This is the opening panel from Brian Michael Bendis's Illuminati miniseries. Click it for a larger image.
Notice anything particularly lazy about it?
How about now?
If you haven't gotten it yet, look at your keyboard and this next clue.
To come up with the name of a Skrull dialect, Bendis moved his left hand one key right of "home" and drummed his fingers!
I'm willing to accept that maybe he put this in as a placeholder until someone could research and see if there was some Skrull dialect that had been established in the past, but no one ever bothered to look it up or after someone did look it up, no one bothered to plug it in.
I'm also willing to believe maybe Bendis did his research and Sfdsdgf really is a Skrull dialect first mentioned twenty years ago, but if that's the case, it only means some other writer was lazy about creating his alien language.
Apparently the latest issue of New Avengers sucks. I also have it on good authority that the sun will rise tomorrow over the eastern horizon and that water is wet. Not surprisingly, the bloggosphere has taken to bitching and moaning. Why, just look at what my colleagues at 2 Guys Buying Comics--two guys whose intelligence I reportedly respect--have to say:
"When will the public stop putting their noses (sic) up BMB's arse and figure out that this is just not a good book[?]"
I haven't heard anyone say this is a good book since the second issue. Not one single person. More on this in a moment.
Further down, Chris can't even work up the enthusiasm to complain. He just asks:
"Are we done yet?"
The better question might be when will people stop buying this book and complaining about how bad it is? Unless Brian Michael Bendis has your daughter tied up in a warehouse somewhere and has vowed to start cutting off fingers and mailing them to you every month you don't buy New Avengers, you are "the public" that is "putting [its nose] up BMB's arse" by spending $3 for a literary kick in the balls on a monthly basis.
I once asked my father, "Why did Don Baylor get hit by so many pitches?" I thought maybe he could impart some observatory wisdom about the slugger's stance that led him to become baseball's modern leader in getting hit by pitches (he's since been surpassed by Craig Biggio).
"Because he liked it," came my father's deadpan reply.
"What?" I gasped. "You think he liked it? How could anyone like getting hit by pitches?"
"If you do anything that many times," he nodded, "you must like it."
On that note, I say anyone who insists on calling New Avengers "Not Avengers," complains about the book every month on his blog, and points an accusing finger at "the public" for the horrible quality of the comic, yet has bought nineteen issues of the garbage in question must be reading crap because he likes crap and has no one to complain to but himself.
If you went to a restaurant for lunch and found a dead roach in the spot where your hamburger was supposed to be, complained, and were told "No, that is the burger!", would you go back the next day?
Maybe you want to give the restaurant the benfit of the doubt because you've had good food there in the past or because you've enjoyed eating other locations of the same franchise. But what if the next day you had the same situation occur? After a week, say they replaced the roachburger's bun with a pile of dog crap. How long would you keep going? Somehow, I doubt after nineteen visits you would still be eating there.
Randy, Chris, bloggers everywhere, either accept that you love being shit on every month or stop paying for it to happen, but shut up about it either way.
Edited to add: Being the lazy bastard I am, I posted this same thing at 2 Guys Buying Comics. Here's the link to go read the comments readers are making there.
About halfway through Daredevil #79, something hit me like a Circle K 40-ounce mug full of ice water dumped over the top of the curtain during a hot shower. I had to stop, go back a few pages, and reread to make sure I hadn't deceived myself, but sure enough there it was.
A Bendis sighting. Issue 80 confirmed it.
Somehow, Brian Michael Bendis, the man who'd brought us some of Daredevil's greatest stories, the gritty and dark Alias, the complete reimagining of an icon in Ultimate Spider-Man, and the groundbreaking Powers, had overpowered the hack who's been soiling his good name by plastering it on every mediocre book churned out by the Marvel machine.
It got we wondering when the imposter had first began the ruination of a good man's reputation. What was the point where it all went south for Bendis? The answer was actually much easier than I'd guessed.
The fucking monkey issue of Powers.
And for those of you who didn't read it, I didn't say "fucking monkey issue" because I had a negative opinion of the monkeys--though I do--but rather because the entire issue is about apes having animalistic sex with each other.
The only possible explanation was that Bendis had been knocked over the head and tied him up in his own basement, kept only conscious enough to endorse the checks sent to him by Marvel. Fortunately, he'd already submitted several issues worth of Daredevil and Ultimate Spidey scripts to artists, allowing those books to remain high quality for months following the assault, preventing many readers from even noticing the change. Before long, though, the Doppel-Bendis to take the reins.
Soon, we had Jean Grey switching Wolverine and Spidey's brains into the others' bodies. Daredevil fought a infant-sized demon. Ultimate Spider-Man substituted new Ultimized characters for plot development. Powers moved to Marvel and Alias became the yawn-inducing Pulse. A secret war was waged over the course of nearly two years. Hawkeye got killed, Scarlet Witch gained the power to alter the entire universe, and the Avengers broke up. When they got back together, Luke Cage, Spider-Woman, Sentry, and Echo/Ronin stole the spotlight. All the world was turned on its ear as mutants became the ruling majority, and all the heroes could do about it was talk and talk and talk some more.
Oops, sorry about that. My... uh... finger slipped on the mouse.
As I was saying, as difficult as this time has been, there's light at the end of the tunnel. I have seen the coming of the Bendis and He shall rise up, rub salve on our wounds, comfort us in times of unrest, maketh us to lie down in green pastures, and smite our enemies!
Okay, I admit it wasn't a mistake that time. Look, all this monkey humpin' is going somewhere. Somewhere big. Somewhere grand. To a height no blog has ever reached before. You just have to trust me. And keep reading everything I write. If I charge you money to read what I write, you should pay whatever it costs to keep reading because, seriously, dude, if you don't everyone else is going to be talking about it and I'm going to win awards for it and you're going to be the only schmuck who didn't read it.
So you'll keep reading? Good because...
... now that I know this is all it's going to take to keep you enthralled, I don't have to put forth any more effort than this.
What simian ugly-bumping taught Bendis...'s evil twin was people would put up with garbage as long as his name was attached. Why take the time to craft a good four issue arc about Peter Parker when you can stretch it to nine issues by adding Ultimate Dreadknight, Ultimate Man-Thing (not to be confused with Giant-Sized Man-Thing), and Ultimate Karkas? Why write an Avengers book about the Avengers when you can fiddle around with fringe characters of the Marvel Universe and have Cap or Iron Man make an occassional cameo? Why continue expanding the character Jessica Jones, one of the most interesting original characters to hit Marvel in years, when you can just make her pregnant and whiny? Why concentrate on turning out four high quality books a month when you can crap out fifteen-plus, crossover all your characters from one to another, and plot and write every major event for the company?
More than anything, if readers keep buying every one of those abominations as they get pooped out, what reason is there to respect the readers?
The answer is simple.
See you next time, idiots! suckers! morons! True Believers!