You might have found out by now that NA #16 was a terrible issue, written for the purpose of making Daredevil an Avenger. The story fails completely as a story because DD’s triumph over the war machines isn’t believable — it could be used in a class as an example of a writer using crude tricks to get around his hero’s limitations.

Bendis loves characters who run, jump, punch, and kick, though. He’ll take them over anyone else. The three pseudotext pages you wrote about could have been replaced by two panels using narration praising Daredevil’s indomitable ______, if the writer actually cared about writing a story.

SRS

Are you being sarcastic? I wouldn’t even rank that as a mediocre Busiek critique, much less a best/good. Coming Curse’s claims are as bad as Jesse Baker’s.

Also, trashing Busiek? I can only see that as possible if you sent your fanfic to him and he politely responded there was nothing he could do with it. Or maybe he snubbed you at a con or something while he was busy.

Also: THAT was objective, T? That’s no more objective about Busiek’s work than I, a Busiek fan, am. Sorry.

Good job. One of the best, objective Busiek critiques I’ve read on the internet ever. His Avengers run was very painful to me to read for all the reasons you describe.

In his defense though, I find him to actually be a good writer when not writing stuff he was a fan of as a kid, like in Arrowsmith and Astro City. The fanwanking gets dialed down and the over the top pandering gets reined in and he stops trying to write like Roy Thomas.

On Avengers though? No thanks.

Use time travel to bring him back to life in Avengers: Children’s Crusade.

Heinberg’s storyline is a spastic, retcon-riddled disaster, but he’s also praised Bendis’s Avengers material to the skies. If you want to damn Heinberg’s writing, go ahead.

A writer is responsible for each word spoken and every action a character takes in his story. NEW AVENGERS ANNUAL #1 is an example of an idiot plot. Williams and his allies act stupidly by attacking the Avengers instead of the menaces they’re supposedly responsible for — but his list of the Avengers’ fatal blunders is nonsensical as well. Are readers supposed to think that Williams is always an idiot, or is he an idiot only when it’s convenient for Bendis? Or is he both insane and an idiot? And if the New Avengers lose to a bunch of idiots, what are readers supposed to make of that? Are they incompetent heroes, or will Bendis have otherwise competent heroes act incompetently when it serves his needs at the moment?

The obvious alternative to an idiot plot is one that has everyone acting intelligently and rationally, but that is much harder for an unskilled writer to construct.

If A.D. had had limited consequences, readers (and writers) could deal with it, but Bendis has been referring back to it repeatedly. If he insists on chaining stories to it, he’s damning his own work. His insistence on having heroes “feel guilty” because they didn’t realize Wanda was insane is particularly imbecilic because it’s obvious to any thinking person that she wasn’t insane until Bendis wrote the retcon, and wasn’t insane afterwards because the story failed.

Suppose that someone claimed that the Marvel Universe was just a computer simulation with all the heroines created by sex-starved geeks. He could make all the arguments he wanted and be wrong, until some writer — any writer — had Marvel publish a story that retconned the M.U. into being a simulation. And then what? Marvel could just as well shut down, because who would want to read about a computer simulation?

If a retcon can alter things in any conceivable (or inconceivable) way, it’s a useless device. Writing is communication; if a story doesn’t communicate information intelligently and intelligibly, it’s a failed story.

SRS

I have a huge Avengers collection going back to the late 60′s. I’ve pulled everything after Busiek’s run (including the not-that-bad Johns run). My collection doesn’t miss the last 8-ish years of the Avengers but my wallet sure does. You can’t take an Avengers story written by Bendis and compare it to any of the great runs. It pales in comparison. Is the Bendis run an amusing read with his TV sitcom style? Sure. But not worth my $3.99.

And for “retcons”, Bendis outright IGNORES crap because he’s a lazy hack or worse, DOESN’T care about pooping on longstanding continuity for crappy stories that scorch earth the character:

1. Wanda regained memories of her children LONG AGO
2. Frog Man is a loving father who has a GREAT relationship with his son, one that enabled him to renounce evil and allow his son to take over the Frog Man identity to fight crime
3. Bendis screwing up so many details about the Secret Wars and Secret Wars II, that even Marvel caved in to the negative fan reaction and declare New Avengers Illuminati #4 non-canon!
4. Having Captain America utterly forget that he vowed that he would never let Wolverine be an Avenger, due to Wolverine’s loose morals with regards to killing and maiming people.
5. Him FUBARing Jessica Drew’s origin…
6. What he did to Grant Morrison’s Marvel Boy….
7. And let’s not forget all of the times that he couldn’t be bothered to keep his OWN continuity straight (characters having multiple names in Ultimate Spider-Man, the debacle where he had the Mighty Avengers appear in New Avengers BEFORE they were even recruited in the pages of their own books!, outright ignoring the fact that he had Norman Osborn MURDER nearly a dozen cops in The Pulse during Dark Reign).

Hell, most of the times, other writers have to do retcons because Brevoort’s too much of a coward and THEY have to clean up Bendis’s mess to retcon things to undo the damage Bendis did and pray Bendis doesn’t try and overrule them (which is why Heinberg left Marvel/Young Avengers BTW, as Bendis was pissed off that Heinberg was undoing the crap he did with Scarlet Witch via having her kids running around as key members of the team and wanted to force Heinberg to declare the characters not to be her kids).

Want to retcon a lame “What If?” team into the mainstream Marvel Universe? Write an unreadable mess of a comic to plug them into continuity. Want to pander to Scott Lang’s 6 fans? Use time travel to bring him back to life in Avengers: Children’s Crusade. I see what you mean. Retcons can get really cheesy when used by writers less talented than Bendis!

No. Busiek stole his “1950s Avengers” team from an old issue of “What If?” What, did you actually think Busiek had an original idea? Hahaha! And Howard Chaykin IS rushing to make a spinoff of Bendis’s 1950s Avengers group. And you wanna know the best part? NO talking gorillas in this one. What is this, DC comics?

Keep attacking all of Bendis’ ideas. Eventually you might convince someone that the Phone Ranger is actually cool or that Busiek is actually capable of an original idea.

Yes, I’m sure that’s the issue. It’s not that YOU have some bias against Bendis or his writing. It’s that there’s a widespread global conspiracy where Marvel has someohow found a way to get leverage against virtually every independent internet reviewer. Yeah. Oookaay.

Maria Hill was a joke villain, basically an outright rip-off of Henry Peter Gyrich, except female and wearing a spandex military outfit. Yes she reformed, but she’s done nothing of note given that everything she’s done or said could have been done by Gyrich.

Secret Warriors was a crap series; even worse than Bendis’ Avengers since at least there was a sliver of story in Bendis’s Avengers stuff. Hickman’s Secret Warriors was nothing but retcon after retcon that made Nick Fury, SHIELD, and Hydra even more convoluted and unreadable as far as making the history so utterly confusing to new readers, let alone unrecognizable to older readers. Oh and Bendis STABBED Hickman in the back, via Siege, which forced Hickman (who was the REAL brainchild behind the book) to have to hurriedly rush out a conclusion for the series.

the 1950′s Avengers: Done before by Busiek and quite frankly, unlike Busiek’s group (which became Agents of Atlas) NO ONE is going to be rushing to make a spin-off of Bendis’s rip-off team!

Quake: No one knows who Quake is.

HAMMER: A lame-ass plot excuse for “evil SHIELD” and was promptly beaten and now is going to be a 5th rate Hydra rip-off. Or worse, a 5th-rate SCRYRE/GOBLIN CULT rip-off (name of Norman’s other secret organization groups from years past).

Victoria Hand: Generic figure and all-around cipher. She’s Maria Hill, but blander.

The Illuminati: Which did nothing of note, except Planet Hulk and even then, wasn’t really needed since Pak could have just had Reed and Tony shoot Hulk into space on their own.

Planet Hulk, Hickman’s Secret Warriors, and Brubaker’s Secret Avengers
——————-
Planet Hulk didn’t need the Illuminati to work. Hickman’s Secret Warriors was a walking abortion, and you SERIOUSLY think Brubaker’s Secret Avengers owes to Bendis? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Secret Avengers exists BECAUSE people hate Bendis. Because Marvel wants ONE non-Bendis book for his critics to read, after it finally got into their thick skulls that they could make money with an Avengers book NOT written by the hack. Not to mention the factor of Marvel wanting an ongoing Steve Rogers book and with Brubaker not wanting to get Bucky Barnes out of the Cap costume, they decided to give Steve his own team book to serve as a vehicle for those who wanted to read the adventures of Steve Rogers.

So no one is willing to pretty much call them out on their crap, because the website owners pretty much would rather be cowards than be honest about the crap coming out of Marvel these days.

And yeah, these comments should have been shut down after Steve Flack. Every comment since has either been redundant or irrelevant. Including mine.

Even despite the fact Chuck Austen was actually writing the book at one point?

If Bendis had submitted a typed outline of the story to Shooter, he might have had the page(s) ripped up and thrown back at him. It’s a great example of a story not being about anything. There’s no purpose to what the people do, even if they might look good (not) doing it.

SRS

Bendis’ contributions to the Marvel Universe include the Secret Warriors, the 1950′s Avengers, Quake, HAMMER, Victoria Hand, and the Illuminati. Storylines such as Planet Hulk, Hickman’s Secret Warriors, and Brubaker’s Secret Avengers have spun directly out of storylines helmed by Bendis.

Nice try, but “Avengers Disassembled” (A.D.) and Bendis’s constant references to it (see last week’s NEW AVENGERS ANNUAL) invalidate practically everything he’s done since then. Erase A.D. and all its consequences; the result is the pre-A.D. status quo. If you can defend A.D. as a story, have at it — but consider how weak and artificial the retcon is as a device. Want to redefine Captain America as a child rapist? Just say those events are hidden in his past. Want to redefine Dr. Strange as a pawn of Shuma-Gorath? Just retcon hidden mind control into Strange’s past.

The retcon, by allowing a writer to rewrite a character’s past however he pleases, allows him to change the character to fit whatever situation he has in mind, but it also contradicts the character’s theme(s) and the themes of the stories he’s appeared in. That’s why the retcon is used by practically nobody except incompetent writers who can write only about a few situations and, if the characters they have don’t fit them, have to change the characters. Otherwise, they can’t produce stories and won’t get paid.

SRS

“Grenade Launcher” is another one of Busiek’s “contributions” to the Marvel Universe. He doesn’t have any superpowers, but he is pretty handy with one particular type of weapon. That weapon, if you haven’t guessed it yet- is the Grenade Launcher. Get it “Grenade Launcher”-”Grenade Launcher.” This horrible character appeared beside two partners; “Smokescreen” and “Boobytrap.” “Boobytrap” was an expert in Boobytraps. Can you guess what Smokescreen specialized in?

All of these three characters were members of the same mercenary death squad. Can you guess what the name of this death squad was? Go ahead, guess.

The death squad’s name was “Death Squad.” Yup. That’s some good writing right there. Do you believe this guy was actually paid MONEY to come up with this crap?

Bendis’ contributions to the Marvel Universe include the Secret Warriors, the 1950′s Avengers, Quake, HAMMER, Victoria Hand, and the Illuminati. Storylines such as Planet Hulk, Hickman’s Secret Warriors, and Brubaker’s Secret Avengers have spun directly out of storylines helmed by Bendis. Also, he created Maria Hill, who has become an important character in Avengers lore to the point where she was included in the latest cartoon series as well as the upcoming blockbuster Avengers movie from Marvel Studios.

Busiek, on the other hand gave us the Phone Ranger.

http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix3/phoneranger.htm

That’s right. Busiek’s contribution is a guy dressed up as a phone. Named, not so cleverly, “the Phone Ranger”. Thank God all of his characters have fallen into obscurity by now. Busiek is the “Chuck Austen” of the Avenger’s franchise.