The Comics Professor

So who had "Brian Michael Bendis moves to DC Comics" in the pool? Anybody?

Some random thoughts on the jawdropping news — at least for readers of superhero comics — that superstar Marvel Comics writer Brian Michael Bendis has signed an exclusive contract with DC Comics...

Wow. I mean WOW. This is huge.

I count myself as a huge Bendis fan. Daredevil was the first Marvel book I read, and as I followed Ed Brubaker and Michael Lark's run I also went back to read all the Miller and Smith, and then all the Bendis, and loved it. Then came his Avengers in the run-up to Secret Invasion, which is my favorite Bendis event, especially the carefully laid groundwork leading into it and the support stories in the Avengers books that ran alongside the main series. Dark Avengers and Siege were fantastic, especially with his multilayered Norman Osborn, but his Avengers titles began to get tired for me soon after The Heroic Age began. I soon gleaned on to his X-Men books (which I almost never read) and Guardians of the Galaxy. After the Marvel Universe died (but didn't really OK never mind hey look Miles is here everybody yay), his Iron Man work was brilliant, especially in the recent developments with Riri Williams and Victor Von Doom, and of course I love Jessica Jones (in all her Bendis incarnations) and Miles Morales, his two best creations. (Didn't like Civil War II, but oh well.)

In short, he represented a lot of Marvel was to me for the last 10-12 years, and I will miss his voice there (even if it has become less pervasive in the last couple years as his big franchises wound down).

Two obvious questions going forward are:

What happens to his Marvel books? I assume he'll stay on Iron Man until #600 (when Tony Stark will presumably return), after which the book will go to a heavy hitter like Jason Aaron (my first choice). The inevitable Ironheart book will hopefully go in a new, emerging writer, as should happen also with the Miles Morales book. Jessica Jones is too connected with Bendis (and Michael Gaydos), though, so I don't see anyone taking that over, unless she's wrapped into a joint book with Luke Cage. Defenders could go on with someone else, but it never received Legacy renumbering, so I expect it will be cancelled (especially now that the show is a memory) or re-oriented more towards the rotating line-up of the classic book (at which point it will be renumbered). I would also nominate Mr. Aaron for that. (Or anything. That fella's great.)

What will he do at DC? The best guess is Batman, whether one or both of the existing books (in which I would expect Tom King to jump to Marvel full-time) or a newly created book. Bendis has often expressed his desire to write the character (which was his sole DC credit to this point), and it makes sense given his focus on street-level heroes at Marvel, but personally I don't see Bendis' voice fitting the Dark Knight. (But I imagine this was the lure that got him to jump ship.)

The best fit in my opinion would be a restored Legion of Super-Heroes book: huge team (like the Avengers or X-Men), an entire world for him to play in and develop (like X-Men and Guardians of the Galaxy), and so much dialogue to write. (I love his style of dialogue, which would work much better with Legion or Titans than Batman.)

My fantasy pick? Restore Green Arrow to his old, ornery glory and give him to Bendis. Call it Old Man Ollie if you want. (I really want my Ollie back, and I think Bendis would be great. The return of three-alarm chili!)

In general, I do have reservations. I don't think it's particularly novel to say that Bendis is an intrinsically "Marvel" writer, much like writer and penciller Jack Kirby was before he jumped ship to do New Gods and more at DC, and more recently when penciller John Romita Jr. moved to DC to draw Superman. Frankly, I wonder how the patented Bendis voice will fit at DC. (But then again, Kirby didn't do too bad!) Given my poor opinion of the state of DC at the moment, I'm inclined to welcome any shake-up. But I also wonder if the addition of such an "outside" voice, as talented and inventive as he is, would get DC even further off-track at a time when they need to find their center (as promised by Geoff John's Rebirth one-shot). I would prefer that they engage Mr. Johns to devote himself to focusing the line (rather than messing with what should never be touched), and find a corner of the DCU for Bendis to play in where he can indulge himself fully (as they did with Kirby). Again, I think the Legion would be perfect for this, or maybe a new or reimagined parallel Earth. (Earth-B, of course.)

What do you think?

Did Professor Xavier Just Pull a Doc Brown? (Spoilers for Uncanny X-Men #31)

Just a little speculation about Brian Michal Bendis and Chris Bachalo's Uncanny X-Men #31...

Before the spoilers, a general observation: I've been enjoying Bendis' X-Men books tremendously since he launched them following the Avengers vs. X-Men event. His talent at writing character moments and witty banter serves this property well, especially with the each of the two books focusing on a younger subset of the group (the Original Five in New X-Men and the new students in Uncanny X-Men). While I think he overstayed his welcome a bit on Avengers, he seems to leaving X-Men on a high note, for that I salute him (along with his uncanny artistic collaborators).

Torture Comics: The New Avengers Cross the Line

Ah, comics.

The other day I was chatting about New Avengers #22 with with my friend Christine of the fantastic Daredevil blog The Other Murdock Papers. I mentioned how how out-of-character it seemed that Daredevil would exclaim "Toss her!" when the New Avengers are trying to extract information from Victoria Hand. (Remember that New Avengers scribe Brian Michael Bendis wrote a lengthy and highly acclaimed run on Daredevil.) Wolverine does in fact toss her--out the window--after which the non-powered Hand falls at least a dozen stories onto a car below.

My concerns about characterization--at least in terms of dialogue--were somewhat alleviated, however, when the whole affair was revealed to be an magical illusion shown to Hand by Dr. Strange in order to get the desired information. Christine was appalled, nonetheless, that Matt (along with the rest of the team) simply stood and watched while Dr. Strange tortured Ms. Hand. (At least Matt exclaims "God!" as she screamed in agony. I wonder, is that better than Grant Morrison having Superman exclaiming "GD" in a recent issue of Action Comics? Judges?) Strange's spell is even called "The Death Illusion Spell on the Shadow," lest there be any doubt regarding its intended effect.

Here we go again, kids! I still remember vividly the controversy over the torture of supervillains at the hands of Ray Palmer, Hal Jordan, and (yes) Oliver Queen during Justice League: Cry for Freedom several years ago. (See issues 3 and 4 in particular for some good dialogue on the topic.) I even addressed the torture debate in an op-ed I coauthored drawing a parallel with the issue of whether Batman should kill the Joker, based on the first chapter of Batman and Philosophy (and itself a topic recently revisited by Comics Alliance). 

Are Dr. Strange's actions any different because they were the result of an illusion, a magical spell, rather than actually tossing her out of the window? Clearly not: in the legal/political sense, torture is usually defined as inflicting physical or mental suffering for the express purpose of obtaining information. (Ssee, for instance, Jeremy Waldron's book Torture, Terror, and Trade-Offs, pp. 191-4, in which he surveys the various prohibitions of torture in official government documents around the world.) The whole point of waterboarding, after all, to make people think they are drowning, not actually drown them. Just because Strange has the ability to make Ms. Hand think she is dying without actually threatening her life doesn't make her subjective experience any less horrible--or any less torturous.

So it was torture--but was it justified? When it comes to the use of torture, someone people say no categorically, and others would allow for some exceptions, such as "ticking time-bomb scenarios." Let's say we grant exceptions in such rare emergencies: does the situation faced by the New Avengers qualify? In what seems like the start of a new Dark Reign, Norman Osborn has once again put together his own faux Avengers team and has masterfully manipulated public sentiment and the media against the Avengers (both Steve Roger's A-team and the New Avengers). They suspect Ms. Hand--the team's liaison with Rogers--is also working for her old H.A.M.M.E.R. boss, and they want her to lead them to him.

Osborn is bad news, of course, but does this represent a "ticking time-bomb," a threat so severe and immediate that (to some people) it justifies nearly any means taken to prevent it, including torture? It's a judgment call, of course, but I hardly think so, unless they uncover evidence indicating immediate and catastrophic plans of Osborn's. As of yet, however, all they know is that he's made them look like chumps--and they certainly aren't helping themselves either.

Of course, Mockingbird clocked Hand before Strange put the whammy on her--and Daredevil himself has certainly used his fists to empty many a bar of lowlifes when trying to get information on a case. Maybe it's just because, as comics fans, we're used to seeing heroes beat up bad guys, but we usualy don't think of this as torture--though, when a real life police officer or detective does it, we take it more seriously. Victoria Hand is an experienced and trained former S.H.I.E.L.D. and H.A.M.M.E.R. agent; she probably wouldn't crack merely from being beaten up. She didn't crack under Dr. Strange's spell either--but was he justified in using it in the first place?

I don't think so. Do you?

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By the way, Christopher Robichaud touches on the torture issue in his chapter "Fighting the Good Fight: Military Ethics and the Kree-Skrull War," in The Avengers and Philosophy: Earth's Mightiest Thinkers, now available for pre-order.

Brian Michael Bendis' run on the Avengers titles ending in 2012

Comic Book Resources has announced, at the end of a lengthy interview with Avengers mastermind Brian Michael Bendis, that he will end his tenure with the franchise in 2012:

"I'm going to wrap up 'Avengers' and 'New Avengers.' At the same time the first storyline of 'Avengers Assemble' will be done," Bendis told CBR. "It's a good time to move on to other things. Before I go, though, I'm ending things big. I'm in countdown mode. You know when you're watching a show like 'Breaking Bad,' and every episode feels like the second to last episode? That's where I'm at. I've been on the Avengers longer than anybody in the history of the book. When you take everything into account, I've written over 200 issues. I'm very, very proud of that, and what we have coming up this summer gives me the opportunity to go out on a high note. I know enough about showbiz to know that's a great time to go."

I have been a huge fan on Bendis' work on Avengers since the team was first disassembled, and his influence appears throughout Avengers and Philosophy. I hope to have more to say on his epic run in future posts.

Thank you, Mr. Bendis, for a groundbreaking run.