In case you haven't been keeping up, Christopher Bird's been schooling us all about Dr. Doom dialog.
The thing is, yes, it's hilarious that Doom would be obsessed with "My Little Pony" (cf. Mordru's vaudeville career). But this is actually good Doctor Doom dialog; you can tell that this is what Doom would sound like if Doom were deeply perturbed over the loss of his Burger King commemorative tumblers.
In reading about how television writing rooms work on blogs like Ken Levine's and Lee Goldberg's and John Rogers', and reading non-television work by TV writers, I have learned that there is an identifiable skill here, the ability to immediately recognize and synthesize a consistent character voice that someone else created. It's an indispensable skill for TV writers.
And, obviously, for any writer working in a shared universe.
Like most superhero comics.
It's a skill that Brian Michael Bendis appears to lack.
Posted by Greg at April 29, 2008 3:15 PM
I find it ironic that Bendis screwed up Doom's dialogue so badly, because frankly, I think his dialogue writing is usually one of his greatest strengths. Read the first couple volumes of "Ultimate Spider-Man", for example; he does more than make these characters sound right, he makes them sound human. Doom's dialogue is so off the mark that I'm baffled as to how it could come from the same writer...
Wow. Thank you for the link. That post is the sort of thing that gets Christopher Bird many thousands of years off his time in Purgatory. :)
How about you get over it already. So Bendis had one bad panel, wow, let burn him at the stake!
This silly Bendis-hating-fest has gone on for over a month now, get a grip already.
#3: I've been hating on BMB a hell of a lot longer than a month, and for a hell of a lot more than one panel.
But thank you for commenting. It's good to see a new generation of readers enjoying comics, and I hope your English Composition final goes well this month. Study hard!
Personally, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Bendis has someone ghosting for him.
Chrs Brd s gnf. I invented the Mordru Vaudeville thing whole cloth. *And* he left out how Mordru segued into magic after Moe cut him from the Stooges and Mordru ended up as a gaff in Milton Fine's head act.
You will note that Mike Grabois put together the Mordru Vaudeville thing. Mike talks more about it here. You are prominently credited in both of Mike's posts.
Ooooh, a diss on my grammar. I am mortally wounded. Well, English happens to be my third language, so I hope you had a good time wanking off to your own sense of superiority.
Meanwhile, Bendis is still writing the most important titles of Marvel, while you are sitting in front of your computer mumbling into your beer. So I guess it all evens out in the end.
Magnus: Thank you for your kind comment regarding my Brian Michael Bendis post. As you can imagine, I've received so many positive responses that I cannot possibly respond to them all personally. But, once again, thank you for your kind remarks.
Magnus, you're certainly entitled to your opinion, but IMHO Bendis has had far more than "one bad panel." He's written (again, IMHO) the worst group of Avengers I've seen in a long time (he seems much more comfortable with street-level characters, so writing "Earth's Mightiest Heroes" seems something of a disconnect), and characterized Doom so poorly in that one panel that it DESERVED ridicule.
Yes, Bendis IS writing some of the most important books Marvel has. Isn't it funny that the audience, even for the "successes" of the crossovers, is a pale shadow of what the comics market was before the Dark Age of the 90's? I don't blame him for the shrinking market, but he's clearly not bringing in substantial new blood, either.
I'm happy, in a sense, that you are enjoying the books, but a LOT of people have had issues with Bendis' style for a long time, pretending it's only been a about a month is disengenuous at best and outright lying at worst. Like him all you like, but don't misrepresent those who do not like him.
Take it and run.