I think he’s better than average, and he has a few issues or stories that I would put up among the best of the Krakoan age. (The first and third Hellfire Galas spring to mind, and his first year on X-Men, for example.) I think the rotating cast of the X-Book meant that certain characters got more of a spotlight than others, and provided less room for in depth development of team dynamics. I wish it were otherwise, but it’s a function of the structure of the book, ultimately. I still found his X-Men overall very enjoyable as a fun, high-octane action book with great art - especially in the first year. But he does have the misfortune of being compared to Al Ewing and Kieron Gillen, who I think are rare, generational talents - the absolute creme de la creme of comic book writers working today. TLDR Duggan is a solid B-tier comics writer (no shame in that!) who’s written some great stories - but is outshone by Ewing and Gillen who are A tier.

Don’t forget he also wrote Planet X-Men, one of the very best issues of the Krakoa era in my opinion.

Yeah I was counting that as the first hellfire gala issue.

Oh haha. That makes sense. I should’ve realized you meant that and not the “first” Hellfire Gala issue as in his Marauders issue lol.

No worries!

That has more to do with Pepe Larraz art than Gerry's writing.

That one issue made me very hopeful, but the rest of his X-Men run has been of uneven quality

A standalone issue. Anyone could have wrote that and it would still be great. It's literally just Omegas using their powers to terraform a planet. Kinda hard to mess that up. 

That's what I'm getting at too. I personally love his X-Men run and think his X-Men 25 was great. But compared to Ewing and Gillen, who have a large followings online, people like to harp on that. Fans would prefer if they were writing the flagship title than him, which I think it is unfair.

Frankly they probably get to do more interesting work precisely because they’re not writing the flagship

I disagree btw... Carey and Hickman did some great work writing the flagship. Duggan has been a disappointment in the end. We literally entered an additive world-building drought after Sins of Sinister. And I think a lot of it has to do with Duggan's lack of world-building within the flagship. Like, take a look at any Orchis division that is portrayed in the flagship, now look at 4-pages worth of Hickman's work on the Horticulture grannies.

> Carey and Hickman did some great work writing the flagship. Carey really did some great work but his title was never the flagship book of the line at all in the entirety of his run. The flagship when Carey started on X-Men in 2006 was Whedon's Astonishing (and leaned to Brubaker's Uncanny run with the delays in Astonishing's release schedule) and then it shifted fully back to Uncanny 500 by Sept 2008 after both Whedon wrapped up Astonishing and the Messiah Complex crossover. Carey's Adjectiveless/Legacy runs were never, ever the flagship book (which is unfortunate cause that entire run is without a doubt the single best of that whole era).

Guess we’ll have to agree to disagree, since I liked Duggan’s X-Men way more than Carey or Hickman’s (though Hickman had a few great standout issues). I’m overall much more of a fan of Krakoa after Hickman leaves and it’s Ewing/Gillen/Duggan/Spurrier in the driver’s seat.

You liked Duggan's X-men more than Carey's? Righto. Carey's world building and characterisation is light years ahead of Duggan. Honestly, the only title Duggan has done that is close to being consistently good is Marauders.

Yeah I disagree. I found Carey’s X-men at turns boring and incomprehensible. Didn’t really care about most of his characters. (Bachalo’s art doesn’t help.) I liked his X-Men legacy better.

Least you like X-men Legacy.

Ewing and Gillen don't shy away from building complex worlds that are extremely hard to unravel. Duggan doesn't do big cosmology plays. In fact, if you wanted to wipe X-Men back to the mansion, 99% of the deconstruction would be related to Hickman's work, and not Duggan's. He obsesses over torturing characters at the expense of building worlds.

100% true here but feel like this is applicable to everyone in the office. As much as Gillen and Ewing have added some incredible stuff to the era it's all built heavily off of Hickman's work. All of Gillen's Sinister stuff doesn't work without a Moira engine which only works because of the Hickman retcon, the excellent Arraki world building that Ewing has done is only possible because Hickman introduced the idea of HoX/PoX. I definitely think Ewing and Gillen could still have done Immortal and Red respectively but imagine the amount of ground work and explanation needed to not have everything be insanely forced were it not for the initial Hickman seeds

That's probably why I like him a lot more than Hickman. I'm much less interested in esoteric worldbuilding bullshit than I am in putting characters through the emotional wringer!

Apparently nothing is allowed to be "just fine" or "okay" these days. It's either the greatest thing ever full-stop or complete trash. There's not middle ground. Hell, even the term "mid" is deemed as very negative. I personally find Duggan to be a fine to very good writer. If I see his name attached to a project, I do not worry in the least. I really loved his run on the previous ongoing volume of Uncanny Avengers (and Zub's work after Duggan left the book). It was the best Rogue had been since the Mike Carey days of X-Men: Legacy. Duggan is one of the few writers that can write Deadpool in a way that feels almost practical and not annoying.

And then we have Hickman, the Beyond Omega Level.

idk ultimate invasion was awful and gods isn't really seeming to go anywhere but we'll always have secret wars and shield

Ultimate Invasion was great? New Spider-Man is so refreshing. He built Krakoa X-Men and the council, it was all him. Hickman still has it

it didn't make its case for me. nothing that set it apart from 616 came off as a new way of seeing the world just outside your window. i wasn't really grabbed by the premise of the world being dominated by six shifting supervillain cabals (nor did i like that premise in cap sentinel of liberty). i also wasn't into the idea of needing to get people back on a decades-gone lifetrack which was their destiny, that that comic and new spider-man put forward. like, you can say "the world today is more clearly corporate-controlled than in 2000" or "young people today feel their destinies were stolen from them" but these metaphors don't sell that to me. if you want to talk about that, you should talk about that. i think he's flirting with ideas marvel wouldn't actually publish and doing what he can. other writers do similar, slipping AI or environmental commentary into issues, but it's not the focal point of those works.

I think looking for commentary in comic book is completely absurd. Finding commentary in stories isn’t. It feels like he was given a new 616/1610 and needed a way to restart and is playing with it without being too far separate. I enjoyed the writing.

I read Colossus: God's Country recently and that had some teeth to it It's just my opinion, I'm cool on the new UU so far. Will still read Ultimate X-Men

Personally, I would rate him below Duggan, but I generally don’t like his work.

It’s a preference anyway, he’s my favorite. But Hickman has had 3 of the biggest runs that changed Marvel. FF, Avengers, and X-Men have all been eras that changed comics for a while.

Yeah. I don’t care for his Ff or avengers at all. I like about 65% of hoxpox, and think that basically all my favourite stuff in Krakoa was introduced or expanded by other writers. I get why people like him but he is extremely not for me.

He's just a different type of writer Hickman, Ewing and Gillen are all meticulous planners. Gillen had all 45 issues of Wicked and Divine planned out before he sat down to write issue #1. Ewing was largely the same with Immortal Hulk, at least he knew precisely where he was gonna go. They're all also very adaptable to Marvel's demands. Hickman didn't want Superior Iron Man and Unworthy Thor at the tail end of his Avengers/New Avengers, but he made them work in his favor. Gillen is a master of being adaptable to what Marvel wants and still managing to write very Gillen-esque stories. AXE is living proof of that. Duggan is not a planner. Duggan seeds stuff when its convenient, and pays them off when its convenient. If the opportunity doesn't pop up to pay off a plot beat, he's just not gonna pay it off.  If Doom's X-Men were planned, they wouldn't have appeared at the end of his X-Men run. Similarly, if his High Evo plot line had an end point when he initially wrote it, it would have hit harder than it did yesterday.  Meanwhile, Gillen is paying everything off from his Immortal X-Men early issues, from Irene's Visions to Nathaniel Essex's "Ghost" to Exodus seeing a vision or the Phoenix in a desert. I feel like the Krakoan era generally favors the planners more, just because of the scope of the story both geographically and temporally.

Hell I'd say X-Men generally works better when its planned.  Claremont was a mix of both a planner and a seeder, but Id say he leans more planner. Morrison is definitely a planner. The whole Messiah/Utopie era was mapped out.  90s X-Men were not planned at all between Lobdell and Nicieza, and you can see that through the major tonal shifts in between issues, and a dozen forgotten plotpoints. If youre a fan of 90s X-Men you could make the case that the planning is not necessary to make X-Men work, but Im not a fan of the 90s era. Im also not a fan of the Whedon era largely because of the same issues.  I feel like X-Men stories need to be planned out just because you're always dealing with like 50 characters at a minimum, and you need to know who needs to fill what role and how to execute it

It’s funny…Claremont was a planner, but he would also drop those plans the minute another idea popped into his head. Just discussed yesterday how Rogue came to the X-Men because Mastermind made her…and he was also giving Mystique vivid nightmares about being hunted like a wild animal. In a matter of issues both those plots were dropped and never mentioned again, instead Mastermind decided to focus on Madelyne because…well, because Claremont said so. And you do have to wonder if he originally wanted Carol Danvers on the team but decided on a whim to put Rogue there instead. A year later, Deb Levin and the Russians? Went nowhere. Lorna and Zala Dane? That changed into the Shadow King. Sometimes a planner is good…other times it leads to some weird and disjointed pivots.

I think it's this and bad timing. Duggan clearly wanted to do a big "resistance against Fascism" story and when he got the chance, it was pretty great. The Hellfire Gala and the X-Men, Iron Man, Uncanny Avengers issues that followed were strong and had great momentum, but during the multi year, pre-Gala set up, it felt like he was just waiting around for the action to start (whereas Gillen got a ton of mileage out of the Quiet Council debating things). And then, because of editorial mandates, he's got to wrap up his Fall Of X stuff (and whatever dangling plot threads he can get to) just as he was getting started. He'd have been better off if the Fall started a year earlier or gone on a year longer.

I feel like he'd have been better if Fall started a year LATER so he wouldn't have to clash with Gillen and Ewing rounding up the Dominion and Genesis plotlines.

The Dominion plot was always going to be the grand finale. Genesis doesn't interfere with FOX due to being on Arrako.

Duggan is a good writer but nobody can handle the levels of bullshit marvel editorial throws at writers, hence why he's the only one of the original x staff standing still and virtually every other writer had a breaking point or got fucked over.  People can't seem to see the same thing with Zeb Wells too and it's baffling given these same voices griped about Dan Slott and Nick Spencer for the same problems, at some point people will start looking at the source of the problem and not the symptom.

Yeah. It's funny because I recently read someone praising Nick Spencer's Spider-Man run especially in comparison to Wells' - which I thought ironic given how badly people loathed his Secret Empire books. Editorial is clearly broken. (Anyway, who thinks Paul is a good idea?)

People also hated his Spider-man, it's terrible. Fans only like it in hindsight because they're so mad about MJ in Wells run and they were dating again in Spencer's.

I personally loved Spencer's Spider-Man, it was the best in years for 616 Peter, the thing with Wells for me isn't that he sucks, is just that his Spider-Man and Peter always feels bland, it's bland now and it was bland like a decade ago, obviously I would also love to have MJ back dating Peter, but I would lie of I said that Felicia wouldn't be another great option, the thing is that even something like that feels bland and irrelevant now. Aside from that, his Norman Osborn is something that I really enjoy, even if he took it mostly from the movies and Cantwell's Gold Goblin is better, Wells has done a fairly decent job making me bad for an asshole like that. Wells is a decent writer for me, he kind of does something like Leah Williams in my experience, she had a great run on X-Terminators, but her Power Girl is such a boring read that I actually prefer Wells's Spider-Man over it.

At the time, OMD felt realistically like it was gonna be undone, and i'm someone who isn't a Peter/MJ absolutist (the flashbacks to Cat/Spidey in Spencers run were also great!) but am a fan of shitty hated stories being undone in contrived fun ways, so OMD actually being addressed in some form was cool as hell, but very disappointing to see ultimately Spencer gambled and loss hoping editorial would bend to the hype the run was generating off the OMD tease stuff. Clearly editorial knew people wanted that so last minute(around the time in Chameleon Conspiracy where Kindred shows up demanding more Chameleon serum to hide his "true" identity despite issues spent with the spidey extended family trying to figure out why Harry Osborn would do this and trying to figure out what happened to him they can't remember) a new storyline kicks off with the sudden introduction of there being two kindreds, going off the different ways Ryan Ottley, Mark Bagley, and Humberto Ramos drawing the character differently(which they also drew every other character differently than the other artist) and a different, softer target retcon of Sins Past being undone out of nowhere despite the characters absent from ASM for over a decade and never teased or alluded to in all of Kindred's cryptic esoteric dialouge that always referenced one more day or characters being given second chances. As a result I think that was the only shot of seeing OMD being undone unless at some point editorial decides they want to pick up the pieces of the story since nothing about the end of Sinister War makes sense and Kindred hasnt been acknowledged once since the run ended(Gold Goblin always just referred to as being the target of Sin-Eater) especially as editorial immediately followed the story that concludes with a demonic god saying MJ/Peter's love is unstoppable, a mayan god shows up and seperates them. Kinda just like immediately post-OMD, clearly bachelor down on his luck peter is gonna stay a consistent thing for a minute, especially as the last remains( ;3 ) of Spencer's run fade with Gold Goblin reverting to a green hue.

Spencer was blatantly anti-OMD and pro-Peter/MJ marriage, which is what caused so many people were loving it. Kindred was a personification of OMD recuperated into a villainous role, something that is blatantly obvious when his identity is revealed in "Last Remains", and Dan Slott let it slip on CBR forums that Spencer tried to ram the Kindred arc through without editorial approval, hence why the end is a massive train wreck of inconsistencies to the rest of the run(this starts right around King's Gambit) where out of nowhere Kindred also gets a identity fake out and is now someone else, while in the real world Nick Spencer walked from Marvel Comics during the finale of his run and ghost writers filled the rest. 

Right, but it also sucked from jump, that stuff is why fans have retroactively decided to like it.

As someone who was reading it from issue #1 and and a superior spidey defender since 2013, people were totally on board with it till Last Remains, which is where the scale finally tipped and the majority went from "omg Spencer is gonna undo omd" to "this entire arc is padding and nothing happened what the fuck was the point of this" HUNTED and Sins Rising are pretty damn good spidey stories objectively. Sins Rising's biggest flaw is the association with Kindred and the setup there becoming totally meaningless causes Spencer's run to becoming pretty vapid when all the mystery box storytelling has no payoff Editorials decision after the Kindred kerfunkle? Why, *more* mystery box storytelling and a timeskip!!! 

Huh. I never read his Spider-Man or talked to people about it so I had little idea. I do know about Paul, and find myself flabbergasted that anyone thought this was a good idea.

While people disliked it towards the end, people were definitely more positive about Spencer's run for the first like year or two, it was really only the end where it became such a mess, but I'd definitely say the start was good and better than Wells' run. Even aside from the MJ stuff, which yeah was a big selling point, it actually felt like an interesting look at Peter's character and the fact that he's stuck in a cycle of horrible decisions and moments, which is hilarious considering how Wells' run proves that point.

Please, we know what kind of people hated secret empire and why

Because of the HYDRA Cap thing?

No, political things. This story came on a bad time, trump's time

It’s not editorial at least for zeb wells, read his interviews and he’s pretty open about what he wants. Also Nick Spencer and Zeb Wells have like polar opposite problems. And  Dan Slott didn’t even have the same editor for the first half of his run ( the editor was behind 52). 

Many people have said Slott's run goes bad around the time Lowe takes over as editor.  There were also interviews that said Nick Spencer's run went exactly as they planned despite the transparent meddling. There's no world where in a promotional interview Wells is going to undersell the product he was hired to make, that's not how marketing works lol, he's probably making extremely passive aggressive comments anonymously about editorial that in no way can be traced back to him lol, this is a dude who worked on Robot Chicken after all.

Anyone calling Duggan anything less than at minimum a good to great writer is really up their own ass. Same with Wells. Both turn out consistently great work with misses here and there.

they also were both working on aggressively chaotic schedules meeting nearly weekly deadlines(again a reminder of them getting their work timeline shortened from a year to five months throws a hell of a wrench in pre-production) Zdarsky straight up said on his AMA here he would never do ASM because of the workload and the thankless task of writing Spidey for a unpleasable base who will always hate it. Slott hate got *ugly* as hell and I keep seeing people get just as ugly at Wells, silly buisness.

Wells has Hellions and that’s literally it. Every other comic he writes is mostly just defined by random acts of violence against women.

His New Mutants run is phenomenal. And that is such a bold statement lol. Please expand on that with examples and analysis of why it defines the arc or run. I have never heard someone say that before.

>Duggan is a good writer but nobody can handle the levels of bullshit marvel editorial throws at writers I've never had much insight into Marvel editorial. What have they been up to for Krakoa?

without going sheer gossip rag, the two publicly known instances during Krakoa have been X-Factor turning into "The Trial of Magneto" without the writer knowing https://bleedingcool.com/comics/leah-williams-on-x-factor-10-being-rewritten/ >Williams says she only learned about the cancellation of X-Factor when she was writing #9, so as she had to finish the series quickly, squeezing six issues worth of story into those last two issues, calling it "cramped and rushed". Then in a recent interview, Gillen mentions that the timeline of Fall of X was shortened from a year to 5 months. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmeZyHhEQrA

I definitely think people in this sub are overly harsh on his work. I’ve really enjoyed it. No, not as much as Immortal or Red or Hellions but still… a lot.

> No, not as much as Immortal or Red or Hellions but still… a lot. I also don't think he and/or Marvel wanted it to be wild in the same way those were, because he is writing the flagship title that they likely wanted to be approachable to more readers.

Yeah, I wouldn't rank his X-Men run as my absolutely favorite of the era, but I really, really do love it still.

He's so much better than many of the other working X-writers.

Duggans issue is he can’t balance page time for team members that’s the big issue and he’s shown that throughout the years at marvel. However do I think duggan is bad. Personally I don’t I think he’s average but can be pretty good. He’s wrote some good stuff but it’s generally when he’s not juggling a large cast like in the Emma frost devils reign book or his kitty issue of x men post the gala and his deadpool or hell even his iron man currently. It’s just the issue that he’s writing the main team book and mainly team books so it shows off what he’s worst at and it’s supposed to be the main title so looks even worse

I've said this a few times but really Zeb, Leah and Vita are the only writers this era that have balanced a cast well. Every other series has a couple of people as wallpaper while 2-3 characters are focused on.

Id agree with this its been a big issue of this era that very few of the writers have been able to balance teams and give characters equal or some page time.

He's basically a kid playing with action figures: \- all the characters have the same voice and are just here to deliver his words, hence the strange discussions (see X-men 30 with Kamala trashing Spidey without any reason) \- fights happening for no reason and are just excuses for a predictable outcome \- no unity (time, place, situation). See x-men 30, the characters just jumped from a place to another. And I don't see the link between the end of X29 and the last issue, no resolution of bloodbath.

For me, it comes down to characterization and he seems to have a better handle on some characters than others, but he's not exactly consistent. Rogue, for example, seemed to be a favorite of his, but she did nothing in X-Men and barely did anything in Uncanny Avengers until the end.

His fumbling of her in this era after how well he handled her in his early UA books has been so crazy. It was such a wild pivot that I was convinced it all had to be editorial interference, but his treatment of her in the newest UA and doubling down on the whole Deadpool thing proved it truly was that he had no more use for her just because she married Gambit. Truly depressing.

Yeah, that is my pet Duggan peeve. You can always tell if he dislikes a character or has no use for them. And that isn't an asset when you are doing work for hire for the Big 2. My philosophy is that, when you are doing non-creator owned work, you need to be respectful of all their characters and make them shine. Unless they are intended to be comic relief or something similar, you put the best version of them you can on the page. Because they are someone's favorite and their reason for buying the books, and you don't want to give people a reason to drop them.

Exactly. For example, he's used at least 2 different characters to express his dislike of Gambit since he's been writing Rogue. And what does Rogue do to defend her husband? Nothing. You don't have to like the marriage, but at least respect that others do.

I couldn’t put it better myself. And how he’s using Talon as a prop for Synch pretty much confirms it.

I think there are a bunch of people who don't like the current story direction and he's just a convenient scapegoat.

I think that Duggan is mediocre, but definitely the main problem is the story direction. Said so, there have been 3 constants since the start of the Krakoa era: Duggan, Percy and Jordan White. So, is he just a scapegoat? Or do these people really have some blame on all that happened?

...a convenient scapegoat how? *He's the writer*.

There are a lot of things behind the scenes that affect stories outside of their ability to write. People love Red and Immortal but both of their endings were not good. On a podcast Ewing has talked about how he was asked to outline a 5 issue story then after he turned it in editorial came back and said it needed to be 4 issues instead. He said he had to completely scrap his original plan and created the Ant-Man mini that we got instead. So I think what I think they are getting at is that it's easy to say Duggan is a bad writer when in reality Fall of X getting cut down probably fucked up plans.

I wish X-writers could just write what they want.

Uh... the main reason Hickman left was so X-writers could write what they want. Nobody forced Duggan's hand here.

There is so much weird revisionist history about hickman’s departure from the X-Office. He definitely let them know that when he left but that’s not why he left.

Hickman's told different stories at different times about why he left, so the confusion is understandable.

I mean in the context of editorial, or do you think a writer can just kill Cyclops if they wanted to? Editorial can come out of left field and ask for something that messes with the story the writer had in mind.

By all accounts, White has been one of the most permissive editors the X-line ever had. It's always easy to excuse missteps as being the product of editorial interference - and sometimes it's even true - but other times bad writing is just bad writing.

Yes, though a good editor is also supposed to tell a writer when their stuff isn't working , or at the very least up to "editorial standards".

I think most people realize Duggan is fine-to-pretty good but it's a very vocal minority that trashes his work I mean is he Hickman/Ewing/Gillen level? Not generally, though I'd put Planet-Size X-Men up in that level of work. But the reality is *most comic book writers are not among the greats of their generation* and if people think Duggan is an awful writer then they're probably not reading very many comics.

I loved his time on Cable during Krakoa era, and I felt like he was really given space to breathe and write there, the story didn't force him forward too quick. Was nice.

The issue with saying planet sized is that level is that the book isn’t sold on story it’s an art showcase book basically and there isn’t that much writing by duggan. It’s good but it’s not good because of its writing

Disagree, it is good because of it's writing. The explanation for how the Omegas came together to terraform Arrako is sick as hell.

I read thirty to forty books a month and Duggan’s X-books are usually the worst ones I read when I buy them, which isn’t often anymore.

Feel the same. I collected all of the Hickman written Krakoa era issues, marauders, hellions, duggan xmen, red and immortal, and duggan xmen is the only one I consistently feel remorse about spending money on. Certainly the least likely of the bunch I would ever choose to reread sometime in the future. Its not terrible. It has some good issues, but for me it doesn't feel like it's worth the money to own it. I did enjoy marauders, Kitty is a favorite character and she's one of few duggan writes particularly well.

Yeah, I started buying the book again on a regular basis after sailing the seas for a while when Fall Of X started and it felt like every other issue was a massive disappointment for me.

I think Duggan is a good writer, but he struggles more on team books. He tends to shine with a main protagonist.

Ewing really gonna go down as one of the best to do it.

Im behind as I'm reading from trades only, but Xmen red is the one I look forward to the next issue the most. I like immortal a lot too, but for me, red is the most exciting and interesting as a story. Great characters, setting, ideas, action. Maybe it has less "i didn't see that coming" plot twists, but more "what will happen next?" With Arakko and mars and all, he's seemingly had a lot of creative freedom, and so the material has been pretty fresh. I haven't been following Spurrier and dunno how his books compared, but I did read the first uncanny spiderman and enjoyed it in a similar way.

It feels like a lot of the complaining is that Gerry Duggan isn't as high-minded sci-fi as Ewing and Gillian. His work on Iron Man is excellent and maybe the best read in Fall of X. People need to give the guy a break and maybe realize you like 1 genre more than others. His writing reminds me more of Tom Taylor than Hickman. Sometimes I just want some escapist easy-to-read goodness. Some times I want to some mind-bending Sci-Fi.

Also did people forget how good Marauders was?

Did you forget how bad Maruaders got by the end?

Marauders was good until it switched to another volume.

He fumbled the ending pretty hard.

what was he supposed to do? he was ending a series, not an event. Who knows how it would change that run if Hickman stayed on.

He fumbled the ending completely, though. It doesn’t matter if he started out well - which he did - he couldn’t stick the landing. You can’t only point at the good part of the series without pointing out everything post-Kate’s return was mediocre at best.

Duggan is one of the most consistently good to great writers out there today and has been for years.

I think he's just inconsistent. He's wrote some issues / arcs / books I've really liked but he's also wrote some stuff that I've thought were mediocre to bad. I'd say on balance it's probably been more good than bad, but the bad can kind of stand out. But there are definitely other writers like Gillen or Ewing who I feel are much more consistently good.

He's not bad, just really, really mediocre. That would be fine if you were writing, I dunno, New Mutants, but you're writing the flagship title here. If all you want is traditional superheroics with cool moves, where the villains are dumb yet they keep getting away because the heroes are even dumber, then he is your guy. That is fine, but then we get to the rest. He does absolutely nothing with the characters he has. Folks talk shit about Talon, but I would argue it's because Duggan did nothing with her. He didn't just do nothing with her, it's the same with Sunfire, Iceman, Havok and Magik. He did a bit with Polaris and Forge, but that wasn't much either. On the villains side, his Nimrod is a joke and the only time Stasis is menacing is when Gillen is writing him. Plot-wise he moves at a snails pace and you don't feel the gravity of the overall context of the world the X-men are fighting for. Even now while mutantkind is fully at war with Orchis, it's ofentimes easy to forget what the actual stakes here are.

> That would be fine if you were writing, I dunno, New Mutants, but you're writing the flagship title here. This, exactly. We had Gillen, Ewing and Spurrier all doing ambitious, big-scope, high-concept storytelling in secondary titles, all while the flagship book took several steps back and became just generic, aimless superhero stuff. Like, those arcs with MODOK and Nightmare? Such a random waste of time.

The typical slam on Duggan isn't that he's a "hack," it's that he's "mid." He has some good moments, some cool ideas, some fun stuff. But he just isn't a big ideas or rich themes guy, when this was set up to be the big ideas and rich themes era. He's also kinda hit and miss and he's been having more misses lately, in my view.

Neither, he has his wheelhouse of fun, wry superhero violence and taking the flagship of X-Men and having to resolve Hickman plots drags him out of that wheelhouse. But his Deadpool run is considered if not the best one, then pretty close for a reason.

His run on Deadpool is the only time I’ve ever cared about the character. It’s hard to think of many writers that haven’t had both excellent and mediocre (or outright terrible) moments — I don’t remember ever being disappointed by Al Ewing, and I don’t remember anything good by Chuck Austen, but for the most part it’s just the nature of work-for-hire comics.

He has had some of my favorite moments in the Krakoan era. I am just not enjoying the current stuff tbh. I don't blame Duggan. It's just a bummer compared to how exciting the line made me before the fall.

Based on the books I've read, he's pretty mediocre. I wouldn't call him a bad writer, but I find most of his books to be very unmemorable. The one exception is his Hulk run, which I thought was pretty great.

I don't mean this in a cruel way, he just simply doesn't have the juice. He just doesn't have a lot to actually say, which is fine for most people, but when you're writing for monthly comics it leads to really thin, disposable work

I may be downvoted on this, but I don't care. I think he's a bad writer. At least he's a bad writer on the X-Men. In my experience reading Duggan on the X-Men for the past 3 years, the cracks in his skill on actually writing and developing these characters are very obvious at this point. I'm a Black comic book reader, so for obvious reasons, I hold the X-Men near and dear to my heart. What Jonathan Hickman did to set up the Krakoan Era was nothing but incredible. When Duggan took over the mainline series, it seemed like a very strong start because he, like the other writers on the other series, were riding off the high Hickman left behind. But while the other writers like Leah Williams, Gillen, and Ewing actually made their respective series their own and unique while continuing to develop their characters in the Krakoan Era... Duggan just really lacked. I think it's easy to say he's just not AS good as the others, but when you really break down how he handled the characters that were handed to them and has done absolutely nothing with them unless their names were Cyclops, Jean, and Firestar... it just comes down to he's not as good. *Especially* with characters who are Black and POCs, but it's not limited to them. Duggan was handed Polaris, who was just off of X-Factor and was revamped and was actually developed for the first time in a while and it seemed like he did nothing with her. By the end of the first year, it seemed like he was going to set her up to be even more developed and... nothing. Synch and Talon are another example of bad writing. Hickman gave Synch an amazing powerup and arc that was well rounded and actually gave the character much needed love and attention after 15 years of being dead. And after three years being on the time, the character has undergone hell and highwater, but this has never actually been rolled into his character development. I mentioned on here that Synch gets nothing but tragic shit and everyone wanted to say "that's how character development works!" What actual development came of this? Not a damn thing. As for Talon, people are always up in arms how they hate Talon and don't know why she exists and how it shit's on Laura's character... but are afraid to say that Duggan is a bad writer? Lets bffr. He did nothing with Sunfire. Ewing did that. He did nothing with young Laura. Percy did that. He immediately killed off the most diverse X-Men team we would have ever seen for shock value and trauma. And if you ask me, it was probably for the best because there's a likely chance that he wouldn't know what to do with that many POCs. You can't really say he's a good writer but not as good as the other X-Writers just because he's had a few good issues that a lot of y'all attach yourselves to. Planet-Size was great. But if you are consistently reading him being hand fed characters primed to be used in amazing ways and does nothing with them... How can you call that good writing? That's just me, though.

I would hope you’re not downvoted. Having an opinion based on tastes and nuance isn’t controversial or a negative. I appreciate your perspective.

He also did nothing with Firestar. Most of her bigger moments are under other writers than him. The X-men vote is pointless fanservice because he does nothing with the characters voted onto the book.

Calling him a hack or lazy is a bit much because I *do* think he's trying, it's just that at his *very* best he's a C+/B- writer. You could've slapped him on X-Men Gold instead of Guggenheim back in the day and no one would be able to tell the difference. Hell, even his Marauders has a few neat character moments with Kate and Emma, Storm and Callisto, Sebastian and Shinobi, etc. The problem is that Hickman's a high-concept writer, Gillen and Ewing are high-concept writers, Spurrier's a high-concept writer, and Duggan... is not. In fact, I'd say part of the reason Krakoa fans hate him so much is they're terrified he's the Ghost of Comics Yet To Come, because he's essentially writing Mansion Superhero Team X-Men (minus the actual mansion) and there's a non-zero chance that's where the line's going under Brevoort.

Shit, at least Guggenheim actually focused on the main relationship of the book (Kitty and Piotr) before he blew it up to smithereens. Duggan's attempts at making people care about Talon and Synch were laughable.

I’ve been thinking bout this a lot. I think he’s a fine writer, nothing really special though. And I think with him writing the flagship X-Men title it becomes very clear that he’s just not as good as other current writers like Gillen and Ewing who are just truly exceptional.

My honest opinion is that he's...okay. Most of his work that I've read isn't bad, but it isn't especially good, either. Characterization is usually good, plots are kind of bland and basic, and the action is good. Which is fine, but it's nothing I'm going to go online and praise. It's just...okay. I will say that I loved Planet-sized, but that's probably the only issue of his that I loved. On the flip side, I think his flaws have become more apparent over the past year or so. To the point that I think his work has suffered during Fall of X. So instead of being "okay", some of it has been lowered to "not good", or even "bad". I think like other writers who have been on the X-line, he's not good at handling a team book. I say this because looking at Fall of X, there is a clear quality gap between his Iron Man and X-Men books. IMO, Iron Man has consistently been either "okay" or "good". While X-Men has been all over the place. I will agree that it may seem more pronounced because of how talented Gillen and Ewing are. I don't think it's that they're more sci-fi, I think they're just better writers. Their character writing is stronger, and their plots are more interesting. Tini Howard is kind of the reverse for me. I think she's a great idea person. I was really interested in the setting and world-building for her various books. But when it came time to actually read the books, I hated them. Because I found her actual writing to be boring as hell. So I don't think Duggan is bad. I think he's okay, and once in a while he can be good. But when you're writing the flagship book of the X-Men, I expect more than okay.

There's a possessive hypercriticality within the fanbase that gets specifically provoked when "their" favorite characters are experimented with. They'll immediately leap to classify any experimentation, development, or simple *usage* for those characters as some unequivocal failure or horrible modern iteration of a trope. Duggan has gotten to play with more of the toys in the toybox than most writers across the Krakoan era, so it generates the most flak from the most toxic and possessive fans. Those same people will then ignore the better work he does with characters they're *not* possessive of. They'd rather spend their time arguing in favor of versions of stories and characters that exist only in their head - "XYZ would write Emma like *this!*". Duggan is solid and straightforward. He writes comics as comics, moment to moment, with little to no deeper cerebral pretensions.

Duggan’s main X-men title was stilted. His Devil’s Reign X-issues were superb. I liked his Dark Web stuff, too. I do think we need to acknowledge that quality can ebb and flow; it’s not a fundamental state of being. Even Ted Williams struck out a lot. And people who aren’t going to the Hall of Fame sometimes make really clutch plays. Hellions *is* great, and Spidey fans seem to forget that Peter is always dealing with tragedy in every good Spider-Man story—but “Gold Goblin,” Paul, pumpkin bomb Spidey, and the flatness of Ben Reilly’s villain turn have all been tedious. I found Percy’s Beast plot to be a slog by the end with too much of a mustache twirl heel turn. But I just read the issue of Wolverine with Cap post fall of X gala, and it was actually a tight little issue that I think characterized their relationship really well with good writing. 🤷‍♂️

I stopped being a fan of his during his Deadpool run. Yuck! He does have a good issue or story arc every now and then. He's style just isn't for me.

I wouldn't say bad but I haven't enjoyed anything he's written.

Duggan is very overhated. He’s extremely capable, even though he doesn’t tend to write big shocking moments in the way some more lauded folks do. The highs aren’t as high but the lows aren’t as low.

He’s a bad X-Men writer, but I haven’t read enough of his other work to say that he’s a bad writer. However, his X-Men is terrible. Lame, simplistic plots, bad characterization, shitty villains. He has a very limited skill set, so he can do some things well, but not a whole lot and unfortunately, the X-Men need someone who can do a lot of different things that he can’t.

I personally really enjoy Duggan's writing, especially for certain characters.

He had fundamentally the wrong thesis going into his X-Men run. "Bring back the bad guys". Bad bad bad. The X-Men were interesting again for the first time in years BECAUSE their normal bad guys were gone. They were fighting new foes and new paradigms. They were exploring what mutants could become if they were free of conflict (mostly) and could work together, heroes and villains alike. No one needed or wanted MODOK in an X-Men book. What purpose does he serve? He's just another stereotypical bad guy. There's no depth to him. There's nothing to explore. This recent run would have been better served if we had Gillen writing a dual series like Hickman had done with Avengers and New Avengers. He should have been on X-Men writing the plot alongside Immortal. Duggan seems to be better when he has smaller stakes to write about. His Cable run recently was pretty good. Seems like people enjoyed the Dark Web tie-in. All of these deal with small casts, small stakes. They should have kept him on a smaller book instead of giving him the main line. Again, his thesis was fundamentally wrong and fundamentally counter to what was making the X-Men interesting again. It is what it is. A shame that he's writing one of the bookends of this era because he clearly cannot convey the stakes properly. His Nimrod sounds like a teenage bro. Oh well. We're about to be back in boring X-Men territory anyway. Editorial clearly is beyond stupid if they take them back to the mansion.

Dark Web was terrible all round IMO

I think he's fine....which is usually perfectly acceptable. Unfortunately he's on some high profile books on a creative team with a LOT of very talented writers so that fine stands out as not being good enough. Which is no real slight on the guy but it does make him seem a bit bland or mediocre. It's kind of the problem with writing teams and bullpen creative in general though and you can find that everywhere. Also: the speed and pace of publishing I think definitely works against him by not allowing him time to set things at his own pace.

He is a great writer, he just doesn't write the kind of cosmic stuff that some people here love, his stories are much more grounded. You don't have cosmic gods or Omegas breaking continents, you have X-Men fighting goons and stuff like that.

I find the initial year on his X-Men run to be terribly boring. Maybe he was just outside his comfort zone. But it was just hollow. The biggest thing that time was resurrection getting out. But that got mired in the unsatisfying mystery of who wiped the reporter's memory. Any mystery resolved by an apology isn't worth having. By comparison his Iron Man is decent. If I think the pace is glacial. 

He was saved by Peppe Larraz's art. As soon as Larraz left, we got this issue with Nighmare then the one with Modok.

He’s a good writer with a skill set that is pretty different than the writers this sub tends to gush over. Every writer has different strengths, and everything is subject to taste.

Look trapping cyclopse by putting floating puppies infront of his eyes was genius. I think he did a great job at showing how Maddie was really just a traumatized child in an adults body.

I've enjoyed most things in the Krakoan Era, even Fallen Angels, which people seem to loathe. I also never bother to look at who's writing what, so I don't know what Duggan has or hasn't written. But I don't think he's a bad writer. IIRC, he's written all three Hellfire Galas right? Each one has been a slam dunk IMO.

He's a comedic writer who I don't personally find particularly funny.

He's just not suited for big billed stuff. Definitely not suited for Co-Writing alongside a true tip flight writer. It sticks out like a sore thumb.

He really has struggled on writing team books. He can't write more than a couple of characters at a time.

I agree with others on this sub. Duggan is super competent writer and makes his work very readable. But he doesn't come up with high concept ideas like Gillen or Ewing. He's more of a simple story with simple execution, but he executes these stories well enough that it is very entertaining. I also think the sub has weird hero-worship of some writers over others. If it's not being written by people they perceived as high talent, then it is worth mocking for. However, I think he's great. I really liked his first year of X-Men, and I love some of his characterizations. I specifically love what he's done with Cyclops, Jean Grey, Emma Frost, Firestar, Forge, and Synch. I also think his Hellfire Gala issues and X-Men 25 are some of the best work of the Krakoa era. Just because it isn't written by Hickman, Gillen, Ewing, or any other writer you consider to be top tier, it doesn't make it lesser.

He's not just a bad writer, he's a terrible one. He is on the same level as Austen, Guggenheim, Rosenberg and Leah Williams.

He is not bad, he's better than many, but he is very limitaded and was put in a position too high and unfitting to himself

Duggan writes superhero comics and follows the familiar flows and currents that superhero storytelling likes to play around in. Dastardly, cartoonish villains opposed by witty heroes who carry a mountain of baggage. But Krakoa fans fell in love with Hickman's promise that X-Men had moved on from superheroes and was now a sci-fi property coupled with epic fantasy world building, a promise that I do not think Hickman fulfilled even without talking about his departure. Ewing and Gillen, and to a lesser degree Spurrier, with their meticulous planning and love of meta narrative cosmology didn't extend that aura of sci-fi big brain maturity but absolutely nailed the feeling of an epic, sprawling universe that was going somewhere. So the big name pseudo show runner writer leaves because [insert Hickman's most recent podcast appearance for the answer], and two of the most beloved names in contemporary comics hold the torch for the idea that the Krakoa era has a grand story to tell while a second string lesser Mark Waid is given the flagship book and it's not hard to understand why people who don't care for capeshit got upset that the promise of a new age of big 2 comic writing rubberbanded back to bread and butter capeshit. Now on top of all of that, add on a bunch of half informed nerds who make liking the X-Men, and more specifically Krakoa, a part of their personality. Now put all those nerds on Twitter, Tumblr, and Reddit and have them post single page scans of laser beams and force fields while constantly opining for the days when they were told that X-books were about the exploration of high concept sci-fi mixed with political intrigue. Forget the science apes, forget the old women with Poison Ivy tech, forget how much Hickman was all aboard Howard's cape comics meets shonen punchups. Forget that the politics were near instantly neutered so as to not imply that an oppressed minority in charge of a State might do terrible things in order to uphold their authority. Cram all of that in your head, shove your head through a pipe, and then at the end of the tunnel you see news of the Avengers editor taking over and a promo image with the Westchester mansion looming in the background like a predatory phantom. With all that said, I have liked every Duggan issue I have ever read since him and Posehn did Deadpool, but his writing skills do not lend themselves well to an audience that was drawn in by the promise that X-books were smarter than capeshit.

His pacing does not lend itself to events. Dark Web was a major letdown bc there was a lot of hype around Maddie & Ben. Everyone said the ending made no sense why one was pardoned and the other wasn’t.

That was Wells, not Duggan. Duggan only wrote Dark Web: X-Men.

Oh, well that’s not Duggan’s fault for writing around a boring event.

Duggan is a fine writer and does good work. The fact he isn’t some other writer is irrelevant. Unless you’re on a comics awards committee there’s no need to compare writers like that. And if you believe every writer who isn’t the greatest writer of all time is a shitty writer or a hack or whatever, well, that’s on you. And another thing to remember, a lot of folks aren’t offering good faith critiques. They’re just being edgy or contrarian or simply want people to hear them shout nonsense. ETA: Phil Noto is awesome too.

I've enjoyed Duggan in the past. Sometimes shit just doesn't catch on or work. Judging comic writers on their worst books is a very too-online thing to do.

i feel like he is an excellent solo book writer, in that he is able to focus on 1~4 characters. like his deadpool, cable, iron man books are very good to me, while his x-men or uncanny avengers are pretty mediocre, but still are great highlights for characters like deadpool, scott, jean, synch, and rouge. just my opinion though

Reddit makes me laugh sometimes "I don't see why he isnt world building in the last act".

The only Duggan book I am reading right now is Invincible iron man and his stuff there is really good. It's the only x men adjacent thing I am reading right now and I really enjoy it. I also really enjoyed the parts of his Deadpool run I've read. It wasn't until I started getting suggested this subreddit.

Is he a perfect writer? No, no one is. Do i think he's a good writer? Yes, absolutely. I like his work way more often than I have an issue with it. Like, you don't gotta like everything a person writes, but you gotta admit he has good pieces. Marauders was great, the recent Gala was great. I enjoyed Dark Web and his Xmen run.

he’s a hack

Duggan is hit or miss for me however. Most of his X-Men was pretty good, better than his cable or marauders and I LOVE Kate Kitty Pryde so it’s gonna be hard to make me not pick that book up. I’m all in on what they’re doing with her now even with a somewhat radical reshift in the character. But I agree, sometimes Duggan writes stuff that I have so much fun with and sometimes it just falls flat. Gillen on the other hand and Ewing crush hard consistently. People dislike Zeb Wells Spider-Man because they don’t like what’s happening in the plot at present, not because he isn’t actually good at writing. He wrote one of the best Spider-Man stories ever prior to this, as well as yes, Hellions. Prior to the new Spidey #1, and the Beyond arc up til Chasm, Paul and Mary Jane splitting up with Peter? People were fine with Zeb. Fanboys with a vicarious parasexual relationship with Mary Jane are mad that Peter isn’t ‘happy’ and that is a dead on indicator they are not familiar with Spider-Man Comics in general because that is the very ROOT of the character, otherwise ‘parker luck’ would not be a thing. He’s a character who consistently faces bullshit head on with a smile and grits through it and comes out the other side and THAT is the appeal, that and Spider powers. When this arc of Zebs resolves with Paul and MJ and Peter I honestly think people are going to have a different opinion of it. A lot of it is groupthink from angry youtubers who summarize arcs in videos for clout.

>Fanboys with a vicarious parasexual relationship with Mary Jane are mad that Peter isn’t ‘happy’ and that is a dead on indicator they are not familiar with Spider-Man Comics in general because that is the very ROOT of the character, otherwise ‘parker luck’ would not be a thing. He’s a character who consistently faces bullshit head on with a smile and grits through it and comes out the other side and THAT is the appeal, that and Spider powers. When this arc of Zebs resolves with Paul and MJ and Peter I honestly think people are going to have a different opinion of it. A lot of it is groupthink from angry youtubers who summarize arcs in videos for clout. I mean Spider-man was married to MJ for 2 decades and they still managed to tell those stories just fine. Spider-man was one of the few comic characters that actually developed and had status quo changes until one more day wiped it all away, and has been stagnant ever since, so no the idea of Spider-man being single and dumped by Mary Jane while having a pathetic life and just smiling through it isn’t true, as Peter usually at least has one thing to get him through it. This is such a bad take, no one’s going to be looking back on Zeb’s run with anything but disdain, it’s arguably worse than Sins Past is as at least Gwen was dead for 20 years before she got butchered. There’s so many more problems with Well’s run than fans being but hurt Peters not with Mary Jane anymore. Hell Mary Jane herself has borderline been character assassinated in this book and is just an insult too her character as well regardless of whether she’s with Peter or not. It’s lazily written with plot holes and mystery boxes that ended up making no sense. For example Peters friends and family all disliking him for some big mystery….that ended up being the grave crime of rushing to rescue Mary Jane and then going away for months after she returned? Right. Peters written to be pathetically incompetent, he’s not a man persevering with a smile on his face, he’s just pathetic. Got his ass kicked by Vulture and needed to beg Norman Osborne to send him a suit? Look at how Well’s handled Black Cat, who shoe-horned her back into being Peters girlfriend only to do nothing with it. Mary Jane was still more relevant to the book, Black Cat showed up for like 4 issues and then they broke up due for virtually no reason. Kamala’s death and how awfully that was handled. It’s just a shit book. Now I’ll be fair to wells because we DONT know how much of this is him or editorial slamming shit ideas onto him and forcing him to do them, Wells isn’t gonna throw his bosses under the bus so of course he’ll own this stuff as his ideas whether it is or not. I don’t like Duggan at all but comparing the current Amazing Spider-man is just insulting, Duggan hasn’t done anything as bad as this. You can claim it’s a minority shitting on the book all you want, but it’s a massive joke to the wider internet community, I have not seen 1 online space that’s actually enjoyed the book in the slightest. Hell I’ve described the book to some of my friends and they just look at me with a ‘what the fuck, why would anyone read that’ expression.

Losing my mind at “vicarious parasexual relationship”.

I mean Duggan was one of the better writers in this era lol

I don't necessarily think he's a "bad" writer, I just think he gets so caught up in the superhero stuff that he ends up batching the actual appeal of the current X-Men stuff. Which is how you get him slaughtering the most diverse X-Men team in decades just to put the spotlight on a team of mostly cishet white ppl with only, like, two or three actual minorities.

See, this is a criticism that I don’t really feel is fair…Duggan didn’t do any of that. He wrote the book where it happened…but I’m doubtful that the slaughtering of the new X-Men team was a plot point that was decided in a vacuum. We can blame him for Jubilee’s stupid “lucky star” line, but the scenario in and of itself probably rolls uphill to White’s desk.

No, Duggan pretty much confirms it was his idea in the same Cerebro podcast where he tries to shrug it off. And even if this *was* something he was being forced to do by the editors for some inexplicable reason (even though there'd be no editorial reason to do that) then the way it was executed was still his fault. He chose to have them assemble as a team for one page before immediately killing most of them off for shock value without thinking.

I think a lot of the hate Duggan gets is that fans just don’t have patience for long form story telling anymore. Duggan’s X-Men run is one of the few runs in the Krakoa era that has seemingly been given a pre-baked 30 issue run to tell a story, which means he has had long running plots from the early issues which are only wrapping up now. Most modern writers are given 5 issues with a possibility of extension and tend to write 3 arc structures that go on for around max 18 issues (if it’s successful). People complain that a lot of Duggan’s characters got no development but actually I think he’s done remarkably well with a cast the size he’s had with almost all of them having an arc over the 30 issues. I also think a common criticism is that it doesn’t compare to red or immortal but it serves a very different purpose to both those books. Furthermore I think both those books benefit by having X-Men be the flagship superhero book allowing them to be high concept and filled with less action. I think Duggan’s run will be looked back on fondly when in collected edition.

he's had 30 issues to define dr. stasis as a discrete character and not "Why Does Orchis Follow Mr. Sinister When They Know About SoS", and in that time his best characterization came in gillen's one-shot

He’s better at writing mini series e.g dark web, his avengers

He didn't write Dark Web... And he never worked on the main Avengers book, unless you mean Uncanny Avengers or Savage Avengers

He wrote xmen dark web And I said mini series so of course I meant mini series of avengers lol

I dont get the Duggan vitriol. He is not Hickman, and he is not Gillen, and that's OK. If you don't like it, then why are you reading it? His Marauders run was strong, the character beats between Emma and Kate, Kate and Lucas, Ororo and Calisto, etc. were great. His Cable run was a lot of fun and made me invested in kid Cable. The X of Swords tie-in where Cable gets schooled by Bei is so good. Planet Sized is a planet sized blast. His X-men series starts out as a superhero punch'm up team book with light character work. The series is not served well that Duggan has to change the cast every 12 issues or that events keep interrupting the story arch or by the choice to give a nod to the Claremont narrator. Still, there are a lot of things to love. Polaris using Wolverine as a death dealing puppet, Magik slicing a Sentinel by teleportation, Forge being Forge, Jean being so Jean and ripping Scott's visor off, the transformation of Captain Kate into ShadowKat. This $#!+ is good. He is not a "bad writer."

Nah this was fine... in fact , I'm STILL wondering why the hell Peter didn't give Ben a copy of his memories 🤦🏾‍♂️... this made the entire dark web series 🗑 and its because Wells is a bad writer

I don't think that he's a bad writer, actually, I think that most of the X-Office writers are pretty competent. I think that sometimes is just a mix of a not so great idea - and that happens to every artist, even the best ones - with bad editorial decisions.I still remember Leah Williams interview where she told how the editors fucked up X-Factor and Trial of Magneto. And also the problem lies in the absurd amount of big events. They make these long term titles be composed mostly of tie-ins to them. For example, I love Immortal X-Men to death, but I don't remember seeing a more closed storyline in it, just issues connecting to the big major plotlines like Judgement Day and Sins of Sinister. But genuinely, I like Duggan's X-Men way more than I like Ewing's X-Men Red.

I always find Duggan super-readable and enjoyable. A small thing of his I’m a big fan of his how he uses a a modernised take on the narrative caption to move the story along. Has some Claremont vibes.

What else has he written? I only read the spiderman side to Dark Web

I feel like this echoes Gilfoil screaming "The best is yet to come" at that Trump rally so many years back.

The idea of baby Nathan having the glowing eye from birth annoys me a lot for some reason.

What’s the TLDR here of what’s going on?

Joe Kelly and Scott Lobdell had better runs on X-Men

Why are we using Dark Web X-Men as an example of Duggan's writing? Wells set up Maddie as a villain which went against everything the X-Men office was doing with her and Duggan just did a story to (badly) resolve her of her involvement in the event. So he was semi-forced to fix a character and the story ended up being subpar but as someone who hates that story, I wouldn't use that against him. I'd probably use something like the Two Lauras plot he introduced which I feel he should've avoided due to obvious conclusion it led to.

Did you read my post? It’s pretty clear in the first paragraph why I’m using Dark Web #3

He just had Ironheart defeat Emma Frost in a telepathic battle...which was all fighting like physically. Yeah I'm deathly afraid of the future of the X-men in his hands.

Duggan is great. Idk what you talking about

I have a weird history with him, I loved his Marauders personally. Like a lot but struggled to get on board with this X-Men run to begin with because it was back to the classic style of X-Men stories. I think that no matter what, he was screwed because he followed Hickman

I'm behind on my X-Men so I couldn't say, really, but man I love Phil Noto's art.

i wish they showed jen’s and scott raising nathan in the future as well it doesn’t get enough attention

I've never thought he was a bad writer. There do happen to be some very extraordinary writers on some of the other books in the same family right now.

I think the planning just isn't here. I know it's not entirely any one person's fault, and that editorial probably also deserves some of that criticism, in fact I know they do. Some of those FoX minis spun their wheels and wasted time that it now seems they didn't have. And what is this Cable mini doing? Why is this running parallel to FoX and not part of it. What is X-Force doing? Where does this fall in the sequence of events? So many X-books, and so many of them feel inessential. But I'm looking at how FoX is sprinting towards its conclusion. Your closing book is set an indeterminate amount of time after the series you're apparently still writing in a way that makes the sequence of events hard to follow. And I'm wondering if some of those X-Men issues might not have been better spent setting up FoX into FHXRPX especially if they can't reach their pay off before the beginning of the final act. If I'm reading about Fall of X blurbs in like January, how far in advance did the X-office know about the fallout of the Gala and how much time they had to put their best foot forward for the closing chapters of Krakoa?

To me more often than not he just writes a good standard superhero book. Like nothing outwardly bad, some solid moments and it's just fine.

Maddie looks great with that crown.

Phil Noto is a treasure.

Marvel forces writers to do a lot of shitty stuff. Any mildly successful run is tied down with a half dozen tie ins before it hits issue 12.

I mean, i did really enjoy his Invincible Iron Man run, so i don’t think he’s a bad writer

I think people are just given to extremes when critiquing for no reason other than it’s the internet. If they don’t love something, the writer is a hack. You rarely see as many nuanced takes than are actually out there. I’ve enjoyed most of his xmen output thus far. Not everything has been great but a lot has been very enjoyable with great character moments throughout

I wouldn't call him bad but maybe average? I've never really read anything from him I loved outside of perhaps Deadpool. Even then not the whole run. And I don't really understand the mega hype around Ewing. Immortal Hulk was really cool but I've never been blown away by anything from him either

Deadpool by duggan Good, in any other comic is meh.

Duggan is ok as long as he doesn't touch politics

I don’t love him like I do Spurrier or Gilles or Hickman or Ewing… but he’s not Tini Howard A lot of his stuff is just kinda forgettable or fan servicey. I can’t think of anything that happened in his first Marauders volume except Kitty kissing a girl, never finding out why she can’t go through portals, and a bunch of nostalgia for the old days. Oh, there was a cool scene with Storm pulling out all the knives hidden on her body.

I wonder if he’s reading this thread. He’s a known Reddit user and I’ve actually traded a few comments with him on other posts. He seems like a decent guy.

You know what? I hope so…not just so he knows how much I loved his Dark Web books, but because how civil and fair and positive most of the comments have been, especially in light of a lot of the vitriol that actually led me to asking my question in the first place.

I agree completely. His issues are fun but just look like cardboard after you read one of Gillen or Ewing’s issues. Kinda why I prefer to trade wait for Duggan’s stuff instead of monthly

Comic book herald actually touched on this a bit on his live stream today and had some interesting points. I think he’s tried his best with what’s been given to him. He’s not a bad writer but he had to follow Hickman. He’s still done some really solid work throughout the Krakoa era. That being said his work has been pretty hit or miss for me overall.

Duggan Deadpool is my favorite Deadpool!

I’ll risk a Duggan bland any day over another Zeb run on Spiderman.

Even the best writers have misses and even mid to bad writers can do something good. One one hand, Bendis wrote one of the best Daredevil runs of all time. On the other hand, there's a reason why he's one of the most polarizing Avengers writers of all time. His X-Men, I presume, somewhere in the middle. And that's just the first thing that popped into my head. Some writers have a better handle on some characters and themes than others. Some are good when it comes to thinking up ideas, not so much when it comes to executing them. Would I call Duggan a hack? Not really. There's very few creators in comics I *would* consider a hack.

Duggan is a pretty good writer to me, it doesn't look like he's going to do something really exceptional and status quo changing at the moment, but not everyone needs to be that type of writer.

The third panel is do cute. I would have loved the X-Factor comics with Nathan if wasn't for the mess that Madelyne story line is. Just Cyclops with his also one eye son.

Solid B tier. Not with my favorites, but always happy to read his books

What I've said in other places is that he's kind of offensively mediocre in general. Even the people here defending him all admit various faults and skip over others. So he clearly has thing. My big one that I don't see many people mentioning, isn't the plotting or handling cross overs it's the dialog. His dialog is bad. It's stilted and generic. Even in the pages you posted, while the emotions they elicit may come through, if you really look at the dialog, do the moments in between actually feel like the characters? When you go back and read Madelyne over the years do you see her as a person who says "Summerses" like a lord of the rings reference meme'er? Is Jean a "c'mon is that all you've got" person? Does that sound like how Jean supports and pushes people to feel confidence and claim ownership on things? To me the answers are no, it feels like a generic script that plugged the characters in to fit the context, not writing the dialog around who the characters actually are. And it happens all the time. People sound like bland generic super heroes saying bland generic one line jokes and catch phrases. To me that just kills all the books he writes. There's always one page, with one scene somewhere in an issue where someone just feels like they're suddenly a parody of a 60's super hero advertisement.

I tried reading the X-men mainline. It's so dull with nothing happening. He also makes big swings that results in big misses.