••

"Marvel wants to be Hollywood in the worst way -- and they are!"

Warren's girlfriend, Candy Southern, had been killed off a few years before I started that book

It seems like "normal" characters, who were strong supporting cast members, have been treated like cannon fodder over the last 25 years or so. When you eliminate those characters and have nothing BUT superheroes in book, it becomes very boring. Using the X-Men as an example, I enjoyed characters like Moira MacTaggart and Stevie Hunter. They started either killing those characters or writing them out then everyone and their brother became a mutant or had super powers.  

Quoting Bendis: "“He was this thing that was just floating around the X-books, with not the same amount of gravitas that he once had,” says Brian Bendis, who wrote the issue. “I did point out that he would matter more in death.”

***

Great. Blame the characters for your creative ineptitude.

The House of Ideas is rubble now.

I'm not a fan of his writing but over a period of almost 10 years, he's been allowed to more of less remake the Marvel Universe. I know that the justification of editorial has been that they allow "creators to create" but what has been created? Bendis turned the Avengers into a group that anyone can join. As far as Ultimate Spider-Man goes, he more or less just put a new coat of paint on and replaced some pieces of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko's run early on. Then he got to a point where his writing on that title seemed to be like a little kid in his back yard with all his cool action figures "Deadpool's really neat and I'd like to put Moon Knight and Iron Fist and Shang Chi in the book!" Yet Marvel acts like there is no one that has a better vision of what the Marvel Universe should be.

Alot of people say that he brought Spider-Woman and Luke Cage back to relevancy at Marvel. I love Luke Cage from way back but with the increased visibility of the character, he is nothing like the Luke Cage that I enjoyed in Power Man and Iron Fist.

***

Great. Blame the characters for your creative ineptitude.

The House of Ideas is rubble now.

••

Not long after I started at DC, Dick Giordano told me the decision had been made to kill Barry Allen because "there were no more stories to tell with him." My response was that, but for the fact I only have about four good running poses, I could have told a HUNDRED stories with Barry. The fact that the most recent writer had run him into the ground -- so to speak -- was in no way the fault of the character.

It seems that nothing has changed in a quarter century -- unless it is that writers now wear their creative lacks as a badge of pride. Blaming the characters for being poorly handled has become SOP.

••

Remember -- and this is SO important!!! -- the death of Phoenix was not PLANNED. It was not a calculated EVENT. It was not a STUNT.

It happened because Jim Shooter wasn't paying attention, and when Chris and I did the story we'd TOLD him we were going to do, he suddenly declared "You can't do this!" Further, as Chris told me when he called me up in Calgary to tell me of Shooter's latest edict, Jean/Phoenix was to be "taken to a prison asteroid, where she will be horribly tortured for all eternity!"

At which point I spoke the immortal words, the words that will live in infamy, the words that probably did more to ultimately damage the X-Men and the comicbook industry than and six other words, "Fuck that, I'd rather KILL her!"

The Death of Phoenix "worked" because nobody knew it was coming. Not even Chris and me!!