I've just read House Of M in full for the first time ($0.99 sale on comixology) and it's give me a richer appreciation for Bendis.
Let's just look at this for a second and think about the feat Bendis pulled off. 7 and a half years ago Bendis creates a massive crossover across Marvel Universe, repercussions felt in issues long after, the only thing comparable would have been secret wars. For secret wars the writers had to come up with a macguffin in the form of the beyonder, I'm not besmirching secret wars with that, I'm just trying to make the point that Bendis carefully constructed Wanda as a plot device where here powers naturally evolved to massive scale rather than invent a 'supreme being'. In fact she's the perfect plot point, she ties both the avengers and the x-men worlds together cohesively and the mental strain of her life it's pretty much logical in comicbook world that this could happen.
Now take a look at the story. Let's throw everything on the table, what can we do that is massive I mean seriously throw everything on the table, give everyone something that will effect them for years to come.
What's the worst thing we can do to Spider-Man? Take everything bad that ever happened to him, I mean EVERYTHING and make him forget it...then give it ALL back. I mean if that was an Osborn plan it'd be probably the worst thing he'd ever to to Peter.
Logan, what do we do with him? He's been knocking about for years, we've ran pretty much every story possible about his missing memories. Let's give them back. Seems easy right? Well not really because we're going to throw a whole other set of memories on top.
Strange, yeah let's make him fail completely. Let's do something so huge that it's going to have repercussions on him for years to come
X-Men, we should do something new with them....hmmm
I could go on but the main point I'm making is, this:
House Of M is how a crossover should be done, it should be huge, it should have massive repercussions on every single person involved. Not small two-issue "oh woe is me" I mean like serious storyline makers that will last months/years to come.
House of M, might not be perfect but it is a massive feat and probably the most impressive crossover when you consider the scope, lasting effects, cohesiveness of the story. This in turn leads to the criticism of not so much Bendis but Marvel in general. Name another storyline since that hits the same notes.
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