Bendis Leaving Marvel to go to DC

The news of Brian Michael Bendis leaving Marvel to go to DC is way too big for me NOT to mention. This is big because for the last seventeen years, Bendis has been the pre-eminent writer at Marvel. Whether you know this or not, I would argue that he was responsible for the resurgence of the Avengers.

Before Bendis, I NEVER touched the avengers. I didn't read their books at all. I deemed them too corny. Lest we forget, around this time, Iron Man was a C level character at best in my opinion. It wasn't until Robert Downey Jr. came along that he became A-list. Bendis broke down the Avengers and built up a new team that felt like more of a collection of his favorite characters than traditional Avengers. You had Captain America and Iron Man, but then you got Spider-Man, Wolverine, Spider-Woman and Luke Cage. Then a mystery character like Ronin and Sentry. Suddenly, these Avengers were cool and I began reading them.

On the other side of this, Bendis had been working on Ultimate Spider-Man and turned that into a hit. Then he also had a great run on Daredevil (which I still need to read).

He created characters like Jessica Jones (yes, that Jessica Jones!), Miles Morales and Riri Williams. His influence in the past few years of Marvel has been vast.

He even brought over his book, "Powers" from Image to Marvel's Icon imprint. That was another series that turned me on to him. In that book, he was free to use all the profanity he would ever want. Besides that, it started off as a really good crime book. Shame it ended up as a terrible tv show.

I promise, I won't go through the wikipedia list of all his works. What I wanted to show is that I was a fan of his work at Marvel. I didn't enjoy everything, but I knew to expect at least great dialogue from Bendis. It's a trademark of his that I always loved. I personally like issues of comics where it's just people talking. To see him leave for greener pastures will invigorate him. I'm glad he gets the opportunity to work at DC on something new. Maybe that will make me become more interested in their books depending on his project.

The two questions that leave me with are: Why now? And what is going on over at Marvel?