Are some writers and comics incompatible?

Interesting thread and I do agree with most things you've said but I disagree with the Snyder and Hickman arguments.For me Hickman was only good when he was writing the Fantastic Four,right now his Avengers is crap for me while SNyder can't do a good Batman comic even if he wants to.

This is a really interesting topic that has generated some nice discussion. I do agree with the OP to a large extent on the matter at hand. For instance, though I'm not a huge fan of Snyder's Batman work, I really like what he's doing with Superman Unchained which is a totally different style of comic to what he usually writes. Similarly, Kieron Gilleon's Thor and Journey into Mystery runs were great but his Iron Man series has sucked hard so far. And I just dislike Fraction and Bendis generally. Even with series they're supposedly good at like Hawkeye and Ultimate Spider-Man don't interest me much.

Bendis is only tolerable while writing Ultimate Spider-Man. I feel like tearing my head off when I read his Avengers stuff, Alias, or anything else Marvel-related by that man, even books like Ultimate X-Men. USM is the only time I feel that Bendis is comfortably in his element. The man's writing is just better in small doses. When I think USM, I think of lots of back-and-forth dialogue, teens acting like teens, and just overall fun. Bendis' writing ticks work well in USM because it's all I associate the series with. But bring him over to any other Marvel book and I feel like blowing my brains out.

Though, surprisingly enough, Ultimate Six was actually pretty good. He really toned all the Bendisms down in favor of a more hard-edged almost military type crossover.

Jonathan Hickman and his uber-narrations. The first thing is that the guy really needs to tone down the dramatic captions. To be honest, I love a good number of them. The ending captions for Avengers and New Avengers, the one in the Run epilogue issue of FF, the Ronance issue. Those are great. But sometimes the man just goes overboard. Books like F4 and Ultimate Comics Ultimates are when he uses them sparingly, and they work well. But in Avengers I just find myself going, is it really necessary?

Another thing is that he needs emotion and characters to ground his work. F4 and Ultimates? Solid character work mixed with his high-concept ideas. But try reading SHIELD or Manhattan Projects, and all you're left with is complete apathy for the book and its protagonists. I'm a fan of Hickman's work, but it only works when he's able to mix his penchant for epic science and the evolution of man and great ideas and what-not....with some modicum of characterization.

Mark Millar. Millar. Millar. MILLAR. Man....when this dude actually gives a crap about his writing, he churns out some of the best comics I have ever read. I don't care what his detractors say; but Ultimates/Ultimates 2, Authority, and Ultimate X-Men will always have a special place in my heart. I've also heard good stuff about his Swamp Thing, Old Man Logan, and Adventures of Superman stuff. When he actually cares about his writing, he produces some of the most blockbuster big-scale battles and thoughtful characterization. All those annoying tics (like the over-descriptive dialogue or penchant for over-the-top carnage) trigger emotions instead of feeling like throwaway shock tactics.

But when it comes to rubbish like Kick-Ass, Nemesis, Ultimate Comics Avengers, Super-Crooks. You can tell he's just putting words on pages to earn some money. None of these books feel worth your time, just spectacle and pretty art with zero substance story-wise. And all those annoying tics start giving him his reputation for pointless violence, crassness, and misogyny (that and his comments, though....). Also, the man should never be allowed to write sci-fi comics, because his F4 run was just a chore to read through, and completely devoid of any momentum.

How anyone can say Alias was anything but horrible is beyond me. How can anyone describe a book that is mostly go nowhere inner-monologues fettered with swear words while an ugly (in every sense of the word) woman is having a crap as good? And that was like how they started almost every issue. And when it's not doing that it's painstakingly inserting Jones into continuity or having her having grotesque sex with things. All the while swearing.

Wow, I totally didn't notice this post until now. Man, you must have seriously high standards of beauty if you think Jessica Jones is ugly...

Alan Moore is only good at writing amazing stuff. He's not very good at writing bad stuff.

Foul-mouthed chain-smoking women with horrible personalities who spend most their time on the can are not attractive.

Jeph Loeb and sensible writing.

The whole, 'complain about the author because you believe s/he sucks' ban is still in effect.

he's good with every character

Good thread. IMO, Brian Michael Bendis is only good when he's working with street levelers.

@billy_batson: His darkseid was fine, it's the pacing of the story that ruined it :P

Yeah I'd say so for sure. It's interesting when we get new creators on books they've never been on before becuse it offers something new. But sometimes a person's approach just isn't suited to a character. It's hard to pin these things down though.

For example, Rick Remender turned Captain America into an odd, quirky sci fi book for a year. And it worked amazingly. His run has made me love the character. But his run is far different than any run that's come before and fairly out of the ordinary for a Cap run from what I understand.

Now the reason why I think it works is two fold. First, it's something knew we've never seen before. He put Cap in situations and relationships we've never seen. And the only reason it works, and this is important as this is the second criteria for such a change to be successful, it's that he never loses sight of Steve Rogers. By this I mean it is unquestionably a Cap book as thru all weird stuff going on in Dimension Z, we know this to be Steve Rogers. Remender never loses the voice of the character, and all this sci fi stuff he's created is a way to reach the heart of the character, just in a way we've never seen before.

So, in short, yes I think some people can miss the mark on a character. Not because the type of story the tell, but if it misrepresents the character or misunderstands their motives. If a creator is true to the character, they can do pretty much anything. And we've seen some of the best runs or graphic novels on characters that do that exact thing and are renowned precisely because they push the envelope while always remaining true to the character(s).

@billy_batson: like?

@vance_astro: never read his Secret Avengers, but I love his run on Cap.

What do you think of his Uncanny Avengers? I read up to issue 8 and had to drop something so it got the ax. The story was good from what I remember (aside from that wonky narration which seemed to polarize reader opinions a bit). That Cassady art was subpar, and I mainly didn't like that it didn't have a consistent look.

But that Thor centric issue (#6?) was epic. I could see Remender on Thor in the future.

@veshark: Bendis can be good, I think he just needs the right characters to work with. Have you read All-New X-men?

I agree 100% with what you said about Hickman. The guy can do high-concept stuff well, but even then his writing tends to fall flat on occasion.

The less said about Millar, the better. It still kills me that the same guy who wrote Old Man Logan wrote Wanted.

It helps at least, that a lot of Bendis's series he writes have characters who do quip like a young Spiderman: older Spiderman for one, and younger X-Men like young Iceman who is a comical character

And it almost seems that everyone seems to hate whoever is writing Avengers pretty hugely. Heck, it seems to get worse as the Johns hate on his Justice League run tempered down after Throne of Atlantis.

Hey, who knows: perhaps people give Ultimate Spiderman a pass because Bendis created him and defined the story perfectly, or as close to it as possible. Same with Hickman and the FF and Johns on Green Lantern; if a writer stays on a title long enough, few fans are willing to diss it.

But that becomes a curse: people will always expect that Johns will always do a Green Lantern to the characters he 'revamps'. His Teen Titans run is generally agreed to be the second best (Behind the immortal Perez/Wolfman one), but people diss it for not being as good as his GL run. Perhaps Bendis and Hickman, as well as Remender and every other good writer, has that problem.

But even then: perhaps its easier for a generalist writer like Johns to adapt to other types of characters: being able to go from writing young heroes like the Teen Titans to writing old hip people like he did with JSA to his current Aquaman run.

How well can Bendis, Hickman and Remender write when out of their comfort zones: be it Ultimate Spiderman and his quips, the Fantastic Four and their great sci fi feel and Remender and the gritty Uncanny X-Force.

@vance_astro: yeah same here. I wasn't sure that the team had much of an identity early on. So it was kind of hard to know what their purpose was beyond being some kind of PR stunt for human-mutant relations. Looking back I kind of wish I maybe stuck it out as I do really like Remender.

I admit I only know Hickman by reputation, seeing as the only Marvel Book I was getting before I got sent to a land without comic book stores was Wood's X-men. But I happen to think that Synder is a pretty good writer myself. He captures detective elements of the Dark Knight pretty well from what I saw in the pre Damian death issues and the Gates of Gotham series, and he seems to be capturing Superman and his reporter style well. So, that's why I argued he could do Green Lantern or Flash well due to how they are police, though I think he could probably do a decent Spiderman as well now that I think about it.

How anyone can say Alias was anything but horrible is beyond me. How can anyone describe a book that is mostly go nowhere inner-monologues fettered with swear words while an ugly (in every sense of the word) woman is having a crap as good? And that was like how they started almost every issue. And when it's not doing that it's painstakingly inserting Jones into continuity or having her having grotesque sex with things. All the while swearing.