What's up with Bendis?

Ricky

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Ultimate Spiderman has never been my favorite Ultimate Title, but I think recently it's been really bad. I think the Hollywood arc is where things got bad. It was 6 issues and the only interesting things that ever happened where the part about Gwen Stacy. I'm serious. I didn't find anything intersting about the Doc Ock story line. He didn't even have any plan, any motive, he just broke out of prison, went rampage, defeated Spiderman, kid-napped him for no obvious reasons and was defeated at last. Rather boring, I think. No clever plans, no hidden motives, just a popular villain doing villain-stuff to mess up the hero's life.

Then came Carnage. I really loved that arc, at first. The reason is: I loves the way Dr. Conners was portrayed. He'd been doing bad stuff, but he did it because he was out of options, and he even felt bad about it. His interactions with Peter wer also quite enjoyable, because it somehow highlighted who Peter really is, what he wants to do with his life.
Then Bendis killed of Gwen Stacy. I still don't know why he did it, but I tend to believe the rumor that it just occured to him to be a good idea, at that time. I personally think it was a very bad move, because Gwen was one of the most interesting characters in Ultimate Spiderman recently, one of the characters that made reading the book worthwhile. Without her, the high-school cast just seems to be less interesting to read about.
The carnage arc finally ended with an imnious "Spiderman no more!" scene. Some interesting character development could have come out of this for Peter. It somehow didn't. Next issue (the really badly timed Wolverine-special, which woud have been fun to read anytime else) had Peter completely forgotten about Gwen and everything. The FF-crossover was okay, although there was still no real pay-off for Gwen's death. People just went on with their lives, as if she hadn't just died. The Strange-team-up seemed quite boring to me, again. Two issues of Peter living out a nightmare. Okay, we find outthat Peter starts to become afraid everyone around him might suffer from hom being spiderman, and the last scene with him and MJ are the result of this fear, but that's not really enough to fill up 44 pages, I think. Then of course, I'm also mighty pissed off from the horribly bad scene with the Ultimates. Bendis doesn't seem to have a clue what the Ultimates are suppossed to be.
(for those who don't understand what I mean, the Ultimates are part of the military, not some superpowered guys going out in costumes. The whole team would never go out without military back-up. Reread the Hulk-episode in Ultimates 5. That's the way the ultimates tackle a villain. Cap or Hawkeye alone, possibly with a small cadre of SHIELD military personal as back-up, that would have been a lot more in character, but not this.)

Just this morning, when I thought about it, I wondered if Bendis might be on the point, where he's run out of ideas. Killing of Gwen looks to me like the desperate try to do anything, because you can't think of any good plot anymore. He hasn't even told us the story of "how gwen stacy died and what this meant to peter parker and aunt may", so far he has only gained a short episode of shock value, lost a very good character and had to bog his stories down, because he had top accationally show how depressed Peter has become.
Or, perhaps bendis is really writing to many different books at the same time, and he doen't have the time to think properly about Ultimate Spiderman anymore. Either way, the book has been going downhill for quite some time, an I think its time someone admits it.

Ricky
*prepared to be flamed for what he just wrote*
 
Idle Hands

wow, you had a lot of free time to write that....but yeah, i can see where you are coming from. Outside of the webs, the story has been lacking in the character interaction as of late. Last issue was the first fight scene we had in a while (not counting flashbacks, dreams, etc.)

I agree that he is writing too many books and it is showing.....Im counting on him to pick things back up, with all the hype around the new stuff coming out (even after hobgoblin) ill stay on board. However, if this Ultimate Warriors arc flops, ill be done with the book ( i realize i say this all the time, but ult spidey is a book that i expect quality from every month. They same creative team should mean good stuff, but you have to realize, the guy is only human.

Bagleys art is wishy washy, but never to the point where you get tired of it. He has the definitive look down pat on the book and that alone keeps me buying the book even when im not feeling bendis' stories.

Give Bendis several more issues, I trust things will turn around. :p
 
Ricky said:
Just this morning, when I thought about it, I wondered if Bendis might be on the point, where he's run out of ideas. Killing of Gwen looks to me like the desperate try to do anything, because you can't think of any good plot anymore. He hasn't even told us the story of "how gwen stacy died and what this meant to peter parker and aunt may", so far he has only gained a short episode of shock value, lost a very good character and had to bog his stories down, because he had top accationally show how depressed Peter has become.
Or, perhaps bendis is really writing to many different books at the same time, and he doen't have the time to think properly about Ultimate Spiderman anymore. Either way, the book has been going downhill for quite some time, an I think its time someone admits it.

I agree in some ways. The book really has been going downhill but I'm not sure its because he's out of ideas. Personally, I don't know why its happened but he's clearly got a few ideas- see the upcoming spider-man arcs thread. But I don't know. Something must be done! But I have no idea what.
 
Huh. I thought Hollywood was great. Doc Oc did have a plan - payback for Spidey. He's kooky like that. And he was also escaping to Brazil, so...

But I do agree that Carnage was a step back, and while I did like the Wolverine story, the rest of the All-Stars "arc" was only OK. And I agree 100% that the Wolverine story was EXTREMELY poorly timed.

As for Gwen dying, I go back to what he said when he killed off Beast - sometimes in real life people die before their story is told. Why should comics be any different? There should be some things that are senseless and hard to understand. Which is not to say that he didn't skimp on the mourning process for everyone. He got a lot of flak for killing her, which I didn't have a problem with at all, but he would have been much more justified if he would've written everyone's reactions properly. Far be it from me to tell a successfull writer how to do something, but I really don't think it was handled well.

Hobgoblin is off to a great start though. And I don't think he's spreading himself too thin.
 
Yeah, that's it - I didn't want to bother looking it up. You all knew what I meant.
 
Well, the Wolverine arc was someone else's idea, as it stated in the issue. Since these stories have to be placed in trade format, there was no point in placing such a silly story with something deep and meaningful, thus the FF story and Strange story. Besides, Bendis probably wanted to stick something in betweeen Gwen's death and Harry's reappearance, though it failed miserably in almost everyone's eyes.
 
I have to disagree. I dont think USM is going downhill at all!!! I think its just as good if not better. I wasnt too crazy bout the hollywood arc. But Carnage was good and so were the teamups, and the future definately looks bright
 
Nurhachi said:
I have to disagree. I dont think USM is going downhill at all!!! I think its just as good if not better. I wasnt too crazy bout the hollywood arc. But Carnage was good and so were the teamups, and the future definately looks bright

the future is bright as long as the direction is there....its not that the stories are bad...most of the stories had a higher quality prior to hollywood....
comparing the older stories verse the new ones isnt like Good or Bad...but Great and Good....get what im saying???
You want the same level of quality but the good stuff doesnt look as good as the stuff that was slightly better..
 
The Captain said:
ha ha ha, you say that, but then if the next arcs are mediocre, you will be the first to complain...
:sure: I hardly classify myself as a complainer. They won't be bad though. Remember we're getting more Ultimate Daredevil. Also I was thinking about how much I'm looking forward to the Ultimate Vampires Arc... I think I'll post something about it in it's respected thread.
 
TheManWithoutFear said:
:sure: I hardly classify myself as a complainer. They won't be bad though. Remember we're getting more Ultimate Daredevil. Also I was thinking about how much I'm looking forward to the Ultimate Vampires Arc... I think I'll post something about it in it's respected thread.

so if ult dd gets offed in the arc youd be cool with this?? cmon now...
 
TheManWithoutFear said:
:shifty: You're high aren't you? UDD is not gonna get killed off.

You hope. Personally, I think It'd make a good story but I doubt it. As for the Captain being high....well.....Ah screw it, he's higher than Marvin the Martian tied to a rocket ship
 
In MwoF's defense, I too would be pretty upset if DD was offed so soon. I mean, for goodness' sake, we still haven't even seen his Ultimate Origin! I think there needs to be more to Ultimate DD before we go killing him and I think that, if they killed him in USM, that would be pretty silly because I think there'd be a lot of stuff that his death would snow ball into and USM's no place to see it play out.
 

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