Avengers|X-Men|Eternals: Death to the Mutants #2

[laughing_tree]

That’s the real problem. If you just have all the characters it becomes emotional noise. You need characters to carry the story, characters with viewpoints, including people we hate—the villains also matter. One of the advantages of me writing so many books is if I have a story for, say, Emma Frost, I can move it elsewhere if I need to. -- Kieron Gillen

Comments

[lordultimus]

Man, that quote is like the anti-Bendis Legion.

[redmagpie]

Can you elaborate? Genuinely I'm curious, this isn't some sort of snide 'debate me' thing

[mastermahan]

Bendis isn't very good at juggling too many characters. His best writing has always been in solo books, while his team books and his events always seem to become messy and unfocused. His Legion in particular got hit with this because the sheer size of the cast. Most of the characters were still ciphers by the end.

[shakalooloo]

I don't know why he didn't go with a small group to start with, with the option to expand it later, rather than going for constant clustered group shots where most characters' development started and ended with their in-universe name tag call-out boxes. Wasn't helped by Superboy hogging most of the page time, either.

[redmagpie]

Thank you!

[mastermahan]

Honestly? I just think Bendis lacks focus. Look at Powers. A couple dozen issues of cops in a world of celebrity superheroes, and they're alright. Then a Superman analogue goes insane and destroys the Middle East and the Vatican, ending with the announcement that the government has made superpowers illegal. That's followed by seven goddamn issues of flashback and a hiatus.

When it comes back, it turns out the response to a devastating multi-nation genocide is a take on "if guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns" with heroes retired and villains running amok, which seems a bit mild. This lasts a short time until some superheroes decide to unretire and everyone just shrugs their shoulders. Consequences of a world-shattering event over. Oh, and Pilgrim gets lightning powers and Walker joins the not-Green Lantern Corp.

Then you've got stuff like, say, Age of Ultron that ended up barely having Ultron, Secret Invasion that's mostly heroes stuck in the Savage Land while Skrulls play pointless mind games, etc. I think he does his best work with smaller casts because his attention can't wander.

[lordultimus]

There's also the fact that his dialogue suffers greatly when he has multiple characters in a scene. When he has just the one or two, he can do the self-reflective monologues and intimate dialogues well, but when he gets more and more characters in a scene, it's like he absolutely has to give as many characters dialogue no matter how pointless it is, and the characterization suffers to the point where practically the only thing separating them is mention of their powers:

[mastermahan]

Positive: they sound like teenagers.

Negative: they all sound like the same teenager.

[scorntx]

They are supposed to be teenagers in this version, right?

[scorntx]

Secret Invasion is a weird one, given Bendis had been planning it since he started on New Avengers.
So that's, what, three or four years of prep time? Surely enough to have things worked out, and iron out any potential kinks.
And half the final issue is taken up with two characters Bendisloguing about the final battle. Including the "death" of a major character.

Bendis is generally not a writer who seems to be a long-term planner. More of a "do whatever seems like a good idea at the moment" sort of writer.

[lordultimus]

It's really crazy, because that's exactly how the Post-Zero Hour Legion started, and that had a decade-long run!

[shakalooloo]

Wish DC would resume those TPBs of the reboot Legion. Only two volumes? Bah!

[shakalooloo]

I haven't been religiously following this crossover, but given the quote:

Is it possible to get the story from just the main series? Or are all these tie-ins (DttM, the recent one-shots) essential to understand what's going on?

[mastermahan]

It's entirely possible. DttM is basically the next three issues of Eternals and are important for that crossover and that book. The one-shots are character studies, with Starfox being a bit more significant than the other two.

Anything not by Gillen seems to be unimportant.

[doodleboy]

The way it works is that the main series gives the largest possible view of the action. The cast is less individuals than groups. The Avengers, The Eternals, The X-men, the rest of the Human Population, and the Progenitor being the key players.

The action is hyper-compressed. It's hyper-compressed in a way that is still entertaining, but you have large events that only happen in one or two pages.

In order to get a closer eye-view of the story and a closer-view of the characters, you will need the tie-ins. Immortal X-men gives you a better view of the X-men characters, Death to the Mutants shows you what the Ikaris, Gilgamesh and Sersei are thinking, X-men Red gives more character development and space to Magneto, Storm and Uranus's stories. There are three specials coming out that focus on Tony Stark, Starfox and Jean Grey.

So you can understand all the broad-beats from the main series, but if you want more expansion on individual characters then you should read the tie-ins.

For the Avengers though, there's no real tie-ins except for a Tony Stark Special.

[shakalooloo]

Well, I imagine regarding Storm and Magneto in the main series that they appear from nowhere to duff up Uranos and then disappear just as suddenly.

[numeronone]

...yeah, I ship it. Kro can get it.

[arilou_skiff]

"Space-slut" as your official description is... Something all right.

[blues32]

I wouldn't call it an official description. Just what the Earth thinks of him. Not the people on it (though some of them undoubtedly share that opinion), but the Earth itself thinks so.

[timefire]

so technically he's "Planet Earth's designated space slut"

sounds pretty official to me :P

[zachbeacon]

Not to be confused with "Planet Earth's designated slut" ...who is, I think, Tony Stark.

(Despite the best efforts of Matt Murdock, Jennifer Walters, Johnny Storm, ect)