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So is it accurate to say this comic is about a teenager for whom almost everyone he has ever known as well as billions of other people from the world he knew are dead and gone, and yet the comic is not at all about this truly extraordinary circumstance? Does he remember? Is he cripplingly traumatized? Or is he “over it”?

I know this isn’t a stumbling block for other readers, but I don’t think I could enjoy a book with this premise, even if I were in for a Bendis title.

No it’s a comic about a teenager that, thank to a good action, has seen himself and all the people he cared about saved and brought to this new world.

I didn’t have any hang ups about it. Nor did I find Miles (or Ganke) to be any different. I’m not sure how you can say his Dad is significantly changed when he had 4 panels of short dialogue. Just because his wife is no longer dead? Sounds like you’re rooting for victimization or believe that depth requires tragedy.

As far as the idea that he’s traumatized by circumstance, I think he’s had enough of that in his short history – dead Mom, dead then alive Peter, dead bad Uncle. He actually endured the destruction of his world in Secret Wars. To that end, Molecule Man ensured a proverbial happy ending for him.

Miles doesn’t have to mirror Peter’s tragedies to be Spider-Man. To wipe the slate clean and have him and his core family intact is refreshing. Maybe being a teen hero today will be enough of a challenge.

I passed on this. Miles Morales would be more intriguing to me if Marvel had created a new and different alter ego for him but a second a Spider-Man in the Marvel Universe continues to follow the “de-uniquing” of characters. If it works for other readers, that’s great but it’s not for me.

“Captain Marvel leading the charge to profile future crimes and attacks before they occur, and Iron Man adopting the position that the punishment cannot come before the crime.”

So it will have all the subtlety of the original series.

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I need resolution on Beast and want to see how what Bendis did with him weaves into Hickman ‘ s version in Avengers.

Bendis is probably just cutting back on his workload. I don’t know how much work he has to do for his Powers TV show, but people tend to forget he’s also got a few indie books out in addition to all the titles he writes for Marvel.

Arrggggh. That annoys me. Either put out #1 issues every two years, or use the real numbering, i.e. issue #600 but don’t do both!

1992 is an eternity in Internet time. Where’d the Bendis boards start? Compuserve? A dial-up BBS?

(I was a Prodigy guy. And 9 years old.)

1998. Not 1992.

@Jon Callan:

Bendis’ farewell note says “!992-2014.”

Wow, another major comics-board gone.

Maybe at base they’re just not as profitable as they once were.

@Jon: Yeah, 1998 sounds a lot more plausible. But it seems like a pretty unlikely typo, given how far apart the “2” and the “8” keys are. Could have just been a brain fart?

I don’t remember the year, but the Bendis board got its start at the World Famous Comics forums.

@Thad, it is not incorrect. Bendis had a post a couple years ago celebrating the board being around for 20 years. I was only there for the last 7, but it was definitely not a brain fart from him.

Has someone also put comicon.com out of its misery?

A quick search of groups.google.com shows a usenet post wherein Bendis announced that the Jinxworld forum was open on 5/11/99.

I’m unsure where the 1992 date comes from, unless he had something on Compuserve or AOL before Jinxworld (which evolved into the Bendis Board) opened and he’s counting from there.

There certainly wasn’t a Bendis-run web site in 1992; the WWW itself didn’t exist until 1991, and I set up one of the early comics-related web sites in 1995 (<a href="http://rzero.com/books/"doing reviews). I do remember Bendis being on Usenet (rec.arts.comics.*) back in those days, and maybe he had a forum section on CompuServe or some BBS, so he might be using that as the “founding” date. But forums of any kind on (let alone creator/fan discussion) were hard to find on the Web in 1992.

Forums come and forums go. But the communities that form around them can live on. Warren Ellis does a slash-and-burn with his online thingies from time to time, and when he did that with The Engine several years ago, a bunch of the creator folks there picked up and set up a new forum, eventually ending up at SequentialWorkshop.com which is going to this day.

Of course there was a 1992 Bendis board. Where else could somebody go to talk about all of the work he had done up until that point, like the two issues of “Quiver”, or that “Parts of a Hole” one-off? (And that’s it.)

Sure, the board was a bit lean at first, like in 1992, when he didn’t actually publish anything, at all. But it was there!

Back in the day, Brian was always very, very accessible and fun to talk to at cons. I can’t blame him for retiring; he put his time in, now he’s focusing on his work.

Agreed Chris Hero, he was a fixture at the big Chicago shows for years and years. I remember people in line walking up with literally dozens of comics for him to sign. He would plop down the big stack of comics, smile and start shooting off his autograph over and over and over. He didn’t complain or whine or declare no more of that. I didn’t have any comics for him to sign but we chatted about POWERS and he signed my sketchbook (even drew his little bald-headed self portrait).

He was always one of those guests that looked as happy to be there as the attendees. The epitome of class.

Bendis has earned the life he has where he can comfortably skip years of cons in order to get work done and spend time with his family, but a majority of creators MUST go to cons in order to push their books and make valuable personal connections that simply can’t be fostered online.

He has a point in that creators shouldn’t turn con season into slack season, but that’s an issue of time management and not a symptom of attending cons. If going to 10 cons a year puts you behind schedule, then cut back.

yeah i kinda wonder with all the time and travel costs involved w/ cons if creators are better off investing that effort in a targeted social media campaign or investing in their own websites as a place to convert sales.

Those things reach a global audience whereas a con is just a small sampling. I dunno…face to face is always good, but you have to wonder about the costs and time.

Met him years ago at a WWChicago, and not only did he sign several books, he was sitting with Mark Millar, and he flipped through my issue of Ultimate TeamUp that Jim Magfood drew with the Fantastic Four. (someone was doing sketches or such, so the line moved really slow). Bendis was telling Mark who various background characters were (most were based on Marvel employees, administrative and clerical). As he was doing this, I asked him to write those names in the book! So my book has all these cool footnotes.

By I agree, he has put in the time, he can pick and choose where and when he does appearances.

Good for him and good for fans. His work has gotten better over the years, and I’m confident that part of it is due to his commitment to getting work out there, rather than signing comic after comic for mouthbreathers that lug their longboxes behind them. Compare him to guys like J. Scott Campbell and Adam Hughes, who hit up con after con, but have no body of work to speak of.

I’m sure personal appearances are still important, but given his reputation and Marvel’s PR machine, I certainly can see why a convention appearance isn’t a priority for someone working at his level. My work is much more under-the-radar so such appearances are important, but if I didn’t have to go, I wouldn’t either, at least not every year. It’s a lot of work!

I think another big peice of it is that for people on the rise of their career, they NEED to get out to promote their work, but once you have a certain level of cache, you don’t need to do conventions. Will a Convention appearance mean another sale for Alan Moore, Geoff Johns or even Bendis?

Also, for artists, there are more opportunities for them to make money at a convention. With sketches, original art sales and commissions, a convention is not an insignificant portion of their income. Yes, Adam Hughes make make a lot of con appearances, but if he makes more money doing sketches and gathering commissions on a weekend at a con than penciling a book over a month, do you blame him for going where the money is? I sure don’t. It’s a business, especially if you are freelance.

If he can make more money doing cons then he can drawing a comic, I certainly understand his decision. But calling yourself a comic artist when you draw a cover a month and never do interiors certainly sticks in my craw.

With the tv viewers love of procedural shows and Powers being a mix of procedural and superheros this has a chance to be a great show with a great following. And thankfully it, if picked up, will be on FX, who let their shows get a little heavy.

Plus, if they cast Katee Sackhoff as Deena, which is rumored…that would be awesome.

FX is the perfect network for this. So far, so good…

Lance Roger Axt
The AudioComics Company