Was he that bad?

No, he was not the worst.

Nope, he's bad in a few spots, but eventually it'll just be seen as a sub par run on Uncanny and a poorly scripted All New run,and will probably be redeemed by what other ppl do with his ideas.

In context it'll be pretty bad because nothing happened and ppl who sat through it will remember the wasted potential and slow pacing. But Astonishing was hated for being pointless and delayed during its time and yet no one considers that when they grade the run on its own

he is not the worst, its not even that he was bad its that he was anti climatic and slow as crap pacing made you wait half a year or more for a story to end where nothing happened, also he seemed to dismiss continuity and start too much that he couldnt finish by the time his run was over.

As for as Wheldon's astonishing goes i totally count delays when grading whedon as a writer i would never want him back. But if you just grade the story on its own merits then its alot better, also people say it has no rammification to continuity but it did bring back Colossus, introduce Agent Brand & Sword, Danger and got rid of Kitty so I think considering its length thats about as much as any run and none of it really had to be re conned sure kitty came back but it was years later and used the parameters of the story itself didnt disregard she was lost in space in a big bullet lol. He also laid the building blocks of what Scott and Emma's relationship was like, sure morrison put them together but the actual relationship was built by Whedon.

That however is totally not what this thread is about ! No bendis is not the worst writer Morrison is <.< (yea i snuck that in there)

Bendis...good ideas, poor execution

Definitely not the worst

No he was just disappointing.

No, that would be Chuck Austen. Bendis is close, though.

He's not the worst but definitely not one of the best. The execution and pacing are terrible and he's not really a good writer when it comes to teams. I hate that he was put on the books especially when things had such potential

Chuck Austen.

I basically agree with this sentiment, yeah.

As for Whedon's run, I read it in trades after it came out, and from that perspective the pacing was actually perfect. I didn't realize that it was hated for either of those things until after I read it. But was it pointless?

From my perspective it was the book that finally legitimized Emma's standing as an X-man, as well as Cyclops and Emma's relationship.. it was the story that brought Colossus back to life, finally saw him and Kitty as an actual couple, and, for a few years, was the epic, epic ending to Kitty Pryde's story. Even as a huge Kitty Pryde fan, I wasn't disappointed to see her go based on what an epic ending it was.

Plus it introduced a bunch of new great characters and concepts: Armor, Blindfold, Danger, Kavita Rao, Agent Brand and S.W.O.R.D., and Ord and the Breakworld. I dunno, that stuff doesn't seem like nothing.

@oldnightcrawler: see even old nightcrawler agrees with me, soo BOO YA

hahaha..

yeah, I didn't see your post until after I sent mine, or else I would have just re-posted yours. minus the Morrison jab. Actually, I feel like Bendis' run is most comparable to Morrison's of any other X-men writer: especially stylized, good enough ideas to be pretty interesting at the start, but ultimately anti-climactic and somewhat disappointing..

I liked his uncanny run. Bad ending though. I gave up on all new X-Men after he started getting his Guardians of the Galaxy stink all over it.

Not the worst.

Definitely not the worst. My favorite in fact. His writing style and myself are buddies.

I wouldn't say that he's the all time worst, but he's definitely on the short list. I couldn't even stand to read all of All New, especially when he started butchering X-23's character.

@mcklayn: @oldnightcrawler: Lol i was just naming the complaints that we often here when someone says Whedon is overrated, or that they don't get why people like him ect.... Personally I think it comes down to separating the run from the writer in some instances,,,

Bendis is a bad example of an X-writer do to his gimmick issues and lack of plot. But If Lemire and the new team further develop plots like Magik/Limbo, Scott's plans/Mutant Genocide, Beast = crazy, Teen Jean's future....then I wouldn't have a problem sitting back and reading through Bendis' Uncanny. Hell i'd probably even recommend it as being the place to start following the important story arcs....

The real question is if Bendis, Austen, Whedon, Aaron, and Morrison wanted to come back would you look forward to it?...because what decides the writers value and what decides the runs value are usually not in line with eachother.

Whedon: yes, absolutely. he doesn't even deserve to be clumped in with these others; he obviously had a very specific set of stories he wanted to tell, that much is still clear from his run as it stands. His run had goals and skillfully delivered on them. I have no doubt that if he wanted to do X-men again, it would be because he had another story that was at least as good or he wouldn't bother.

Morrison: I would definitely be curious; I would also definitely be dubious. I really liked the tone and stories of the first half of his run, but I was less interested or impressed by his meta, deconstruction stuff at the end. What game is he playing? would factor into my interest. But, as you mentioned about Bendis, if someone tells me they like Whedon's run, I usually tell them to try Morrison's to see where he was coming from (/what he seemed to be trying to fix).

Chuck Austen I think i might actually enjoy if I thought he had a good premise for an X-men story. I'm not really a fan of his run, but there's stuff I admire about it. I think most of his ideas for stories were kind of half-baked, and the execution really wasn't any better, but there are some pretty fun memorable moments that seem to come from doing weird soap opera stuff with the X-men in a way that no else one would think to. If he had a good artist, I could actually see me actually wanting to give it a shot..

Bendis and Aaron: while I actually liked more of these guys stuff than Austen's (I do think they both had their moments), I really feel like these two kind of had a chance to do something really cool with the X-men that (whereas Austin seemed a lot more limited in what he could do, based on editorial, etc), and kind of didn't do near as much with that chance as they could have. Austin's run isn't good, but both Bendis and Aaron were somehow far more disappointing, despite having more good issues. They had their chance.

I'm kind of with you for the most part. Though i'd be more picky critical with the what/where of the position of the book they were writing...

On Whedon- I agree... Theres not a stipulation i'd attach to him other then that if he cameback he'd have to follow through and sticks with the run until he's really finished. The writing is there, but the guy is a busy celeb writer...and delays/early endings are expected.

On Morrison- I could take it but only in an isolated environment. Almost like how Astonishing even after Whedon was never a major part in story lines even when it featured the main cast and characters of the rest of the franchise. Give him a book and make it run alongside the flagship book as its equal with it's own cast and see who does better without having whatever he decides to do in his story be the only relevant thing in the franchise as far as direction,

Austen- I think about a year ago, maybe right before or after Guggenheim did his work on XX-Men he had a huge opening to take over that title and make it stand out by delivering a soap opera style story that to be honest...would've been welcomed considering the lack of any real deep character or interpersonal writing of a X-Men cast in who knows how long. Honestly Peter David brings something similar with far more refinement and praise, but I couldn't have gotten mad over an Austen return since even his weirder stuff could fit in line with some of Wood's work. I don't think he'd work with what's going on now (who would though?) but that was his opening.

Bendis.....ask me again in a year or two. I just feel like as much as enjoyed the tone of his early Uncanny and even some of the stuff toward the downfall.....i can't really say theres something about his writing style i'll miss yet.

Aaron- No. With Bendis I feel like even if you didn't agree with his writing style or story choices if we gave him another 40 issues his story would go somewhere. With Aaron..the squandered potential and lack of growth for what was launched as the essentially the rival to Uncanny just can't be described. There's no story in the book to follow...and the worst part of it is that he actually did get a chance to start fresh with Amazing and by the end of the story he made sure that nothing interesting could be followed up on.

It really does seem like X-Men fans hate every X-Men writer, except maybe Claremont which is odd because I've always found his work to be the epitome of "great stories badly written"

maybe the better thread should be "who was the best x-men writer" in that case. Haha

It's because for the most part most X-men writers, sans maybe Morrison, just try to recreate the keys to the X-Mens success in the 80s...which were written by that guy you mention there.

@cattlebattle: True, but I guess it's kinda hard to avoid at this point. It seems like the whole X-Men franchise is now defined by that whole "attempting to recreate the success of the 80's" thing so if a writer were to go in a completely different direction, people would probably think it goes against the whole idea of the X-Men. At this point, if humans don't hate mutants and the X-Men aren't fighting Magneto/Sentinels/Phoenix is it even a real X-Men story?

Besides, I'm ok with writers trying to redo Claremont-era stuff in a modern way because like I said, great ideas, not so great execution. Trying to read several issues of Claremont's run in a row is painful for me, I can only take so much of Storm unnecessarily telling everybody exactly what her powers are in every single issue.

lol. That is pretty much exactly why a lot of people hat the Morrison run. It doesn't go against the norms of the X-Men continuity, but it does deconstruct it and takes it in many different directions.

Well, yes. The X-Men, especially during the Claremont years, faced all kinds of threats. In fact, after he left, Bob Harras, who was the editor at the time, didn't like the way Claremont wrote the X-Men because he thought they were too broad and were too much like the Fantastic Four or Avengers, so he and Jim Lee wanted to take them down to a more simplistic level.

To each his own. Claremont has his critics but his over arching story lines and ability to develop any character whether they are a hero or a villain or a secondary character was second to none for his time, there is also not many writers that can say they have influenced an extremely popular franchise like he has. As for the characters announcing what their powers were every issue.....I am pretty sure that was a request from editorial, seeing as Stan Lee's golden rule "Every comic is somebody's first comic" was always in place at Marvel during the 80s, so, characters announcing their powers or what they are doing being explained in panels was quite common.

@cattlebattle: I get that the "every comic is somebody's first comic" thing was Marvel-wide, but I do think you can show the audience what a character's power are without having the character announce them out loud.

I'm really not bashing Claremont at all, in fact the final part of the Dark Phoenix Saga is one of my all time favourite issues of any comic*, I just find the writing style difficult to cope with in large doses, which is why I kind of like new writers recycling those old ideas in a modern style, it's like the best of both worlds for me.

*Although I have no idea why anybody really likes Days of Future Past, its popularity is a mystery.

That is subjective. But IMO Bendis was not the worst X-men writer.

I don't really recall that always happening to be honest. I remember stuff like there being a corner panel when Wolverine would pop his claws stating "with a mental command, Wolverines adamantium yada yada" in a lot of issues, but again, that's due to the Stan Lee rule.

Understandable. Claremont is more a of a novelist style writer and it is hard to just a pick up a single story arc because he has usually crafted so much other stuff going on around the arc that if you are not following the series, you could get lost easily. I actually didn't really care for Claremonts stuff when I was young. Though it was boring. When I got older and I got to read the whole run with all the minis, New Mutants spin off and back up issues combined, I really enjoyed how it was written and how it all played into each other and how it played out, probably some of the best character work for super hero comics ever.

Days of Future Past is celebrated because it was very original and groundbreaking for its time. Its easy to look at things in hindsight and critique it, people do that to things like the original Star Wars and kind of undermine a lot of the cool things about it. The dystopian future where villains/robots take over is a dead, overused sci fi trope now, what with almost every cartoon kids watched growing up having an episode that has that plot, or the Terminator series and its rip offs, but DoFP predates all of that. It was the first time you really saw a younger, sidekick like character take center stage in a story like that, it was the first time you saw Magneto aligned with, and apparently leading the X-Men, characters like Wolverine and Storm are brutally killed, when the Brotherhood and the X-Men throw down in the climax the military starts attacking them both and thinks they are both threats....which is something that never really happened to anyone other than maybe the Hulk, but not a group of super heroes before, and it a lot of what happened in that book would set the stage for the X-Men status quo for years to come. Claremonts whole run after that story has tons of hints of that future inevitably happening.

One of the worst, but not THE worst. Then again that applies to him in anything he is writing.

it's because it's the first really good X-men story.

Dark Phoenix Saga is certainly noteworthy, certainly pushed the boundries of the genre, but it's also highly overrated and drawn out much longer than it needs to be.

DoFP tells a story no less groundbreaking or epic in only 2 issues. To me it's more of an X-men story, a better told story, and just a better story in general.

DOFP was great for its time but I almost wish it hadn't happened because it almost feels like it started all the time travel nonsense that plague the comics today. God Loves Man Kills was great and the Phoenix/Dark Phoenix was epic but it was drawn out a bit and really is one of those stories that I think could be updated if there was ever a reboot. Plus its also responsible for starting the over reliance on the Phoenix as a plot device. It almost feels like some of those stories did more harm longterm than good considering how the elements are constantly rehashed and redone

I agree with your comments about DOFP and the Phoenix/Dark Phoenix storyline. Those would be great storylines if they were explored, and then went away, but we were subjected to them ad nauseum because writers just love to give us their take on both, especially the Phoenix storylines, and sadly, most of them fail miserably at giving the newer stories any gravitas. Lightning really does only strike once in many cases, and I especially feel that the Phoenix just sucks all the interesting possible developments out of the room whenever it comes up.

@phoenixofthetides: yeah I wish it could be mandated that this can't be done anymore

hehe bump

side note, i totally miss @oldnightcrawler

Some how i got left behind in this portion of the convo, must of got busy with work

Whedon - If he could meet deadlines I would never want another X writer, AT the same point if he can't give me a book every month or two (whatever the schedule is) then no. NOW if he wanted to write like trades that just came out as trades, id be down for that.

Morrison - hard no, Honestly he might make a nice editor. I like his ideas, (some of) and he was a great Emma writer but at the same time he seemed to do stuff just to do it. If that makes any sense and we are still having to live with GLOB because of him !!

Austen - i have never hated this man as much as the rest of the readers do, I don't think I would want him on Uncanny but I would not be angry if he made a return

Bendis - Nope, his personaility seems like a guy who just wants to do things to say he did. Really similar to Morrison actually, HEY I WROTE X MEN, HEY I WROTE SUPER MAN, or whatever, you know im the one who did this crazy thing in blah blha that shook up the whole scene for the next decade regardless of if it was good or bad. Change is not always the answer, so yea no thanks

Aaron - This is the worst of the list in my opinion, NO, No, and NO. I absolutely hated his love affair Wolverine and The X men book where he totally couldn't decide how he wanted to write logan (a space gambling killer or a caring teacher) and just did like 12 year old scripts, I dont know hard pass for me

I got one for Anyone else who wants to get in on the fun

Matt Faction? yes or no to a return

Austen. Aaron. Bendis. Morrison were all terrible writers for Xmen. I'll also add Guggenheim to that list. There are definitely more but that freakish five would be hard to beat. Each one seems to either hate the Xmen or not care at all

@hawk2916: lol i cant argue that a few unpopular ones i enjoyed were lobdell faction and bunn

@hawk2916: lemire......Lemire.....You forgot LEMIRE!!!!

Lemire was worst than austen and Guggenheim

Bendis is like the worst writer period...

i mean in all seriousness he probably wasn't the worse but certainly top 5

Yea i disliked Lemire more I think, and Morrison imo but the worst of the worst of all X men writers is Jason Aaron if you ask me

Aaron by far. I like absolutely nothing this man has written.

his work on thor was decent, he should stay there :-p