Feb 19, 2008
Luke Cage / Jessica Jones. Is it a work?
From the latest issue of New Avengers #38 – The Luke and Jessica break-up issue. I thought that the above page set the tone very well on both my thoughts. Gods I love and hate Bendis! and his writing!!
Is it all bullshit between Luke Cage and Jessica Jones? I am torn that it is a work (a con to get Jessica in as a spy amongst Tony [Stark] and The Mighty Avengers) and Jessica really did run to the Avengers for safety. Funny enough is that on For The Love of Comics blog, on a “Divided We Stand” blog post, CrackerBob and I have gotten into discussion about this. Drop on in and give us your thought or drop your two bits here.
CrackerBob’s For The Love of Comics blog post here:
http://www.fortheloveofcomics.com/2008/02/17/x-men-divided-i-stand/#comments
It was a well written issue. I might not have agreed with all the content, or situations, but it was well written. That’s Bendis for me. He writes well, really well, I just don’t always agree with what he’s writing about. To be honest I don’t agree with what he doing most of the time. I thought he wrote a great Doc Strange, I didn’t like how he was using him though. The whole Tigra crap was a great bit of dialog surrounding the situations, even if I found what he was writing about denigrating. Weird i can’t seem to find better words to describe it. He’s great at dialog and characterization, sucks at plotting. Does that make sense?
Correct me if I’m wrong, Silenzio, but it kinda sounds like you don’t really like what Bendis is doing, but you like how he’s doing it. Is that fair to say?
I agree with you in general about Bendis’ skill at dialog and characterization, but there have been a few places that I think he dropped the ball. Since you mentioned the recent Tigra scenes, I’ll use her as an example. I’ve known police officers, and imagining them enduring what Tigra did and not only breaking, but not saying a word to anyone about what was going on does NOT seem like something they’d do. Who knows what someone will do under extreme duress until they experience those circumstances, but police are trained to deal with stress and extreme circumstances. That whole thing didn’t seem quite right to me.
Of course, with the whole Skrull thing, who knows what’s intentional in the writers’ portrayals of characters these days?
I wonder if Bendis really does know what he is doing with the overall Avengers arc. I know when he began down the Disassembled road, so many fans were ready to burn him alive. Now it seems that through New Avengers and now Mighty Avengers, he has built this solid Avenger base to write stories about. Dr. Strange was not used properly ’cause he was a Skrull. Tigra got messed up ala Blue Velvet style which added to the entire “bad ass” version of the those villains.
To me Bendis! is down with his writing and it all works for me other than the Scarlet Witch / Hawkeye issue which was far to fricken slow paced for my liking but I understood why it was such a slow burn, to be a slow burn.
Bendis! surprises me which is good and enjoyable.
That all said – Is the Luke / Jessica thing a work or are they really through or is it all due to one of them being a Skrull?!
Yeah, I’ve learned that it’s probably wise to give Bendis the benefit of the doubt – so far, his stuff has payed off in the end.