Brian Michael Bendis has been one of the biggest writers in comics for years. He made his name over at Marvel but defected to DC in 2018, taking over Superman and Action Comics in a run that had its ups and downs. It was recently announced that he would be taking over Justice League, DC's biggest team. There's a lot of expectations for this run but one good way to know what might be coming is to look at where Bendis has been — his time writing Marvel's biggest team, the Avengers.
Bendis wrote the team for almost a decade. He did a lot of things that fans loved and some things that fans hated. By looking at this older run, one can get a taste for what he might do with DC's biggest team.
10 Thing We Loved: The stories always looked amazing & Bendis wrote to each artist's strength
Bendis' time on New Avengers, Mighty Avengers, Dark Avengers, and Avengers looked pretty amazing and that went a big way towards showing just how good his stories could be. He worked with artists like David Finch, Jimmy Cheung, Leinil Yu, Steve McNiven, John Romita Jr, Mike Deodato Jr, Stuart Immonen, and more. Every A-list artist Marvel had worked with him at some point or another.
While there are a lot of legitimate complaints about Bendis' run, the art isn't one of them. The stories always looked amazing and Bendis wrote to each artist's strength.
9 Thing We Didn't: Bendis has a very particular way of writing, one that puts a lot of emphasis on dialogue to the detriment of just about everything else
It's become a source of parody in the industry — pages with multiple panels of talking heads and walls of quippy dialogue. Love the MCU style of dialogue? That's Bendis speak in a lot of ways.
The Avengers were always one of Marvel's premiere action franchises, with the team boasting some of the best villains ever created but Bendis' run sort of lost sight of that, as the books became very soap opera-y. Another problem with Bendis' style is the way it forced most of the characters to speak with the exact same voice, taking away their individual voices and making them all sound a bit like Spider-Man.
8 Thing We Love: Dark Avengers was the peak of Bendis' Avengers run
Taking place after Secret Invasion, it starred Norman Osborn and a team of villains taking over the roles of the Avengers. Starring an eclectic group of villains wearing the mantles of heroes like Ms. Marvel, Spider-Man, and Wolverine and joined by Ares and the Sentry, this book was a lot of fun.
While it has some of the same drawbacks of a lot of Bendis' Avengers work, it was a different look at the team, one fans had never had before. It also featured killer art from Mike Deodato Jr, making the whole thing look amazing
7 Thing We Didn't: Mighty Avengers was long-winded & a bit boring
After Civil War, the Marvel Universe's entire landscape was changed, with Iron Man being put in charge of SHIELD and becoming the de facto leader of the heroes, even though he had to do some shady things to get there. Bendis began writing a second Avengers book, Mighty Avengers, starring a team of mostly classic Avengers members who had been on Iron Man's side, like the Wasp, Ms. Marvel, Wonder Man, and Black Widow.
While it seemed like it was going to be a big book, it never really had very much impact and was just kind of there. It took all the worst parts of Bendis' writing and amplified them — it was long-winded and a bit boring.
6 Thing We Love: His Portrayal Of The Sentry
The Sentry became a really big part of Bendis' Avengers run as time went by and he was one of the highlights. While some people thought of the character as simply the Marvel Superman, Bendis slowly but surely turned him into the bogeyman — this was a man with the power to destroy the planet, constantly warring with his dark side and his mental issues.
It made more sense for the Sentry to be played as a fragile force of nature than as a rollicking hero and Bendis captured that to a T. By the time Dark Avengers rolled around, everyone was actively scared of him, fearing that he could snap at any time.
5 Thing We Didn't: The Event Books
For years, Bendis was one of the men in charge of charting the direction of the Marvel Universe and he used his Avengers books to set up the publisher's biggest events. While the set up for these events would be pretty good, the events themselves would end up being long slogs. The payoffs would usually be very good but the journey there was often excruciatingly slow and boring.
House Of M is a perfect example of this, six issues of long-winded set-up, one issue of badly choreographed action and more soap opera-level shenanigans, and a final issue that laid out the new status quo. All of Bendis' events were this way and it shed a bad light on his Avengers books.
4 Thing We Love: The Avengers have had a long history of bringing in second-string characters & making them integral parts of the team & Bendis' run was no different
He immediately brought Luke Cage and Spider-Woman onto the team, bringing them back to the forefront of the Marvel Universe in a big way.
Throughout his run, Bendis would bring even more of Marvel's minor league characters into the books, from Avengers mainstays like Wonder Man and Hawkeye to long lost characters like Iron Fist and Brother Voodoo. Bendis did a lot for the second string of the Marvel Universe in his Avengers books.
3 Thing We Didn't: His Treatment Of Classic Avengers' Villains
Bendis did a lot of interesting things in his Avengers run but one place where he constantly dropped the ball was with the Avengers' classic foes. Ultron probably got the worst treatment, first coming back as a naked Wasp and then starring in Age Of Ultron, a bloated mess of an event that never lived up to its potential.
Kang made a brief appearance in a story he wasn't even the main villain of and Doctor Doom appeared in Mighty Avengers, which wasn't good for anyone. Morgan Le Fay and Molecule Man both appeared in Dark Avengers and their appearances weren't as bad as others, but they weren't great either.
2 Thing We Love: Bringing Wolverine & Spider-Man Into The Fold
In the pre-MCU Marvel Universe, Wolverine and Spider-Man were easily the most popular Marvel characters of them all but neither had many goings-on with the Avengers. Spider-Man was a reserve member of the team and Wolverine had teamed up with most members of the group, but that was it.
Bendis brought both heroes onto the team and it made a whole lot of sense — Spider-Man was one of the premiere heroes of the Marvel Universe and Wolverine was pretty much the main mutant. If any two heroes deserved to be members of the Avengers, it was them. Their time on the team did a lot for both of them and the team, truly making it an assemblage of Marvel's greatest heroes while also opening the door for other characters who weren't traditionally Avengers to join the team.
1 Thing We Didn't: Bendis' style of writing wasn't very conducive to action-packed storytelling
The Avengers was always the book that fans could turn to and get some nice superhero action. However, Bendis' style of writing wasn't very conducive to this sort of storytelling. His stories were long, decentralized affairs, full of jokes and a lot of talking, with action blow-offs that were pretty disappointing and kind of badly done.
Bendis' Avengers books were pretty boring, with some being worse than others. He got better about this as the years went on but even then, it was nothing like the Avengers books of old. He turned the Avengers into a soap opera, à la Claremont's Uncanny X-Men, except he completely forgot about anything but the soap opera, unlike Claremont.