Some thoughts on Bendis from a self interview I did of myself on my blog (hey, I like THE COMMITMENTS, sue me):

MAOTE: Okay. Marvel comes to its senses, calls you up, and begs you to write any one title you want. What is it, why, and what are you going to do with it?

ME: AVENGERS. It badly needs me. And damage control.

MAOTE: Give us an example.

ME: Like this:
PAGE ONE
VISUAL: This is a splash page, with several Avengers – Hawkeye, the Scarlet Witch, the Vision, Captain America, Iron Man, Giant Man, the Wasp, all dressed more or less as if they’ve all just gotten up on Saturday morning, in the kitchen at Avengers Mansion. Hawkeye is at the table with a plate of food, a stack of comics on the table beside him. He’s reading a copy of AVENGERS; from the cover, we can see it’s the issue where he supposedly died. Everyone else is sitting or standing around, eating or getting themselves food or washing dishes or what have you.

HAWKEYE: Uh…
HAWKEYE: Say, guys. Did you know I was dead?

TITLE: Starting Over

PAGE TWO
PANEL ONE:
VISUAL: Iron Man, Scarlet Witch talk to Hawkeye.

IRON MAN: You just got to that issue? Oh, it gets better.
HAWKEYE: Better than me dead?
WITCH: Sure. Turns out I killed you. And eventually about a million mutants. Because I’m an unstable psychotic mass murderer.

PANEL TWO

VISUAL: Add in more Avengers, see word balloons.
VISION: But you’re a very beautiful unstable psychotic mass murderer, Wanda.
WANDA: Aw, Vision, that’s soooo sweet. Pass the jelly.
CAP: I don’t know. I like the part where Tony begs Wolverine to join the team.
HAWKEYE: Wolverine… joins the team…?
CAP: Yes. ::snicker:: But only after Tony begs him.
HAWKEYE: You never begged ME to join the team!
IRON MAN: Well… be fair, Clint… we were enemies…

PANEL THREE:
VISUAL: More yammer.

GIANT MAN: I don’t know, Tony. Wolverine could be a valuable addition to the team. I could, like, throw him at… I don’t know… the Mandarin. Or giant robots.
WASP: Oh, ew. Those sideburns. And he never showers. I’d rather have D-Man. Honestly.
CAP: Maybe Tony can beg D-Man to join the team for you, Jan…
GIANT MAN: ::musing:: Yeah… I could throw D-Man, too…

And then, the mansion gets attacked by, like, super gorillas.

MAOTE: Super gorillas?

ME: The Marvel Universe has a criminal shortage of super-gorillas.

MAOTE: I suppose they could be being led by the Man Ape…

ME: Exactly.

MAOTE: So… essentially, you’re going to take everything Bendis did on AVENGERS and write it all off as having occurred in… what… the authorized AVENGERS comic book that exists in the Marvel Universe?

ME: Sure.

MAOTE: Well… it’s… hmmm. You realize that every Brian Michael Bendis fan in the known universe is going to declare jihad on your ass, right?

ME: Yeah, well, Marvel’s not going to hire me to write AVENGERS any time soon, and if they did, I doubt they’d let me do that on the book. But you asked me what I’d write if I could, and that’s it.

MAOTE: You don’t think there’s any way to work within what Bendis has established? To, you know, de-emphasize what you feel isn’t exactly AVENGER-ly about what Bendis has done, and get the book back on track, without simply eliminating… what… two years of continuity… wholesale?

ME: Dude. Wolverine is in the Avengers.

MAOTE: It’s… I… well, you could throw him out…

ME: But then he would always have been in the Avengers, and next time, like, Kurt Busiek or Mark Waid or someone does this story where he brings in every Avenger who has ever lived…

MAOTE: Yeah… okay…

ME: I mean, we have to put up with D-Man. For God’s sake. D-Man is always going to be an Avenger. And U.S. Agent. And Sersi. And Dr. Druid. And friggin’ She-Hulk. Now you want me to clutter up the roster forever with goddam WOLVERINE? Oh, please.

MAOTE: Well… fine, I see your point. Still, you would get a great many death threats.

ME: Yeah. I’d like to bring back the letters page just so I could print and respond to all of them, too.

MAOTE: What would you say?

ME: I don’t know. “Say, Bendis fan, why don’t you see how rich and creamy a lather you can work up on my ass with your lips?” Something like that.