Record: Brian Michael Bendis

What is so great about Bendis anyway? This hugely overrated writer with an inexplicable following based on his name alone may have first begun his career as a novelist, but certainly came to prominence following his work on Powers for Image Comics. While he may have come up with some effective women in the books he’s written, he’s still pulled some sexist acts, which I’ll try to highlight below.

• In Avengers: Disassembled, we have the notorious case of Scarlet Witch going insane because she failed to have children, a storyline based on one of John Byrne’s worst works from 1990. She even sends the She-Hulk berserk during this. The worst part is how it invokes the stereotype of women being unable to cope with power.
• Another one of the worst things about Disassembled was how it regurgitated the Hank Pym as abuser stigma: another character, possibly Tony Stark, asks Hank, “don’t you got a wife to beat?” It’s as offensive to Janet as it is to Hank, who does not deserve this kind of character assassination by now.
• In the 26th issue of the current Avengers volume, he wrote a supremely silly story where Hawkeye and Scarlet Witch have a tryst without even trying to solve anything. Problem with this is how it made Wanda seem more like an airhead than anything else. It was a really dumb story that didn’t serve much purpose other than to seemingly assure readers that Hawkeye and Scarlet Witch are okay and little the worse for wear, yet at the same time did not seem to be written out of love for the characters.
• He killed off the Wasp during Secret Invasion, one of the awful crossovers published in 2008.
  

Based on that and how Bendis has basically taken the Avengers and far removed them from the core premise and structure, that’s exactly why I can’t understand what’s so great about him. And I’d be very happy if, just like Joe Quesada, he would just leave Marvel already.