Also check out Instocktrades.com. Run by the same people who do DCBS with the same insanely low prices (anybody know how they sell stuff as low as they do?). The only difference is they only sell tpbs, hardcovers, and the like their that they have in stock. Free shipping on orders over 50 bucks. Great little site with a bunch of deals to be had.

Probably the same way any retailer with rock-bottom prices does:

Mass quantities ordered + mass quantities sold - overhead costs + power of the internet to reach the masses + $$$$$$$$$

Retailers get most HCs/TPBs at 50% off, so they are making some profit.

Thanks guys.

Well, I'm adding ANOTHER title to my dropped books list. After "reading" POWERS #11 last night I am DONE with that book. I went through the actual "story" in about 2 minutes and the rest of the book looked like a 6 page interview with Bendis about how awesome House of M is. New Avengers is next on my chop list if the Sentry doesn't show up soon and do something interesting...

F... this book and F... bendis.

Bravo, man I wish more people would see the light like you did on the single most overrated writer in the industry, so he would stop writing so many titles. I remember when the first issue of Powers came out I was blown away, then I actually dropped the book for a while b/c it never went anywhere & then I thought the first volume ended really strong. But every single issue of the new series has been total crap, & I finally gave up on it the last issue. IMO Bendis just fools his audience into thinking he is a good writer but almost everything he writes is just utter filler crap, his stories never go anywhere, except for Chuck Austen there is no writer in the industry worse at characterization, but people think the guy is genius b/c he uses profanity, & writes every character as if they are deaf, & somehow people are fooled into thinking this is how real people talk.

Hey now, let's not destroy the man. There's no such thing as a perfect writer and Bendis is still one of the best writers in the industry. The problem is that he's too prolific for his own good. Powers was an incredible read when he first signed on because it was his own work, and he had to bleed for it to make it a success, and secondly, he wasn't helming Marvel's universe at the time. Trust me i've always noticed this dip in quality in a writer when their attention is divided so many different ways.

That doesn't mean I like every single thing he writes. Take Brian K. Vaughan for example. I love the guy, he and I have actually become friends (sounds really weird I know, but it was a total accident), but everything he's written other than Y and Ex Machina have been really poor in quality. His UXM run was just filled with neat ideas - as usual - but almost no plot or character development. What it really boils down to is that the characters they're working with don't have a lot of wiggle room - and therefore can't be thrust in the direction that the writer may really want. If BKV had his way then Collossus and Longshot would have already made out by now in UXM. Grant Morrison is another good example. In every popular title I read of his I always feel that he's just filling the book with great concepts and character moments, but there's no real substantial story or character development. But in Invisibles and even his recent Seaguy and WE3, he's shown that he's still a master storyteller.

Bendis's DD is still one of my favorite books, because part of the book is being carried by Alex Maleev. The dialogue is also incredibly rich and fulfilling and the storylines are really good for a DD title and not that utter fanboy crap Kevin Smith was spewing out. In case you thought that DD was a bad book, go back and read some backissues from 1990-1999. Then you might have some respect for the man who brought a book back from the grave.

New Avengers is a crappy book, but that's because it's a crappy concept to begin with. This team won't last more than a year at best. The Busiek/Perez days are still my favorite.

House of M is your typical crappy Marvel X-over. Marvel needs to take a lesson from DC on how to do X-overs. Maximum Carnage, Maximum Security, whatever the hell they are, I don't care anymore. And X-men has been rebooted so many times the past few years it's pathetic. If there's any writer that should be executed it's Chris Clairmont. Maybe everyone should take off their rose-colored lenses and realize just how crappy his Uncanny X-men was and always will be. None of those stories started out any good and Marvel knew it, so that's probably why they cleaned house a few years ago and half-assedly tied up all those loose ends.

I agree though about the dip in quality in Powers, and I really think Bendis should just keep the book on hiatus until he can actually churn out a decent story instead of vying for his fans $$$.

Who is destroying the man? Nobody has even mentioned the man, just his writing.

Who is talking about the perfect writer? And while I'm not denying Bendis is one of the most popular writers in the industry, he is a far cry from one of the best.

I really hate name dropping, especially when it is totally irrelevant. It always discredits one's argument to me. If I mentioned to MKV at the Big Apple con your name, I highly doubt he will say, "yeah, he & I are really good friends".

It is really hard to take you seriously. How on earth can you say Runaways is poor quality? Can you say you don't like it? Sure, but the book is not "poor quality", it is hands down one of the most original titles Marvel has put out in over 20 years. The single hardest thing to do in comics is to create new superhero characters in current continuity & have people care & respond to those characters. Vaughan has done this as good as anyone has in decades.

DD is the epitome of all that is terrible & overrated about Bendis IMO. The dialogue is attrocious, please explain to me what is so "rich & fulfilling" about it. I'm serious, explain it to me. EVERYONE is hard of hearing in Daredevil.

Hard of hearing?

. .. Yes, hard of hearing

What do you mean hard of hearing?

. .. Everyone talks like this.

Like this?

. Yes like this.


Oh, you mean like this?

.... Yeah.

Yeah?

... Yeah.


. . And this is good writing?

. I guess so.

His stories go nowhere, they have no point & no ending. He has been on the book for over 2 years & done absolutely NOTHING with the characters. He is outed as DD only to deny it. He has ending countless issue with almost the same exact ending. DD himself is almost never in the comic any more, there is no insight into any of the characters anymore, they are all empty & hollow & we know nothing about them. The comic is the PERFET example as well, of pointless, padding, pages & pages of issues where NOTHING happens, even no dialogue, these are stories that can be told in ONE issue that Bendis drags out to 4-5 issues. As for Maleev, his computer generated art is bland, boring, & sloppy. Every panel of every issue & every cover look the same. It is near impossible to decipher what is going on the very rare times there is action.

You trash Kevin Smith (who I hate, I'm not sticking up for him), but then you tell people to have respect for the man who brought a book back from the grave? B/c it was Smith, not Bendis that did that. The book was at the bottom of the sales chart, until Smith took over, & Bendis' #s aren't even close to what Smith's were.

Yeah that is part of it, but the larger part is the writing. Bendis has no clue how to write these characters or pace a story.


I'm with you on this one.

Like that episode of Family Guy where Brian goes to see Blair Witch with a blind guy -

"Nothing's happening...


Nothing's happening...


Something blew up...


Hawkeye died...


Nothing's happening...


Nothing's happening...


Oh, Wanda's crazy...


People are pissed."

You can't expect any writer to have a perfect record or even a good record. I just mean that some good writers turn out real stinkers sometimes.

He goes to the same comic shop I do, and I didn't even recognize him. He looked sooo different from his Wizard profile pic and even the one on his website. Apparantly he had car trouble, I helped him, and I was talking about how great Y: TLM is and he was just snickering the whole time. Then we just stood there talking for awhile, he even said his name was Brian and I didn't catch on. We run into each other quite often now as we live in the same area and like I said before, share the same comic store.

My super-memory is malfunctioning, and I'm sorry that I didn't mention Runaways, but that is very clear that is not what I meant. The point of my argument is that what he CREATES is often better than what he INHERITS as a writer. Runaways was an original comic with original ideas and characters that he created (with the help of an artist of course), and it is a resounding success, and for all the reasons that I gave, because he can do whatever the hell he wants with the book and it's reasonably isolated from the rest of the crappy Marvel Universe that's run by $$$ and not by <3<3<3.

Yes, it sucks that Bendis's dialogue is all the same, and that's something that annoys me too sometimes, but is it worse than this:

Hero: I've got to stop you for the sake of mankind and because of my willingness to be a hero! watch while I state the obvious and make rediculously long remarks that will cost me the milliseconds I need to take my enemy down!

Villain: HAHAHA! I will defeat you now! and watch while I implement my master plan into defeating you while I show you the very thing that can destroy you and not only that, i'll show you the very thing that can stop it and save all of mankind! and now that you're in my grasp, i'm going to start the Rediculously Slow Moving Dipping Process!!!!

Because as repetitive as Bendis' dialogue is, that's actually how people talk in real life. They're not quite sure of themselves, they make mistakes in conversations, assumptions are quashed, etc etc.

I didn't mean sales, I meant the actual quality of the book.

I actually still find Daredevil slightly interesting (well aside from this Decalogue thing going on now). The last storyline with the old crime boss coming back after DD was a good read. But Powers....well, I can't see it improving. There hasn't been much spark to it since the reboot.

New Avengers is just bad. I was planning on getting the next 1-2 issues to see if the Sentry actually shows up, but I don't think there is much of a point. This is like the Secret Defenders with a bigger budget. That example of Bendis dialogue above was dead on. I didn't mind it in powers (even DD). It kinda fit with the police interrogations, etc.... It does not work on avengers. You could move the word balloons around on the page and it wouldn't matter what was coming out who's mouth.

Captain America: It's just...we've got to...it's just something that we have to handle.

Spider-Man: We've got to handle?

Iron Man: We have a...

Captain America: Responsibility.

Iron Man: We have a responsibility...to handle things like this.

Spider-Man: Things like this?

Wolverine: Don't you think...I mean it's not just me, but don't you think...

Cage: I know.

Spider-Woman: I'm from SHIELD, we've never....we've never had anything to do with....

Captain America: We'll handle it.

Me: ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

Why is Bendis so popular if everybody seems to hate his work so much? Is he popular with Marvel because he can write so fast and gets a lot of books out per month (although, given the examples, I see why he writes fast )?

I don't read a single book he does, so I guess I'm out of the loop.

Yeah, Bendis does have trademark dialogue but I still like DD. I admit though that his other books (New Avengers, USM, and Powers) really suck.

Hype and Fanboys. It's as simple as that. Marvel is great at manufacturing hype and telling comic readers what they should like. In a way, they dictate what becomes popular. A solicit promises something great, collectors and readers alike buy it, it becomes a huge seller before anyone has even read the thing, then suddenly the next solicit can say something like "read the sold out sensation of the year" so the next time around ever more people buy it. And if it's selling, it must be good.

Yup you nailed it, Marvel definitely attempts to tell the fans what they should want instead of it naturally catching on (take X-23 as a prime example). Or there constant declerations of whatever upcoming writer they have as the next big thing, yet they haven't written a single good comic. Also, as dumb as it sounds, there are fans that think Bendis simply MUST be good b/c he writes so many comics, someone here even posted that & the sad power of Wizard. The largest comic book magazinei constantly tells us how great Bendis is so he must be great. I also think another reason he is so popular is the basic lowest common demonator factor, & I don't mean to offend anyone by this. The guy curses a lot, & loves dirty humor, so I think that just resonates with a lot of people. A lot of people think Powers is this brilliant edgy comic just b/c every other word is "fuck".

You brought up an interesting point about Wizard. I actually enjoy the magazine...it's fluffy garbage, but it's fluffy comic garbage. And it's good readin' while camping or on the can.

Anyway, I've found that it's impossible to believe just about anything in that magazine. I mean, they promote Marvel and DC like crazy. And guess who buys advertising. Marvel and DC. How can a small magazine like Wizard possily tell a "true" story that would rip on either of these publishers? If they wrote about how bad Bendis is lately, do you think Marvel would buy ads? Hell no.

I'd love to see a magazine come along that blends the more mainstream, 'fun' elements of Wizard with the journalism of The Comics Journal.

I agree. I've subscribed to Wizard since the first issue. I enjoy the DVD section, the upcoming books, and most of the articles. But, it would be a much much better magazine if it didn't gush over the big two (even three with Image) so much. It's sorta the People Magazine of the comic world.

I have been buying Wizard for years myself, but I was kinda ticked when it went up to $5.95 from $4.95 an issue. I don't know why they need to charge any extra. It seems to be getting thinner each issue. I hate to drop another monthly purchase from my comics dealer, but I think I am going to have to go the subscription route.

I didn't even notice it took such a big jump! It's only $2.33/issue to subscribe, I can't see many shops beating that.

Hmm... even re-reading the old Claremont X-men stories via Essential X-men, I'm still entertained, and I'm pretty sure not all of it is nostalgia. He has seemed to have lost it, and his dialogue now is really stilted at best(I really wanted to like Sovereign Seven,really). But I still love the Claremont/Byrne issues...

By the way, while I do hear great things about dcbservice, my prices were actually from my latest order on mailordercomics.com...

i have 3 orders out with DCBservice now. The site is so easy to use. I hope they stick around.

The new issue of Wizard came today and one thing that becomes increasingly clear with each issue is that they are all about some self-promotion. It seems like every feature or article ties in to a product or event that is sponsered, published, or owned by Wizard. Very annoying.

I tend to agree. And for me most of the events aren't even in my state.

But I will credit WIZARD for helping keep my foot in the Comic world. I didn't buy anything for long time but I would still buy Wizard every so often to keep up.

The problem with Wizard is definitely a conflict of editorial interest, I mean they have so many promotions and specials like the 1/2 issues and action figures that they can't risk printing articles panning bad comics. That's probably why they don't review comics anymore. I like to call it Wizard: The comic book movie hype magazine.