by secondwhiteline » Mon Oct 08, 2018 5:54 pm
No, I totally get that part of the appeal - he does big, branching plots that involve tons of characters and at least a decent subset of those characters making big decisions. You'd think that would be an obvious component of event comics, but like you said, Bendis has always been a poor fit for those. I'm just not usually a fan of that style, and I think Hickman's very guilty of plugging characters into a framework rather than having the conflicts come from the characters. (It's not as obvious about it as, say, Civil War II, which was hilarious in how often it had the Things Happening happen off-panel. Oh, Bendis.) Reading his Avengers I never felt like the characters were really acting like themselves (I'm like 78% sure he's never read a Dr. Strange comic, and yes that's a hill I'm gonna die on here), and even if they had been nothing was engaging. I've been to sexier college lectures. And as a comic, his Fantastic Four probably would've made for a nice, sleek website design.
...Huh. I'm kind of a jerk, maybe. Anyhoo, I wonder if some of his space death villains were created with the idea that they'd be easy sub-bosses for Thanos in the upcoming movies? Seems easier that way than to draft up some new takes on preexisting characters. Although their very monochrome movie looks don't help them much in the merch department. I don't expect Maw and Glaive to do great in ML, based on how Proxima's been sitting on shelves. They seem like wasted spots in ML, but I know a certain group of collectors will be completists about MCU, so I totally get why we're getting them. Even if I'd much, much rather have MCU Ghost instead.