Just to clarify: I don't dislike the character per se, I'm just not going to read Avengers when there are more than one or two characters of his noteriety level on the team. I read team books for the A-Listers and the more popular B-listers.

I would never pick up any book with JLA Detroit, JLA Antarctica, or the Great Lakes Avengers. There is not enough there, to capture my interest.

Put Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash, and Martian Manhunter , or Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Hawkeye, Vision, Wasp on a team and I'm there. Even the JSA- with out soome combination of Green Lantern, Flash, Wildcat, Dr. Fate, and Mr. Terrific being on the team-i'm not certain that I would purchase the book.

Martian Manhunter surrounded by Vibe, Steel, and Vixen? No thanks. Might as well give me a solo series with J'onn. Then I don't have to be bothered with other characters I don't care about. However, I like team books the most.

Like I said, the only team I give a pass to, is the X-Men. Because I like them that much and have liked pretty much every character that has been on the team-in issues I have read.

Dang, man, remind me again -- when was it, exactly, that I became your favorite Internet chew toy?

Who is this Peter Bavid person ???

I would think you'd be more worried about Joephisto chewing on you.

Peter David disappointed me with X-Factor 200, making the long-awaited first-ever hook-up between Siryn and Deadpool into a throw-away rude afterthought illustrating how far Terry had fallen. Although Deadpool is no longer the fantastic character he used to be, so maybe there's that.

ANYWAY. Disassembled and House of M made me decide to ignore Bendis (I agree with the 'every character talks the same way' criticisms) aside from Ultimate Spidey, and after the Ultimates 3 came out, all the joy was sucked out of that entire universe for me. I remember a Wizard article that basically had Bendis and Millar fellating each other about Civil War for several pages, revealing Millar wrote most of it while in a hospital constantly puking. It shows. So I also avoid Millar because of how much Civil War sucked.

I liked Busiek's Avengers run because it was really the first time I ever read Avengers and George Perez is awesome. Sure, it was wordy, but the whole effort was to get back to classic Avengers-style stuff after all that Heroes Reborn mess. If you've read Astro City, you know what Busiek's capable of. Then again, Bendis took over from Chuck Austen or whoever was crapping it up after Busiek's run ended, so it definitely needed SOMETHING to happen. But Disassembled was not it - at least not the way it was executed.

Bendis seems to be mostly great ideas and unpleasant execution. Disassembled COULD have been awesome - the Avengers suddenly have the absolute worst day of their lives with chaos exploding all around them that completely destroys their way of life - but did he need to have Dr. Strange show up and take a steaming dump on Kurt Busiek's intricate character development of the Scarlet Witch? Not to mention undoing all the redemption work Busiek did for Hank Pym after Bendis openly said he hated the character. Civil War COULD have been great, but did Millar have to turn Captain America into a hyper-aggressive moron and Iron Man into an over-officious jerk - not to mention how stupid the Punisher was made to look.

That said, this is the first time I've seen Bendis say anything close to self-critical as opposed to constantly harping on the 'change is good' thing (hey, your nuts are currently unkicked! I'm going to change that, because change is good!) and dismissing critics as whiny losers, and saying things like "the Wasp never had her own series so no one should care that much that we killed her" and stuff. Although I've been boycotting Marvel big events since House of M (made an exception for World War Hulk and Annihilation stuffs, but still) and I'm entirely sick of Norman Osborn, but I glanced through the first SIEGE thing where Doom finally throws down with Osborn, and I actually considered picking it up. But I didn't, because I know I am always disappointed by him even when the setup is encouraging. Because I saw him write Doom horribly in some Avengers book a while back, and I really can't stand poorly-written Doom. He was okay in that one issue... but I've been burned too often.

Same here. Triathalon was alright in my book...

Gotcha! Check the white text you quoted!

I think that pretty much hits the nail on the head.

I understand comics are a business, and need to make money. Massive cross overs generate money. What get's me is that it doesn't stop or end. That, and 'totally rewriting everything' every year is no different then nothing ever changing. The huge 'shakeups' all start blurring together, leaving me with a sense of 'who cares'. Not to mention constant price hikes. I can only imagine people who have been reading since the 60s and 70s.

I've watched it sky rocket since the 80s. It hovered at $1.00 for a long time, then 1.99, then 2.99, now 3.99 for something I have to by 6 of to get the story that should take 3-4 issues. It, plus editorial/writing decisions has massively cut back on the number of titles I read regularly.

I'm with you. I (reluctantly) just started cutting way back -- about the only things I'm reading regularly are Project Superpowers and Justice Society. And if the latter becomes a "You must read 4+ books to get the whole story!" (which threatens to be the case with the new All-Stars title, Magog, and the new Blackest Night tie in), I might wind up buying the PS-related books from Dynamite exclusively and giving the "Big Two" a complete pass.

And, for the record, I still remember when comics not only (usually) told a complete story in one issue, they often had more than one story in a single regular-sized issue. (I also remember when the price of a regular-sized book rose from $0.12 to $0.15, and my father's outrage at the three-cent increase -- they'd been a dime when he was a kid)

You forgot Power Girl.

Actually I deliberately excluded that book from mention because Palmiotti and Gray seem to be keeping their narrative as far away (in tone as well as in story) from the JSA books as they can. Very fun read, by the way.

I like it.
Makes me miss the old Infinity Inc. days when they first appeared in All-Star Squadron and then in their own Baxter Edition book.

In the latest issue, the full-page panel where Vartox's ship first shows up had me laughing until the tears came.

OK, I'm done -- this is a Marvel thread after all...

Refering to the OP, I appreciate that he at least has semi-admitted that he made a mistake with Dissassembled.

I agree with others assessment that he tends to wreck characters he doesn't like, and make stars out of those he likes, which can be annoying. As a fellow Cage fan, I like what he's done with him, but I hate what he did to Ant-Man, She-Hulk and Hawkeye as they are favourites of mine.

I like Clint Barton as Ronin, and the new direction with Pym(Mighty Avengers). She-Hulk was awesome as a solo series and shouldn't have been cancelled.