Bendis ranting about X-Men rumors

(starts at 3:00) The devil is spreading his lies...

Bendis gonna Bendis.

People really do need to understand that when a story isn't in their fave characters favor the writer doesn't "hate" them, it just means they are a bad writer!

I still think Marvel hates the X-Men but the last few issues of UXM have been amazing, so I am really excited for the conclusion of Bendis' run.

92 minutes of applauses!

Bendis says when talking about fans asking him about Marvel burying the X-Men "It's such an insult to those of us who work on it everyday"

This comment is funny, seeing as a lot of fans think Bendis whole run on X-Men is an insult to the entire franchise.

@cattlebattle: 92 minutes of applause also for you.

It's always something with the x-men

say WHAT?!?!?!?

Yup....sounds about right.

Sorry Bendis, you don't have to hate us....we hate you enough for the both of us.

Man I hadn't really considered this yet... Bendis might lose creative control over Miles. That sucks. :(

facts.

Really glad this guy is leaving Xmen. And coincidentally really sick of the Secret Wars stuff.

I didn't realize Bendis had a lisp. Ha. I don't dislike him as much now. Although someone should get ahold of him and tell him the loose tie around an unbuttoned collar is not a good look...

I dislike him again.

god, I wish he was leaving GotG so bad... we complain about his x-men writing, but it was nowhere near as terrible or ignorant of the source material as his Guardians work.

Well to be honest I believe him. I mean he does have to consider his reputation and relevance his words have or will have in the future, so inferiority complex (that is indeed justified BTW!) aside, I think we can trust him........... lol you know what I mean here.

Now, that his run was absolutely irrelevant and watered down insignificance, that's a whole nother story.

Someone can give me only one good reason, to don't ask to Bendis why he has lost 130,000 readers in three years, even having at his disposal Cyclops, Jean Grey, Magneto and Emma Frost, if his run is soo good?

Really, this conviction that they can write everything, ignoring the complaints of their customers (because we are customers, not only readers of simply fans) and ignoring the lost sales, is for me cause of great concern about their future comics.

true its not good he should go back to the avengers

1. he's a polarizing writer. A lot of fans didn't give him a chance to begin with, and a lot who did were turned off by his story-pacing and dialogue style.

2. his Uncanny X-men was pretty different than any other X-men runs and thus failed to meet the expectations of many fans. And the premise alone of All-new X-men was enough to not catch the interest of many long-time fans.

I'm not saying his run has been "soo good" (although I have really enjoyed most of his Uncanny' run), but just as being popular doesn't make something good, being unpopular doesn't itself mean that something isn't good.

I don't think he is polarizing, in fact I like his Ultimate Spider Man, but in his X-Men he have made so much mistakes, that I put him in the top of my personal chart of the worst x-writers.

What are this mistakes?

Premises abandoned (the Cyclops' revolution), things not explained (why the power of Scott, Emma and Magneto was broken?), characters not developed (Teen Jean), nothing respect for the continuity, even if it is the continuity of his books (Kitty is also in Black Vortex, than in the "Malloy saga" and in Uncanny X-Men 33), huge mistake (in Battle of the Atom Xavier Junior was the nephew of Professor X, but in All New X-Men 27 is explained that Xavier Junior is the Professor X's son)…

what I mean by polarizing is that some fans love him and some fans really don't.

Like you seem to be, I'm pretty hot and cold on the guy: I like some of his stuff a lot and other stuff not at all. For example, I personally really liked his Uncanny' run, but I lost interest really quickly in his All-new' run. So, as far as X-men writers go, I guess I wouldn't consider him a favorite or a least-favorite.

I'm not saying these aren't valid criticisms, but I do think a lot of them have as much to do with fan expectations.

Premises being abandoned is like that, in a way; every fan seemed to have their own idea of what Cyclops' revolution was supposed to be, and thus their own expectations of what shape the story would take. When the story didn't take the direction of what Cyclops' plan seemed to imply, it was judged on that basis rather than on the story that actually happened.

Continuity is another thing that seems to bother some fans more than others. I'm generally not one to expect or get hung up on continuity to begin with, but since I was mainly only reading Uncanny' and not his other books, I didn't even notice. But the idea that all of the stories have to fit together in a way that chronologically makes sense is a fan expectation that I don't have (as long as each story or book makes sense within itself). So, while some of Bendis' stories may contradict each other's continuity, it doesn't matter to me as long as they don't contradict their own.

I'm not saying his Uncanny' was flawless, but the fact that it doesn't line up perfectly with another story from the same time isn't really a criticism of the story itself.

But, like I say, while these are things that do bother some fans, and certainly a big part of what makes Bendis such a polarizing writer, they are based on a certain level of expectation from the fans. Not meeting the expectations of the fans isn't in itself a measure of quality for the individual stories themselves.

Can you imagine for a moment having to put up with this day in and day out though. Imagine every time you left your job or school someone or a large group utterly destroy everything about you in a forum (including your appearance). I honestly could not handle it.

I enjoyed the run on ANXM for the most part (I left after the Pichelli issue) and Uncanny had good moments too but the pacing did go slow and meander which is why I left the book. Magik had some great moments but it just was not moving fast enough.

Personally it seems that many readers either like one X-camp or the other and (as I had in the past) trashed the other side. I think both sides at the moment are a mess and while the writers have a lot of responsibility, the editors are also to blame. Bendis walks with the cross because he is the most vocal, but some of the 4 and done writers have just as much bravado as he but they do not stick around long enough to make a real impact. Read Willow Wilson's interview and personally I thank Allah she is not staying on the title ( hopefully, given the unknown SW effects). If she had I would throw money on the fact that she would have just as many haters. I don't read them at all anymore, I was taken in by Avenger Now, but her "plans" for some characters made me cringe. All creators will have their detractors and their fans, Bendis, good or bad, calls out both and keeps himself polarizing. Like him or loathe him, people are talking about him, buying his work, and keeping him at Marvel.

slow.......pace......slow...pace. SLOW PACE!!!! and yet he gets away with it :/

"Ranting" =/= Answering a question in less then two sentences.

People need to understand that without a character going through some lows/sacrifice there can't be any highs/heroics.

Hehe yeah.... so where the f*ck are the Fantastic Four?

WIN

Bendis has done some good work on other titles, but I can't help but think none of the writers seem to have any real affection for the X franchise. Maybe I'm wrong but their hearts just don't seem to be in it.

And now apparently the editor has quit. These all seem like creepy forewarnings of the 'shape of things to come'.

I won't be sad in the least to see Bendis go, but...

Don't be silly, he hasn't lost 130,000 readers. The first issue sales was (as always) vastly inflated by multiple variant covers and sales incentives and to a lesser degree the following few ones too.

His sales has actually been quite steady and relatively high, better than the Avengers for example. Almost all series will lose readers over time, it's called "standard attrition". Bendis is no exception to that rule.

@jcg79:

My question was only a little provocation, did to emphasize the break between Marvel and us: Bendis is tired by our continuous request (I don't think it is the right word) and we are disappointed by his run.

Obviously he is right, because some request are really silly or annoying. But also we are right, because his run is really pointless and his behaviour isn't really professional: how many cover and solicits liars we saw?

LMFAOOOOOO---- 'the devil is spreading his lies.'

That in my opinion is the point: a writer is the "game master". He lays down the rules of the game and so if he starts a book talking about a mutant revolution, talking about powers mysteriously broken, if he periodically synchronize his two titles, it is justified that the readers await that the writer write about that revolution, that the writer explain why the powers are broken and that his book remain synchronized.

It isn't matter what he write about the revolution, it is enough that he write a good story. He may tell about Cyclops that try to create a mutant nation in Canada, he can tell about Cyclops that turn his X-Men in another Mutant Brotherhood, he can tell about Cyclops that realizes that it is counterproductive start a revolution, but the writer must write about that, because he created this expectations.

It is like if Chevrolet advertises its new wonderful Camaro Twin Turbo, but if we go to a Chevrolet dealer we see only the new Impala. It can be the best car in the world, but it isn't what Chevrolet made the costumer believe.

In the comics world is the same thing: the writer make and the publishing house sold a product, that we buy because he said us that we will read a certain kind of stories (expectations of the readers) and if the writer don't write that kind of stories, the readers will be disappointed about that.

P.S. I hope my words doesn't seems too harsh, because I'm still able to modulate them.

@ec2277: sure. some fans have expectations, and the more expectations one has, the more likely they are to be disappointed.

I'm not saying that as a defense to anyone who doesn't like his stuff, I like some of it, but I get why some people don't.

I was just trying to answer your question, when you said,

"Someone can give me only one good reason, to don't ask to Bendis why he has lost 130,000 readers in three years, even having at his disposal Cyclops, Jean Grey, Magneto and Emma Frost, if his run is soo good?"

I just meant that, he lost readers because his run didn't meet the expectations of the fans.

But also that not meeting those expectations is not in itself any measure of quality.

If writers or artists always had to do what the fans expected, I think most fans would probably get bored pretty fast. Creators need to be able to go in directions that fans don't expect or there'd never be any surprises.

Of course, not all surprises are good, and not every X-men fan is going to like every X-men story, but I'd still rather see the creators have the opportunity to try different things -even if they fail- than to have them have to try to cater to a fan-base that's simply too big to please everyone anyway.

@oldnightcrawler:

My question was rhetorical, so it isn't necessary take it litterally. In Italian I do an great use of rhetoric and hyperbole, in order to give more emphasis to my speeches. But I'm not yet able to do just as well in English; I will improve.

Anyway I agree with you: a story can't be predictable, because it would be boring. But the plot must have a develop coherently with its premise. De facto Bendis choose to tell us the story of Cyclops, who recruit a team of guerrillas in order to start a revolution and after a troubled personal journey, he decides not to do any revolution.

It would have been a good plot, but all this personal journey was narrated out of panel, without that the new recruit without that new recruits did nothing significant and in my opinion this is the main reason of the resentment against him of the x-fans.

Classic Bendis

maybe, yeah.

then again, significance is in the eye of the beholder. While none of the new recruits were specifically important to the overall story, I personally still enjoyed what they each added to the stories and think that their perspective of the events was more interesting than just using a bunch of previous X-men characters. Would I care about those characters outside of a book that featured Cyclops, Magneto, etc? -probably not especially, but I still enjoyed how they served this story.

And I'm not disagreeing that Cyclops' story in this couldn't have been better; I'm sure someone else could have told the same story and have executed it in a more compelling way. But, again, that's largely a matter of storytelling style, which I think is a limiting and ultimately unfair expectation to put on someone who's job is to be creative.

Bendis' style is really different from pretty much any other writer who's done X-men, so being a fan of the X-men doesn't mean you'll be a fan of how he writes them. When most people think X-men story, they think of something written by or with a stylistic reference to Claremont; but a story not meeting that expectation doesn't itself make it not worth telling (I would even say that makes it that much more worth telling, personally).

Bendis was a mistake as a choice for an Xmen writer. I think he should stick to writing solos. While some may like or even make excuses for him I just can't. I think even he regrets agreeing to write Xmen deep down