1.I chose to discuss "The New Avengers" # 11 not because it's a typical example of Brian Michael Bendis's work on the franchise, but because in many ways it's not. In truth, and for reasons which we've already begun to discuss, it's a profoundly untypical example of a BMB Avengers script. After all, a simple majority of the pages that Mr Bendis has written for the various Avengers titles are fundamentally straight-forward and paternalistic. Those elements of experimentation and decompression which some choose to see as markers of Mr Bendis's style as a whole are in truth less representative of his work in toto than we're often told.
Yet even in its most taxing, post-modern and unpaternalistic form, as in much of "Ronin Part 1", I'm convinced that Mr Bendis's work is deliberate, controlled and often largely successful in its designs. In particular, I'd argue that the characterisation in The New Avengers # 11 is every bit as distinct and consistent as the writer's most trenchant of critics would argue that it's not.
It's an opinion that can be discussed with reference to the 5 page, slow-moving scene between Matt Murdock and Steve Rogers in the comic, which at first sight seems to be an awful indulgence of talking heads, text-saturated panels and stiff storytelling, and which yet ultimately turns out to be something far more valuable indeed.
2.
If I've learned anything from the writing of these past few pieces on the Avengers, it's that the way in which a comic book succeeds or not in telling a story can rarely be understood with reference to one or two particular components isolated from the work as a whole. We discussed, for example, how Stan Lee's characterisations were charmingly convincing when presented within the context of his work with Jack Kirby, despite the fact that there were on occasions problems with the consistency of the voices that he gave some of his characters. But that those problems exist in "The Coming Of The Avengers" is, in many ways, irrelevant, because what matters is how the various constituent parts of the comic book work together to create an overall effect.
And if we can accept the validity of the storytelling principles which, working in combination, constitute "paternalism", then Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's "The Avengers" # 1 is surely a splendid piece of work, regardless of any flaws which might be revealed if the comic is held up to this analytic principle or that.
Yet, sometimes I wonder whether the very presence of the non-traditional and even post-modern aspects of Mr Bendis's work obscures for some the value of the mainstream comic books he writes. Even now, almost a decade on from his first appearance as a scripter of a conventional superhero title, the very presence of those divergences from the paternalism which has marked the superhero genre since 1938 can muddy the purposes to which his innovations are put. So many of us, and I include myself here, for I don't always find this business easy, are so habituated to paternalism that we register anything that doesn't sit with the familiar paradigm of traditional storytelling as unwelcome, as an indulgence, as laziness, as even constituting a mark of disdain towards the audience.
Now, I'm not arguing that the breaking with paternalism in many of today's superhero books is always done for good reasons and to good effect. But where Mr Bendis's work is concerned, it just can't be said that he's unable to write in the paternalistic style, or that his innovations with it are careless and artless. We know that's not true, for we've seen him deliver issue after issue of often traditionally-styled and usually bestselling superhero books over the past decade, and only a critic who insists that everything should be produced solely for their own taste could fail to respect that achievement. And so, when Mr Bendis does break substantially with the broad principles of storytelling exemplified by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's "The Coming Of The Avengers", it's worth asking why he should be doing so, rather than assumming that he's failing in some spurious responsibility to work within the tried-and-trusted narrative tradition established in the Marvel Comics of the early Sixties.
"Ronin Part 1" is certainly not a traditional, paternalistic comic-book. But everything's that on display in its pages is there for a reason, for a specific purpose. It's not a haphazard conceit, but a different and equally valid approach. And rather than judging it for what it's not, for the degree to which it doesn't do things as Stan'n'Jack did, it ought to be valued for what it does achieve, and for how very well it does so.
3.
Firstly, I thought we might consider the issue of characterisation in the duologue between Matt Murdock and Steve Rogers in "Ronin Part 1", and the value of the dialogue that Mr Bendis uses to ensure that each of the superheroic alter egos on display is quite distinct and individual in comparison to the other.
And, to start with, it ought to be said that there is indeed a great deal of dialogue in this scene, and that it's the sort of concentrated wordage which can lead to Mr Bendis being labelled as a "wanna-be screenwriter" who yet fails to ensure that his readers can clearly tell one individual on display from another. Mr Bendis, we're so often told, is in love with the lines he creates for his characters to such a degree that he forgets to edit his rambling in order to ensure that his readers always know who's talking, and why they're saying what they are.
If that were so, then it's hard to grasp how Mr Bendis should have done such a fine job of keeping the distinct characters of Murdock and Rogers so clear and recognisable across the often densely worded panels of this five page exchange. After all, it can't be argued that Captain America and Daredevil have such immediately distinct personalities and voices anyway when they're out of the character-sharpening focus of their costumes. and that's especially true as far as their dialogue is concerned. In truth, as with most of the superheroes who's identities were initially fixed in the early-to-mid Sixties during the Marvel Revolution, each superhero has a great deal in common with the other, and that's a process that's in part continued ever since. For while we might feel confident that we could identify a sentence that, for example, Matt Murdock wouldn't say, can we be so sure that we know what he would say in a particular situation. Do we know what verbs and nouns Steve Rogers is more likely to use than Matt Murdock? Have we a fixed and trasnparent grasp of the way Rogers and Murdock express themselves, or in truth, us everything really rather more conditional and subjective?
How to tell the two of them apart? They're both working class kids from New York brought up to show respect to others, they're both rather melancholic, perplexed and yet determined individuals, often to the point of obsession, and it can't be said that either of them has a well-developed and pronounced sense of humour when in the presence
of acquaintances. More challenging yet, neither carries any extremes of dialect or vocal idiosyncrasies of the kind which would permit one to be told immediately from the other in the way that, for example, Reed Richards and Ben Grimm can be, or Thor and the Hulk. They're not even truly differentiated by extremes of class, both having risen in the world considerably since their youth, and now that Rogers has apparently adapted so completely to the present day that the language of the Forties has fallen from him, why, what is unique about these people? In truth, any scene which places Matt Murdock and Steve Rogers together, out of costume and away from jeopardy, will by its very nature pose the writer considerable challenges where the business of making each character appear to be quite immediately different from the other while staying true to themselves is concerned.
Of course, the paternalistic tradition would suggest that much of this problem could be side-stepped by simply showing both characters in action while wearing their various costumes. A clear difference between the personalities of Captain America and Daredevil might in such a way be far easier to establish. They could discuss their concerns as they punched their way through a fight scene with, say, robots, or during a roof-top be-costumed stake-out. But, as we'll soon discuss, the structure of "Ronin Part 1" as a whole requires both characters not to be shown in costume, not to be shown in action, and not to be shown in anything other than a public, open environment. Furthermore, as we've discussed before, the scenes in the book which aren't concerned to show Ronin's adventures in Tokyo from the perspective of a deaf woman are designed to serve in counter-point to Maya's experience of the world, to be full of sound, crammed with words, conversations, human beings communicating with ease without having to focus one on the other, and so on. All of these formal requirements greatly limit what Mr Bendis and Mr Finch can show here, though I hope you'll agree that such writerly conceits are made entirely worthwhile when the achievement of the scenes of Ronin in Japan are considered.
Working within such constraints, Mr Bendis can't afford to let his characterisation slip to the degree that Mr Lee's did in "The Return Of The Avengers". He has to use dialogue alone to create distinctive, separate characters, and he has to do so in panels designed to be still and word-heavy. If he doesn't, Ronin's adventurous sojourn overseas loses much of its force, because it would no longer stand out in such total contrast to every other scene which frames it. And, just to add more complications to the problems Mr Bendis faced when writing this scene, he's denied by the conventions of modern-day comicbook scripting the opportunity to produce the most purple of dialogue so as to paint, for example, Steve Rogers as a cornball patriot and Matt Murdock as an entirely self-obsessed vigilante. Though the contemporary writer of superheroes still has the freedom to create character with relatively broad brush-strokes, creating believable personnas for Murdock and Rogers in this scene with the kind of pulp-era conversations which Stan Lee used so effectively in "The Coming Of The Avengers" is denied to Mr Bendis.
4.
Admirably, Mr Bendis's dialogue never shirks the fact that these characters are in many way rather similar where their speech and behaviour is concerned in a situation such as that shown. He accepts that both Murdock and Rogers are terribly serious and doesn't try to pry the two personalities apart by artificially making one behave in an untypical fashion. To be frank, these are dour men when they're engaged upon the business of their costumed profession, and suddenly deciding to create a convincingly jovial personality for Steve Rogers would never work.
Instead, there are three main ways in which Mr Bendis creates consistent difference between these two superheroes. The first is that he works from the fundamental premise that both Daredevil and Captain America are in essence moral actors. They both view themselves and their actions in terms of different but quite coherent sets of principles. (They might not be entirely rational principles, especially in Daredevil's case, but they are coherent.) Murdock is of course a somewhat lapsed Catholic, and Rogers is an old-school Republican democrat and patriot. When both men act and speak in this conversation, therefore, they do so with reference to beliefs beyond their own likes and dislikes, beliefs which in fact ground and inform their likes and dislikes. So, where Murdock is concerned, his fundamental drive is to avoid being morally culpable for harm done to others. As he tells Rogers;
"There is no way on God's green planet I will put you, Peter Parker, Luke Cage and the others in my line of fire. I will not do it. Because even if we saved the world from an alien invasion ... saved every life on the planet in a flurry of heroism not seen since the days of mythology ... and Jesus himself came back and joined the team .... the next day all of you would be sucked under a bus ... just for knowing me. I can't do it."
In essence, Murdock is as selfish as he can be, because he's claiming the right not just to control his own destiny, but those of others who would most probably quite happily choose the being-sucked-under-a-bus option if they could save the world in doing so. He's so obsessed with the weight of his own guilt that he fails to notice that by not joining the Avengers, he's committing a sin of omission, permitting evil to triumph because he failed to act. A better Catholic might understand that all choices are tainted, and that the lesser evil is sometimes the necessary one to opt for.
By comparison, Cap's essential democratic pragmatism is constantly counter-pointed with Murdock's individual-minded, Catholic obsession. It's notable that Rogers constantly articulates what the current state of play is and the immediate problems at hand, while Murdock races off down tenuous chains-of-consequence. Rogers wants to solve problems, not create ideal worlds, and so he's a creature of compromise where Murdock exists informed by religious ideals that only he can apparently negotiate, the ultimate protestant in a catholic's guise. When Daredevil is quick to declare what he can't do, Captain America responds camly and repeatedly with the question "What can you do?" And when Murdock explains that his conscience will not allow him to act as Daredevil, Rogers's humane response is not to challenge that, since freedom of conscience is an American right and virtue, but rather to suggest alternatives. Most tellingly, that alternative is explained in terms relevant to Rogers's own beliefs, referring as he does to "this flag and this country" just as Murdock is quick to reference, apparently without realising it, "God's green planet" and "Jesus".
Secondly, Captain America and Daredevil are shown to be separate individuals by their manner. Rogers expresses himself with the politeness and even deference owed to another member of the community who isn't an intimate acquaintance. In doing so, he refers to Daredevil as "sir" and "Mr Murdock". And when he does decide that its productive to express himself, he limits what he states to concrete summaries of events and definite proposals. He never attempts to impose his will on Murdock, either through his words or his body language. Murdock, on the other hand, is quick to try to dominate the conversation and always presumes that their discussion must be phrased and understood in terms of his own preoccupations. He doesn't wait for Rogers to explain why he's suggested a meeting, for example, but launches straight into "If this is about me joining the Avengers again .. my answer remains the same ... ". Rogers's manner assumes that there is a common solution which both can not only subscribe to, but which both will want to reach. Murdock has already assumed the worst, defined how he's going to cut it off at the neck, and is already defensive about what it is he assumes the conversation will be about. He bristles with a controlled but corrosive despair, forever looking forward to situations which he cannot control but which are his fault, while Roger's calmness comes from a level-headed, solutions-focused approach to life. He knows what his tools might be, he has a sense of what his goals are, and all he's concerned to do is to negotiate the most sensible path between the first and the latter.
Finally, the two are differentiated by body language in addition to the different facial features and dress that's shown by Mr Finch, though this isn't the body language of the paternalistic school. As we've mentioned, and as we'll return to, this scene has to be one that's delivered in a highly restrained manner, and yet, within that requirement, it's clear that it's Daredevil who is the over-wrought party, the regular invader of Captain America's personal space, the emotionally-driven individual who believes himself to be responding rationally while doing something else at least in part. And so, for example, Rogers never raises his hand to or towards Murdock, while Murdock actually begins their talk by extending his right hand as if to push the good Captain away, and later points at Rogers while discussing the harm representatives of the US Government have done to him. Later, Murdock clasps his hands to emphasise his frustration with the patient persistence of Rogers, and then raises them to the heavens to express the weight of the burden he feels he's carrying. Captain America, only the other hand, keeps his frame still, his arms by his side, and the closest he gets to any show of emotion is to frown at certain points in their discussion.
This is not a paternalistic approach to such a scene, but that doesn't mean that this sequence is acted out by two indistinguishable characters spouting a great deal of waffling wordage. Rather, in its own deliberately restrained fashion, this is a scene which is very precisely framed and presented to illuminate the differences between two physically and linguistically similar individuals. Of course, the reader knows that there's a world of difference between Mr Murdock and Mr Rogers. But to show that fact so carefully and succesfully under the self-designed conditions of restraint which Mr Bendis has created for himself is no mean feat at all.
5.
A great deal of the reason why the conversation between Rogers and Murdock takes the form it does depends upon the role that the scene plays in "The New Avengers" # 11 as a whole. We have, of course, started to dicsuss this. And by presenting such a quiet and still sequence, Mr Bendis and Mr Finch are asking their readers to trust them that such a wordy, subtle scene exists for a purpose, or rather a series of purposes, beyond what can be at first grasped from the pages at hand. This is, of course, an entirely different method of storytelling to the paternalistic approach, which doesn't trust its audience to delay its gratification for whatever reason or to the slightest degree. But then, we've already discussed how "Ronin Part 1" is a comic book designed to be read at least once, firstly for the narrative being unravelled, and then, secondly, with that knowledge of the text illuminating the deaf Ronin's experience of the Marvel Universe. This is, as is of course obvious, a very different but equally effective form of storytelling to that of Stan and Jack. Not worse, not better, but different and effective.
6.
There are a host of reasons why the scene between Murdock and Rogers is staged in the fashion it is. Firstly, we know, not least from Mr Bendis himself, that any books he writes which contain largely silent scenes are also likely to be packed with densely worded sections, in order to ensure that readers aren't faced with read-in-a-minute comic books. Secondly, where this particular chapter is concerned, we can see that, just as Stan Lee used his dialogue to shape the pace at which his readers enjoyed his tales as well as to keep them engaged, BMB uses his crowded word balloons to a particular effect. In "Ronin Part 1", there's a deliberate and persistent counter-point created between the almost-entirely text-free scenes of Maya in costume and the text-heavy scenes elsewhere. Thirdly, there's a great deal of expositionary dialogue to be delivered in this issue, and the structural requirements of the tale allow Mr Bendis to take this opportunity to fill the scenes between Cap and both Matt and Maya with a great deal of background information as well as character detail. (In essence, that's an advantage that the other formal requirements upon the style he adopts provide him with.)
And if anyone should doubt that this particular comic was constructed in such a deliberate fashion, I'd suggest they look at the other contrasts and counter-points between scenes across these 22 pages. One or even two of these might be the accidental product of two creators working together on a monthly comic book, but all of them? Consider, for example, how the scenes set in New York all occur in broad daylight, all happen in public spaces, all show costumed superheroes out of their long-johns and behaving as responsible citizens, and all play out in environments where ordinary man and woman are free and safe to go about their everyday tasks. The scenes in Tokyo, by contrast, all occur at night, and the environments where Ronin is shown acting as a superheroine are entirely free of bystanders, who would be neither safe nor welcome on the top of trains, or while climbing walls, or during the infiltration of the hideaways of secret criminal organisations. And where Steve and Matt and Maya are all in civvies in NYC, everyone we know in Tokyo, including "Madame Hydra" and the Silver Samurai, are in costumes and engaged upon business which typical human beings simply can't involve themselves in.
In "Ronin Part 1", the danger of the undercover assignment that Ronin undertakes in Japan is constantly accentuated by the comparison with the lack of threat in the scenes set in New York City. Even the fact that Central Park is a bright public space marked by great green swathes of wild greenery, while the dark-skied rooftop temple gardens in Tokyo where Ronin spies on Kenuichio Harada are private and artificial and constrained, is evidence of forethought, of careful construction, showing Maya's existence in America to be a far less dangerous and threatening one than that of her adventuring in Japan. One world is the world of citizens, and openness, and negotiations held in public. The other is one of illegal organisations and super-criminals, of private deals and terrible secrets, and through moving the reader backwards and forwards from the first to the second, Maya is shown to be both a remarkable character and an impressive and yet vulnerably isolated protagonist.
Of course, it's not a contrast between Japan and America that's being made here, but one which uses carefully chosen and abstracted elements of the urban traditions of each to highlight a more general difference between protagonist and antagonist, hero and villain, predator and prey.
And so, no, I simply can't believe that that much evidence of forethought, design and careful execution is all a matter of chance. Mr Bendis is surely rather bringing a different set of skills to that of the paternalistic pallet here, consciously building on and even at times replacing traditional storytelling approaches to produce particular and intended effects. The results may not always be blindingly obvious at first glance, or even successful for 100% of the time. But "Ronin Part 1" has to be regarded as something more than identikit decompression, as a few windy, indistinct speeches and a few lazy fight scenes thrown together in a few hours to please a supposedly stupid, superhero-obsessed redearship.
I don't believe that of the writer, and I don't believe that of the audience either.
And though Mr Bendis's approach may not always be to my taste, just as Stan Lee's work isn't, it's undoubtedly a skillful and effective one, and it produces results which more traditional methods often can't.
And at times, such as in "Ronin Part 1", those results can be thoroughly impressive, and even breathtaking.
I would've thought we'd all - all - have been celebrating such craftsmanship, such daring, whether we enjoyed the process and its results wholeheartedly or not.
My best splendid best wishes to all, and my wishes for a general and life-enhancing "Stick together!" too. And my thanks to the minor chapter of the massed ranks of the BMB-haters for giving up and not sending any deletable comments over the past few days. As Timmy Thomas once told us, and then told us again, why can't we live together?.
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