I'm a person who is new to marvel comics, and I just wanted to ask why do so many viners hate the writer Brian Micheal Bendis so much. I hear all the time in forums about how Bendis is a bad writer or how Bendis doesn't have a soul. So I wanna ask why do so many people have a problem with Bendis?

Remember that kid in school who said he knew karate so the other kids who said they knew karate wouldn't beat him up? Now imagine that kid writing comics.

Bendis was not always a bad writer. His early days were pretty damn good. His 1st run of Ultimate Spider-Man, breath taking. But since then, he thinks that he can run all of Marvel, and has been ruining canon with everything good in the MU. His Avengers run is terrible, thank god he is leaving that soon, and he is not trying to do the X-Men. Lame.

He is like a villain. Everyone said he had great potential, then he used that potential to wipe his ass and do bad things.

@spideyfan69: he is not bad but he can only write crime or noir stories.

I like his creator owned stuff like Powers and Scarlet, but I stay clear of his Marvel stuff.

I don't care what anyone says about...yeah his Avengers stuff isn't very good but Ultimate Spider-man has been consistently one of Marvel's best titles for years

He can tend to write characters one dimensionally, but he will employ friend banter type dialogue to create a sort of artificial depth. So say a character like Ares who was written as a deep and complicated badass character, under Bendis sort of becomes a character that will act like a macho bruiser and make jokes about killing and woman. Not necessarily inherently bad, but one character has more depth and complexity than the other, and the other one is probably more accessible to casual fans of comics. Now what I just said about Ares can be applied to so many characters Bendis has written, Sentry is just a crazy insane guy, Noh Varr is just some teenage alien kid, Ms Marvel is there to be a punch line for fat jokes, Luke Cage is all about being a daddy oh and all the characters become quippy as well. Fans on message boards tend to know how other writers write characters prior to Bendis or alongside him, and also the stories these characters were in, and so Bendis inconsistency can rub many the wrong way. The more extreme dislike can come if a persons favorite character is really mischaracterized by Bendis, to the extent they consider them ruined.  

He's bad? Really? I've always liked him. Ultimate Spiderman has always been my favorite rendition of comic Spiderman, while he was working on it.

hes a good writer infact hes a really good writer im reading spidermen and its awesome. In my experise most of the bendis haters are thor fans who refer to seige and i think his thor run (i am not sure if he ever did a thor run) but yea seige was ok not as bad as most people make out to be.

There is nothing that I can find wrong with his Ultimate Spider-Man run.

I think most people like his Ult Spider man or his earlier crime work.

However, if you read his avengers stories while also reading characters individual ongoing series by other authors, they are so different that you think they were different characters. I think that is why most people hate him. I loved Bucky Barnes as Captain America that Brubaker wrote because he wrote such a complex character. Bucky in the Avengers was really blah and not really interesting.

Bastard ruined moon knight. Off with his head.

Bump....

I think his Ult Spider-man work is amazing. He made 1610 Spider-Man so popular that people hated him when he killed him off, then got Miles Morales to be appreciated by the community. My problem with him comes when he does work for the 616 mainstream. His avengers work isn't the best (though I enjoyed New Avengers), for example I think he could have handled Thanos better in the Avengers Assemble arc. I feel that Thanos seemed to one dimensional compared to previous roles- and takes away from the character development Thanos has shown in Infinity War, Annihilation, The Thanos Imperative, HOTU and Blood and Thunder. It also doesn't help that Thanos has gone for the cosmic cube before.

But my own personal gripe is with him making 616 Spider-Man job. In Spider-Men, which was admittedly very good, Peter is taken down by Miles despite being faster, stronger and more durable, and having much more experience and recently mastering a new and highly effective martial art form. It also seemed very out of character for Peter to attack Miles like that- But Hey Ho, maybe its just me......................

I can also point to other instances in the Avengers too.

But I think he's a talented writer, who I think should focus most of his time and effort on the 1610 continuity.

@z3ro180: it didnt go anywhere,bad dialog, all picture no writing and why was asgard so powerless...bendis sucks

hrmm bendi is interesting on the one hand you have books like ult spiderman, daredevil, and the 2 x men books on the other hand you have AvX and AoU also there is the avengers and he is always tasked with killing off who ever needs to be killed to be honest i think he is a good writer but he should really limit his load and maybe put his sythe away he is like that nerd in school that was just doing too much for his own good

He writes boring and uninteresting Marvel events which sometimes don't even match up with whats ongoing at the same time, i.e. AoU and AvX. I can't remember reading anything recently written by Bendis that I actually enjoyed.

I don't hate, because that is a strong word, but after the OS tie in for Guardians, I swore off his books.

Bendis? The writer bendis?

BENDISSSSS

Iron Man. riri...

Need I say more?

Because Bendis is matter manipulator. He find what matters to you and do horrible things with it.

His daredevil stuff is great, alias was good, hell..i liked pulse too! I've had not one problem with his ultimate Spiderman but all of his avengers stuff and bigger stories and events are "all sizzle with no steak" and now the bigger he writes he doesn't care about past continuity at all

Because he consistently pisses on continuity and character development, can't wrap up a storyline to save his life, and treats others creation like shit. He's freaking joke, who thinks it's so uber cool to write a piece of dialouge for Thanos that says "People of Earth... Hi.". God damned disgrace.

He is an absolute joke , as others have said he doesn't care about how he portrays characters or continuity,

One of his biggest failures and "crimes" is how he portrays thanos , he writes him as a one dimensional brute with no reference to his brains , cunning , tech , shields or others powers , he just uses him like a dumb brick

From Avengers assemble arc , civil war 2, Gotg original sin tie in and now the guardians of the galaxy #19 finale , thanos was not a developed character, he ruins him and its got to the point where NONE of his stories with thanos are even taken notice of and any showings are disregarded due to the complete lack of understanding of his power level and power set

Gotg 19 was absolutely horrendous, a very poor structured story, more like a standalone non canon one shot , drax , gamora , venom and thing and storlord gave him trouble , its really kind of pathetic how hes supposed to be a professional comic writer and cant even write comics characters properly, its really bad

a one trick pony

This is a great first post.

His first few arcs on Ultimate Spider-Man were good and I thought he did a nice job of writing a 21st century teenage Peter Parker as a sort of ‘TV series in comic form’. Also at the time Bagley’s art combined with the glossy art on higher quality paper was jaw droppingly gorgeous.

The bad? Oh boy... where do I start... With Ultimate Spider-Man although Peter was written fairly well the rest of the characters felt super flat and one dimensional- cliche modern stereotypes of “the rich friend”, “the jerky jock”, “the nice but pretty girl that hangs out with a geek”, “single parent aunt in the year 2002.” Also for me the lack of Peter’s inner dialogue, something so core to Spider-Man, felt empty to me. After the first few arcs I started to loose interest. Stories increasingly felt forced and rushed to me as the series went on. Panels after panels of no text or dialogue- let’s just say that Bagley was doing a lot more work than Bendis.

The worst though, absolute horrible garbage, is when Bendis writes an ensemble cast. Mark Millar had been doing a very clever and politically aware Ultimate X-Men that I adored. Bendis guest wrote a couple of issues that were God awful and totally off tone (one stinker involved a never before seen Gambit helping a lost kid avoid Hammerhead and another Wolverine killing some super dangerous but innocent mutant kid for SHIELD) before somehow being given the keys to the title. It tanked. It turned into the most pathetic dirivitive teenage garbage imaginable. The worst dialogue you could imagine and forced romances replaced the allegories for the war on terror and racism and homophobia- though he decided to make Colossus gay but it just felt like a super forced attempt to be edgy.

And that trend continued as he killed Beast, Peter Parker and countless others for seeming shock value. What started as an intriguing exploration of “what if Spider-Man and the X-Men’s teenage years were in the oughts instead of the 60s” turned into “Brian Bendis’ whacky alternative universe sandbox!”

I hate him because of this.

https://richridernova.wordpress.com/2015/11/27/the-sad-saga-of-star-lordhow-marvel-has-turned-a-solid-concept-into-a-mess-of-diluted-characterization/

Also this.

https://comicvine.gamespot.com/forums/gen-discussion-1/so-bendis-wrote-for-thanos-again-1870283/

Though i didn't really started to ''hate'' him until he messed up Guardians of the Galaxy and Thanos. His Ultimate Spiderman and Daredevil stuff it's good but his Avengers run was pretty much a Luke Cage book with the Avengers as sidekicks and he Always had these issues with continuity since Avengers Dissasembled. He's a guy that should stick with street level vigilantes and never touch sci-fi and fantasy characters, and teams in general.

I wish he never comes back to Marvel.

I think Superman fans can now contribute to this thread as well.

@theinsufferable: I'm not well versed with his recent run on Superman Rebirth series. What he has done?

@mar-vell92: I haven't looked at his Superman and Action Comics yet, but his Man of Steel was boring. There was a boring new character Rogol Zaar who's basically doomsday with a bit more brain who's got a hate boner for Kryptonians and is suddenly responsible for Krypton's destruction IIRC; apparently nothing interesting has happened with this guy in Superman and AC yet. Throughout the whole MoS series, Superman doesn't do anything remotely useful. As expected, there was shock value. The whole thing was like a trailer for his Superman and AC run. And had 2 issues worth of story stretched into 6 issues.

@theinsufferable: Good Odin he's terrible.

Bendis is overrated in my opinion. He doesn't know how to write and relies on shitty jokes to make a story. I hate how he takes badass characters and make them into a joke. Take Punisher for example, he keeps making fun of The Punisher, he writes him like a clueless thug with no tactics. In Daredevil or Ultimate Spider-Man he wrote the character in those series just to get beat up and made fun of. Can't forget how he used Castle in the current shitty Defenders miniseries of his.. Point is, he makes fun of Antiheroes and macho tough guys because he's so insecure of himself. I'm glad he's gone from Marvel with his Riri bullshit.

Ultimate Spider-man was... painful. (Change for the sake of change!)... however most praise that book as being his best work at Marvel. It certainly was loved by a near-dead Marvel for the sales it brought in along with sparking the Ultimate Universe.

Bendis is not a one dimensional writer. Each book he wrote felt completely different in pace, story, style & dialogue. His best work was Daredevil! The entire run. He did a lot of good work at the house of ideas: House of M, Secret War, New Avengers, Alias, Dark Avengers, Ultimate Origins, Ultimate Power, All-New X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, Miles Morales, Infamous Iron Man & Invincible Iron Man.

@redronin said:

Because he consistently pisses on continuity and character development, can't wrap up a storyline to save his life, and treats others creation like shit. He's freaking joke, who thinks it's so uber cool to write a piece of dialouge for Thanos that says "People of Earth... Hi.". God damned disgrace.

Continuity you say? After all the times the Earth has been threatened by Thanos & how every time is a bit of an event, what does he need say? Addressing his audience with a simple ominous "Hi.". Would you prefer a grandiose speech declaring his intentions or just his resume?

People who weren't fans of the Avengers prior to his run will never understand the horror of having 95% of what makes one of your favorite comics took completely dismantled, and having to deal with 30 appearances of the Hood between Kang arcs.

It was five years of miserable comics with awful dialog, poorly characterized heroes, preferential treatment to pet favorite characters, disregard for continuity, and bad story telling, as his book moved drearily from one miserable event with a sad ending to another.

There was never a breath of fresh air, or a moment of happiness. I don't mind my Avengers a little darker. I loved Jonathan Hickman's run, which was an intelligently paced, slow burn epic.

I don't claim to have read every Avengers comic. I've read probably 70% of the major runs though. Lee, Thomas, Englehart, Stern, Busiek, Hickman, Waid...I think Bendis was the worst of them, and I feel sad that he defined my favorite super hero team for so many people.

@improvmonkey: Read how Jim Starlin writes Thanos dialogue, then compare it to how Bendis writes Thanos. Then you'll know why Marvel Cosmic fans are angry at him.

Also some of the lines he wrote for Doom were pretty dumb too.

Well, he's like Frank Miller. He's done some amazing stuff in his early years. And now he ruines everything.

@jb681131: This, except he's not xenophobic and misogynistic like old Franky boy.

From what I've read of Frank Miller he never seemed xenophobic nor misogynistic.

Bendis tends to only be good when writing character without previous continuity. The latest example of his shortcomings is with Superman. He changes lore usually for worse just to tell a story it felt he was gonna tell regardless of it made sense or not.

@jb681131: Almost every female character he writes is a msnipulative bitch or a whore.

As for not being xenophobic, watch Linkara's review of Holy Terror.

I don't think he has ever written anything good before.

Lets to put it this way. It took a movie to give Miles Morales a proper motivation, instead of just asking "what would Peter do" and made his uncle death actually mean something. If your really really good writer. I don't think you need a movie to fix your characters.