import developments from Whedon's run, might as well take the good stuff instead of . . ."
Show some class and be less careless with potential spoilers.
James - It's not a spoiler. Cyclops hasn't need the visor for sometime now, at least an entire story arc, possibly two, in Whedon's run.
Emma had him get rid of it during "torn" which, being AXM, was probably 3 years ago now.
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