Brian Michael Bendis

Recently Bendis reintroduced 70s character Killraven in the Avengers.

I’m glad that the great 70s characters get brought back and used. Bendis brought back Cage, Spider-Woman, Ms Marvel (and some others I’m not thinking about) to the forefront.

In a way, Bendis keeps stretching his writing muscles. He first wrote crime and spy stories. Then Powers is a crime series in a world inhabited by superheroes. He started Daredevil by focusing on the criminal Silke and the FBI agents. He created a detective character for Alias and confronted her with the more fantastic elements of the Marvel Universe (basically a similar concept to Firearm from the Ultraverse). The Pulse was still a crime book but with journalists.

His first foray in straight superheroics was New Avengers and he used the street characters (Cage and others), as well as the human Stark (notice he killed the inhuman Vision straight away).
Then he created the outlaw Avengers.
His try at straight superheroics with Mighty Avengers showed he wasn’t at ease with it yet.
Dark Avengers was better as it was criminals pretending to be big time superheroes. Finally Bendis thought he was ready for another shot at straight superheroics with Avengers (2010). But this time travel story where he focused on the confusing aspects and paradoxes of time travel lacked… in clarity!
By introducing Killraven, he takes another street character (former gladiator) and is trying to play the culture shock for blood. Maybe this is a step to master sword and sorcery next?

The odd thing is that this is taking him so long. He started including superheroes in his stories 10 years ago. Many writers produced great comics in different genres in just a few years. Why is it taking so long for Bendis to master different genres?

Maybe some will say that my description of a continually learning Bendis can’t be right bacause, look! he’s the architect of the MU, their bestselling writer!

I’ll answer that this succes is largely based on two outside factors.
1. The popularity of Wolverine and Spider-Man. They’re in his two teams.
2. The Marvel Universe is itself a continuing and evolving feature, actually the most popular feature, more popular than any individual character. The Marvel Universe was first developed in FF, that’s where time travel, future history, alternate universe, subterranea, Atlantis, aliens races were introduced. From FF #25 on, all the MU characters guest-starred in the series one after the other. FF was the central title. Spider-Man became popular and he had a second series (Marvel Team-Up) where all other Marvel characters could guest-star. Spider-Man was by then the central character of the MU so by following his adventures in this title you could stay acquainted with the developments of the MU. Then this central position was held by X-Men where all the big crossovers started. (And it’s no coincidence that MTU was cancelled during the height of X-Men popularity). And from the X-Men the Marvel Universe axis shifted to Avengers with House of M.
If you removed Wolverine, Spider-Man and the « center of the Marvel Universe » aspect from Avengers, how would it fare? Well, Bendis couldn’t make Spider-Woman succeed with his writing talent alone.