Manic Monday--Superbaby 2018!!

Hey, do you not like it when Lois calls Superman "Smallville?"

Well, then, Bendis is the writer for you!!

That's all from one single issue, Action Comics #1004 (2018). Sometimes even in consecutive panels.

Someone should calculate how much Bendis is being paid per "baby."

Or, you know, an editor could do some editing...

Manic Monday Bonus--Bendis Is Leaving!!

This quote from Bendis was floating around the Twitters last week:

A lot of people took exception to his apparent dissing of Superman's rogues gallery.

I'll let Superman fans handle that one.

But dissing Iron Man's rogues gallery? Are you nuts?

This from the man who thought bringing in The Hood (twice), with exactly the same scheme he used when Bendis brought him in as the Avengers big bad, was a good idea.

So let's just take a little survey from the late 70's & 80s. These guys were all available when Bendis "had issues" with finding good Iron Man villains.

Let's not even do the Mandarin, or Ultimo. Let's see what else was available. I'm sure he'd dismiss Mandarin as "done to death." So let's see who else there is.

The Guardsman (or Guardsmen)--Tony Stark designed armor that drove the user--your best friend--mad?! What's not to love? Yeah, nothing there to "dig deep into the wounds" of Tony Stark.

Look--a Maggia leader modeling himself after a Greek myth? And his daughter, herself a dangerous criminal with a tragically scarred face, is your girlfriend?!? Gee, sorry these weren't as good as you wanted. (In fairness, Bendis did use Madame Masque, but more a way to introduce the all-new, all-mystic Victor Von Doom into the supporting cast).

Unicorn--a criminal whose costume is both killing him and driving him insane, and used as a disposable pawn my every criminal mastermind in the book.

Spymaster. Come on, Bendis--SPYMASTER. A super-duper industrial espionage agent who has the coolest toys. You can't find a story for him?

Melter! Blizzard! Whiplash!! 

Sure, minor leaguers, maybe...but they always seem to find someone to pay to upgrade their powers enough to become a serious threat to Tony. Plus, Bendis is all about criminal mastermind uniting the underworld (see his many, many Hood stories). So these guys would fit right in!

Dreadnought!! Hydra-designed robots with seemingly infinite weapons systems that were later rented out to the Maggia and were later given Super-Adaptoid technology? No-brainer!!

Titanium Man!!! A bigger guy in bigger armor who represents the apotheosis of Iron Man's philosophy. You think Putin wouldn't still employ him?!?

Look, Bendis might have healed Doom's face, and had him reform, and dedicate himself to the mystic arts in one of Tony Stark's stolen armors (??) and impregnate Tony's girlfriend (no, I'm not making that up) and lose a fight with The Hood because sure, why not? But instead of all that, Doom should be a perfect villain for Tony Stark. Sigh...

Living Laser!! You can never go wrong with lasers!!

MODOK! If you can't find a use for MODOK, why are you writing comics?

The Ghost!! Industrial saboteur who can turn invisible and intangible? Good enough for the Ant-Man and The Wasp movie. Not good enough for Bendis.

MANDROIDS!! MANDROIDS!!

Crimson Dynamo. See Titanium Man. Except he's crimson!!

Grey Gargoyle!! A French scientist who can turn people an things into stone!! Sacre Bleu!!

And then there's this guy:

Seriously, though. If you can't find something worthwhile in Iron Man's rogues gallery, well, you're not really trying.

Maybe Bendis can take The Hood with him to DC...?

Spoiler Saturday--Bendis Is Coming!!

For those DC fans who haven't had the pleasure yet, here's a heads-up on what to expect from Bendis:

His characters talk. A LOT. And then they talk some more.

I'm just saying, he's never found a panel he couldn't cram more word balloons into.

Let the countdown begin, Superman fans.

From Jessica Jones #18 (2018)

Decompression, Thy Name Is Bendis!

I'm on record as declaring that the origin of Doctor Doom is just about the most perfect origin story every written. And unless you're going to reveal that the "mysterious order of monks who had dwelled in a lost mountain cave for centuries" means that Doom got his armor in K'un-L'un, well, you really can't improve it.

[For the record, that's the reason the movies keep getting Doctor Doom wrong. Because they f%^& up his origin, and conflate it with the same incident that created the Fantastic Four. And that kind of thing will always--always--pale next to the original.]

Jack and Stan didn't waste a whole lot space, either. Note this incident, as originally told in Fantastic Four Annual #2 (1964), which took up three whole panels:

And really, who needs more than three panels for that?

Apparently, Brian Michael Bendis does, as in last week's Infamous Iron Man #6, he expands that little vignette to THREE AND A HALF PAGES: (click to embiggen if you want to read every "witticism" and insult):

See, the scene is much better because you brought in Ben to call Victor "Euro-trash."

If only Stan and Jack knew that they were supposed to dedicate THREE AND A HALF PAGES instead of three panels to that scene!!

Stay tuned, as next Bendis expands this scene...

...into a 6-issues min-series!!

So, Just How Old Is Tony Stark?

You all know how much I hate the tragedy of sliding timescales.

The understandable desire of trying to keep our heroes at a certain age, combined with the apparently irresistible need to ties their histories in with certain fixed historical events, leads to all sorts of unnecessary cognitive dissonance.

Like Captain America not being awakened in the 1960s any longer...as we keep having to get unnecessarily specific, various marvel writers have had him unfrozen during the Clinton administration, and now even the George W. Bush era.

Of course, that means that Cap now slept through the Civil Righs movement, slept through Watergate, slept through the Bicentennial, slept through the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall...so all those stories are sorta kinda quietly elided out of history, a sub rosa retcon. All because someone needs to put a specific date on things.

But what about Tony Stark? In Tales Of Suspense #39 (1963), Stan had him injured in the Vietnam conflict. Oh, but we can't have Tony Stark be that old, see, so the Iron Man movie (and subsequent comics) set Tony's injury and capture to an unspecified time in Afghanistan.

All right, that's vague enough (because, sadly, there's always some conflict going on in Afghanistan) that we're not tied down to a specific time and date that a) hurts our brain and b) will require yet more historical shifting in a couple of years.

Ah, but that's not good enough for Bendis. In this week's International Iron Man #7, he feels the need the to ignore subtlety, and tie things down as specifically as humanly possible.

I'll keep this as spoiler-free as possible, through the magic of captions!

In this tale, we get the story of how Tony Stark's parents started their relationship...

...how thing progressed...

And of course...

Oh, dear.

Even if you allow for some imprecision in these apparently precise captions, some rounding up or down, you end up with the conclusion that Tony Stark is most likely 34 tears old. That he was born in 1982, the year I graduated from high school. That, even allowing for super-genius and inheriting a massive arms company and what have you, there's pretty much no way he could have become Iron Man until after 9/11. So all those fights with Crimson Dynamo and Titanium Man and other Soviet stooges? I'm not sure what happened there. Those issues where Tony got involved in groovy campus protests of the most 70s kind? Nope!

Sigh...I HATE sliding timescales...

Exclusive--Behind The Scenes Of Civil War II!!

A sneak peak inside the Marvel creative summit where they came up with Civil War II:

"...and then [REDACTED] kills [REDACTED], even that's kinda way outta character, and [REDACTED] is performing a role he couldn't possibly, just 'cause I used to write the guy, and..."

"Yes, Brian, whatever, we'll undo whatever you do, just have the scripts in on time."

Oh, geez, sorry, I thought that was Bendis and Breevort, not Reed and Franklin Richards. Hahahah...I certainly didn't mean to imply that Civil War II is a slapdash barely-plotted child's stream of consciousness idea of an event! That would be just silly to suggest that Marvel's event would generally be better if they just threw random action figures together and Axe-Copped it! Nope, not me, never...

From Fantastic Four #226 (1981)

Manic Monday Triple Overtime--Choas Magic, The Rebuttal

Let's recall the halcyon days of 2004. The Avengers were disassembling, and Bendis (via Doctor Strange) revealed a surprising fact about Wanda's powers:

Yup. No such thing as chaos magic. Firm words from the Sorcerer Supreme. Can't be any doubt, right?

A decade or so later, in the most recent issue of S.H.I.E.L.D., Fitz is possessed, and shoots Wanda with a "magic bullet":

So now Mark Waid (via Dormammu!!) says there is chaos magic, and Wanda is all about the stuff!

Bendis/Dr. Strange, or Waid/Dormammu? Who are you going to believe?!?

No, notintheface and I will never get tired of kvetching about this...

From Avengers #503 (2004) and S.H.I.E.L.D. #5 (2015)