The story by Brian Michael Bendis is powerful, edgy and unsettling, and the art by Michael Gaydos is terrific - moody and striking. It's a terrific adults-only series and well worth your time - if you can handle the intense nature of the stories.
But instead of the comic, I want to take a moment to talk about Bendis.
It was announced this week that he's signed an exclusive contract with DC Comics, so after spending virtually his entire career working at Marvel, he's off to new lands.
He's certainly had a profound effect on Marvel, from his work on the Ultimate Universe, crafting a new course for Spider-Man and creating Mile Morales, to creating new characters like Jessica Jones.
He (almost) invented the event series, beginning with House of M, and following it up with several other universe-shaking events, including Secret Invasion. He deconstructed and reinvented the Avengers and created the New Avengers. He had memorable runs on Daredevil, the X-Men, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Iron Man.
He killed characters off, including Ultimate (Peter Parker) Spider-Man, Hawkeye and Jack of Hearts. (So yes, he made mistakes.)
In addition to the impressive number of great stories he's written, I think he deserves credit for pushing Marvel in the direction of focusing on the writing end of the equation. Art is very important, of course - the medium is a terrific merger of writing and art - but as the old theatre saying goes, "If it ain't on the page, it ain't on the stage."
Marvel became the top company in the business thanks largely to its focus on the writing, building great stories and characters. It helps to have writers like Bendis who focus on the visuals, but aren't afraid to devote lots of time to fleshing out the characters and making the reader care about them. And there are few writers who write better dialogue.
Hopefully he'll be able to have a similar impact on DC's line - both companies are in need of focus, to bring their bloated continuities into line, and to focus on the terrific characters they have in their stables.
It'll be interesting to see what books he tackles - one would expect Batman and Justice League, but Bendis rarely does the obvious, so we'll see.
Hopefully Marvel can find some fresh talent to step in and carry on Bendis' traditions - and someone who can continue the edgy drama we've come to expect from Jessica Jones.
Grade: A-
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4 comments:
Just a heads-up to your readers. The AMC channel had the first episode to Robert Kirkman's Secret History of the Comics. Last night's episode was pretty good, and if you are already a comic fan it didn't shed a lot of new light on anything you probably didn't already know, but it was interesting to see some of the old comic creators, etc. They did speak about the indifference/ feud between Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, and I thought that was interesting and at least got that out of the way. Most series would have avoided that issue. It continues this week. http://tvworthwatching.com/BlogPostDetails.aspx?postId=15193
Thanks for the note, El Vox! I'd missed it, but I've set the DVR for future episodes.
I'm curious what he could do with the Legion Of Super-Heroes or Superman.
I caught the first episode and liked it a lot. One of the few that at least made an attempt to explain the dynamics of comics in the 1960s, and gave both sides (Stan and Jack) a fair hearing. Add some cool graphics and it's a solid show - thanks again for pointing it out!
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