tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5169626575812155292.post5832175324343635522..comments2024-03-27T15:06:43.682-07:00Comments on Handi-CAPEable . NEW!: New Avengers Five Years New Retrospective: My Bottom 10Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17773416732192167277noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5169626575812155292.post-3019064620434074722009-11-08T22:32:13.185-08:002009-11-08T22:32:13.185-08:00>and seriously, we need more Asian and Asian Am...>and seriously, we need more Asian and Asian American heroes and heroines besides stereotypes like Sunfire<br /><br />Yeah, 'cause there's nothing stereotypical about samurai.<br /><br />If you want more Asian heroes, you need Greg Pak to write more comics. Between Amadeus Cho & Jake Oh he's doing his best to fill this gap.<br /><br />>Thankfully, Brother Voodoo has taken his place so he may retire with dignity.<br /><br />More importantly, now he can be written by Mark Waid and we'll see if losing his title can be a case of lemonade from lemons.<br /><br />Also? First time "Brother Voodoo" and "dignity" shared a sentence.<br /><br />>He was a unique and deep character....the one who appeared in New Avengers is just a Kingpin substitute, with dialogue far more melodramatic than a nineteen-year-old petty crook who never finished school would have.<br /><br />Don't forget he went from being a guy who could walk on air and turn invisible (for brief periods) to a typical do-anything magical-powered guy.<br /><br />>Had Hawkeye stayed dead in Avengers Disassembled, it would have been a satisfying heroic sacrifice. <br /><br />No, it would have been a half-assed heroic sacrifice. Which is still better than what we got.<br /><br />>he's yet to write a working group action scene that isn't either a chaotic, personality-free mob-on-mob brawl (which badly hurt his execution of the Hood's Syndicate idea)<br /><br />New Avengers Annual#2 is the closest to working so far. It was less chaotic than usual, at least.Michael Hoskinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11302540308587868138noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5169626575812155292.post-81104635804793137322009-11-08T18:45:22.685-08:002009-11-08T18:45:22.685-08:00Interestingly, all of these might boil down to two...Interestingly, all of these might boil down to two meta-concerns with Bendis's writing: 1) He's bad at letting go of pet characters even when the plot or characterization aren't really there; and 2) He's still not that good at writing genuine ensembles.<br /><br />The first of these is a problem almost every writer has to some degree or another, because their tastes and concerns will somewhere diverge from the reader's. Even Grant Morrison can't let go of Animal Man or the Scottish Mirror Master, who'll turn up in any DC book not titled "Batman" that he writes after while. And his Batman run has involved pulling in a lot of Silver Age stuff many fans and pros have found deeply embarrassing for several decades. <br /><br />Bendis's Bronze Age commitments have meant that a number of characters prominent in that era -- Jessica Drew, Hawkeye, Cage -- will keep being spotlighted. Similarly, the Sentry and Hood seem to have been brought in because Bendis likes the miniseries that introduced them a lot, but to keep using them he's had to fudge so much that the results aren't terribly inspiring.<br /><br />The second is a bit bigger as problems go: Bendis does seem to throw out ensemble dynamics for single-character or dyadic cOnflicts between two individuals almost every time. His plots don't generally hinge on teamwork solutions, and his big character moments are almost never born of group dynamics. You tend to get one or two strong characters running away with the scene or the plot while everyone else plays a background role. <br /><br />This was especially pronounced in House of M, but its been an imbalance detectable in the bulk of his Avengers stories to date. Characters run off on their own, like Barton or Cage against Norman; prvate meetings between two characters drive plot turns, as with the Karla/Noh-Varr sex in Dark Avengers or the Osborn/Victoria two-handers that set the agenda in every Dark Avengers story. <br /><br />He's not really good at convincing dramatic interactions bigger than two characters. Oddly, this is part of why his dialogue has the flow and ebb it does; it's also why there's a lot of Bendis dialogue that, contrary to your prior post, isn't about characters engaging with one another. This second stuff isn't what the reader remembers, though, because it's mostly peanut gallery comments from whichever characters aren't part of the two-shot at the center of his big scenes.<br /><br />The unfortunate problem stemming from this is that he's yet to write a working group action scene that isn't either a chaotic, personality-free mob-on-mob brawl (which badly hurt his execution of the Hood's Syndicate idea) or end up being about one or two characetrs whose efforts make everyone else's actions moot (Doc Strange literally handwaving away the Hood's mob, or the big Avengers vs. Ultron action scene turning into Ares vs. Ultron with Hank Pym in the non-action gadgeteer role).<br /><br />Bendis, again, likes individuality a bit too much to really produce a good sense of the Avengers' gestalt. But hey, other books have hadsimilar problems. Remember Morrison's Batman in that other book where he featured, the one where Batman kept having to save six colorful incompetents even though they were otherwise meant to be his peers?Omar Karindunoreply@blogger.com