| Brian Michael Bendis | |
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| Born | August 18, 1967 Cleveland, Ohio |
| Nationality | American |
| Area(s) | Writer |
| Notable works | Ultimate Spider-Man Powers New Avengers Daredevil Alias Jinx House of M Secret Invasion Spider-Woman |
| Awards | Five Eisner Awards Including:
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Brian Michael Bendis (born August 18, 1967) is an American comic book writer and erstwhile artist. He has won critical acclaim (including five Eisner Awards) for his self-published, Image Comics and Marvel Comics work, and is one of the most successful writers working in mainstream comics, with his books selling consistently highly for nearly a decade.[1]
With Bill Jemas & Mark Millar, Bendis was the primary architect of the Ultimate Marvel Universe, launching Ultimate Spider-Man in 2001 on which title he continues as writer to the present day. He relaunched the Avengers franchise with New Avengers in 2004 and has also written the Marvel "event" storylines House Of M, Secret War, and 2008's Secret Invasion.
Bendis maintains a high profile online, through both his official website Jinxworld (also the company through which he produces Powers and his Marvel work) and his message board.
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Biography
Brian Michael Bendis was born on August 18, 1967 in Cleveland, Ohio, to a Jewish-American family. Despite rebelling against a religious upbringing, he attended "a private, modern Orthodox religious school" for boys, all the while working towards a career in comics, having "announced when I was like 13 to all my friends that I was going to be George Pérez."[2]
He met his future wife Alisa in 1995 through the Cleveland chapter of the Hillel Foundation, where Alisa worked and Bendis was a "staff illustrator" regularly employed to "do their graphics and stuff like that". The two were married within a year.[2] He says that:
- "..we joke about this, but it's 99% true: I was flirting with her, to get more money out of her, and she was flirting with me to get the price down, because of the budget, and we were a little too good at it."[2]
Alisa Bendis runs the business end of JINXWORLD,[3] the company through which Bendis produces his creator-owned comics work. The company also acts as the middleman through which he produces his licensed comics work.[2]
He lives in Portland, Oregon with Alisa and their daughters Olivia and Sabrina and three dogs Buster, Schroeder and Lucky.
Early comics work
Childhood
Bendis recalls always wanting to work in the comics field, having "announced when I was like 13 to all my friends that I was going to be George Pérez," working solo on producing graphic novels from a similarly early age.[2] He was constantly honing his craft, saying that he still has a childhood-produced
| “ | "complete Punisher versus Captain America story I wrote through maybe six entire times. I would draw it and go, "That wasn't good," and draw it again, and not just one page but the whole thing, look at it and go "No, I'll do it better next time" and then do it again, do it again."[2] | ” |
While in High School, he submitted for a "Creative Writing assignment" a novelisation of Chris Claremont's "X-Men and the Starjammers story," which ironically gained him an A+ grade for imagination and inventiveness - he having "thought everyone knew what Starjammers was," and would recognise the work as derivative.[2]
Between the ages of 20 and 25, he sent in a large number of submissions to comics companies, although he ultimately stopped his attempts to break into the industry this way, considering it too much of a "lottery."[4]
Before writing comics professionally, Bendis used to work in a comic book store in Cleveland.
Influences
His first favorite genre was, he says, "Marvel superhero comics," before he discovered crime comics by Jim Steranko and José Munoz, which he traced back via "poppy Jim Thompson graphic novels" to the source novels of both Thompson and Dashiell Hammett, which helped cement his love for crime stories.[5] These in turn led him to discover the documentary Visions of Light, which taught him the explicit visual rules of film noir, an important influence of him creatively.[2][5]
He cites as a major artistic influence "people who produced a lot of work" like Jack Kirby and John Romita, whose voluminous output he feels often "made the work a lot better."[4] His writing influences are less rooted in comics, drawing considerably on the work of "Richard Price, David Mamet, and Woody Allen... [t]he three best dialogue writers in the history of any medium."[5] Mamet in particular he considers his "guru," keeping "a huge book of interviews by him... on my nightstand like the Bible," but he also thinks very highly of Greg Rucka (who he considers to be "the best technical writer I have ever met or talked to") and Alan Moore, comics' "gold standard... so good so often that he is often taken for granted."[5] Learning from these individuals directly, and tracing their inspirations so to also read "the work they loved," he is "totally self-taught."[5]
Artwork, Caliber and Crime comics
Best known as a writer, Bendis started out as an artist, "doing work for local mags and papers, even doing caricatures."[5] He didn't enjoy caricature work (although it "did pay well and it funded all my crime graphic novels"[5]) and moved into producing the complete "storytelling" package - with writing complementing his artwork. Soon after, he began producing work for Caliber Comics, including Spunky Todd.[2]
Through Caliber, he met many of his longtime friends and collaborators within the comics industry, including "Mike Oeming and Dave Mack and Marc Andreyko,"[6] and began the first in a series of independent noir fiction crime comics when he "published two issues of Fire in 1993 and five issues of A.K.A. Goldfish in 1994" with Caliber.[7] In 1995 he illustrated Flaxen, from a script by James Hudnall, with David Mack providing inks to the story featuring "former Playboy Playmate Suzie Owens in her adopted role as mascot of the Golden Apple Comics chain [of comic shops] in Los Angeles."[7]
His best-known early work - Jinx, starring the titular bounty hunter and being in fact a noir crime version of Sergio Leone's movie The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - began publication in 1996, and "ran seven issues from Caliber and five more after a move to Image Comics."[7] In 1998, he produced the artwork for, and co-wrote the Eliot Ness-starring Torso with Marc Andreyko for Image, and in 2000 he produced three issues of the autobiographical Fortune & Glory for Oni Comics.[7]
Most of these early works share a common universe, with Goldfish, Fire, Jinx, Torso and (stories from) Total Sell Out sharing characters and settings as well as tone.
He characterizes much of this period of his professional life in terms of working as "a graphic artist for almost twelve years"[5] undergoing a period within that of "nine years" living as a stereotypical 'starving artist'.[4]
Mainstream comics work
Bendis and Mack both "joke that we had to wait till everyone else left comics before we got our shot," recalling that a large number of creators exited the comics field in the early nineties, either having made a large amount of money during the speculator boom, or having given up hope of doing so.[4] Bendis and Mack (among others) "were going to stay either way," content writing their "black and white comics" for Caliber and their own enjoyment, before they were fortunate to be hired by larger companies - Todd McFarlane's branch of Image Comics and Marvel Comics, respectively.[4]
Image
Bendis says that, upon leaving Caliber (c. 1996/1997) "I got my film back, I took my books, I published them somewhere else, it ended well."[2] In the process of moving from Caliber to Image, Bendis "[laid down] frontline visual responsibilities," describing this shift, he notes that "[t]he day I stopped drawing I became hugely successful."[7]
With the move of his series Jinx from Caliber Comics to Image's Shadowline arm, Jim Valentino, then Image's publisher, also "agreed to do the trades... the way [Bendis] wanted them put out,"[2] allowing his previous crime comics to also be collected by Image in specific (often phone book-like) formats. Common to much of the industry, Image staff were regularly given complimentary copies of the company's output, leading to Image-co-founder Todd McFarlane reading Bendis' A.K.A. Goldfish.[4] Liking what he read, McFarlane asked Beau Smith to put the two in contact.[4] Bendis was subsequently offered the choice of writing for McFarlane either a "modern day Frankenstein [comic]... about a giant monkey robot" or another title revolving around "two detectives."[4] Jumping at the latter offer, this was to become Sam and Twitch, which, although set in the Spawn universe, to Bendis' mind "wasn't a Spawn book," but primarily a crime one.[4]
This proved to be a very fortuitous move, as, Bendis says:
- "...Todd McFarlane... couldn't be a better boss as far as creative stuff goes. He hires you to do something and lets you do it."[6]
He wrote Sam and Twitch for twenty issues, and also wrote (most of) the first ten of the Spawn spin-off title Hellspawn, which non-creator-owned work allowed him to, in the words of Rich Kriener in The Comics Journal "[add] the responsibility of caretaker to his resume, in that he would answer to a vested owner about developing a property as a tangible asset with the future in mind," rather than only working on his own characters under his own terms.[7] This "caretaking" role would provide welcome practice in working on company-owned characters.
Marvel
Around the time Bendis began Sam and Twitch, his friend David Mack began working for Joe Quesada's Marvel Knights imprint, which Bendis himself "was absolutely in love with."[4] Mack gave Quesada a copy of Bendis' Jinx, and
- Quesada "loved my writing, not my drawing, which he made very clear."[4]
Invited to pitch ideas for Marvel Knights comics - which included a planned, but ultimately un-produced Nick Fury idea - during this time "Daredevil became a scheduling mess and he [Quesada] asked if David [Mack] and I would do Daredevil."[4] This high-profile offer led, in a serrendipitous sequence of events, to an even bigger coup for Bendis, who recalls:
| “ | "Then I literally handed in Daredevil scripts and that day Bill Jemas had plopped into Joe's office and said, "Gee, we've been working on this Ultimate Spider-Man but it's not coming together. Who would you hire?" And shockingly Joe said me."[4] | ” |
Major Marvel works
Daredevil
Bendis' first major work for Marvel Comics began in 2001, when he took over writing duties on the Marvel Knights incarnation of Daredevil. Launched in 1998 by Kevin Smith and Joe Quesada, Bendis friend David Mack had written and drawn 6 issues before scheduling issues and Mack's recommendation of Bendis for scripting duties led to him working on issues #16-19, with Mack remaining on art. After a brief hiatus, Bendis returned with artist Alex Maleev to produce a critically acclaimed run on the title, writing such major plot points as the outing of Matt Murdock's secret identity and the reemergence of the Kingpin as a major Daredevil villain.
Bendis wrote most of the following 55 issues before handing over the title to writer Ed Brubaker and artist Michael Lark in 2006 after the two discussed current and future plot possibilities. In 2008, an Omnibus edition of most of Bendis' run on Daredevil was released with a second volume announced for 2009.
As a major Daredevil author, Bendis is name-checked in the Daredevil movie. The corrupt boxing manager tries to persuade Jack Murdock to throw his fight, referencing bribed boxers "Miller...Mack...[and] Bendis". The former two are former Daredevil writer/(artist) Frank Miller and (writer)/artist David Mack.
Alias and The Pulse
Launched under Marvel's non-Comics Code R-rated "MAX" imprint in November, 2001 (alongside U.S. War Machine and Fury), Alias featured former-superhero Jessica Jones operating as a private investigator. Largely illustrated by Michael Gaydos, (under covers produced by David Mack), the series ran for 28 issues before many of the characters moved to Bendis' mainstream Marvel Universe series The Pulse.
The crticial and commercial success of the series led to it being the second (after Fantastic Four Vol. 1) title to be collected in the "Marvel Omnibus" oversized hardback series of longer-than-normal reprints. All 28 issues (and a one-shot What If..? issue) were collected in one volume in April, 2006.
Ultimate Marvel
Bendis is one of the premiere architects of Marvel's "Ultimate" line: comics specifically created for the new generation of comic readers. He has written every issue of Ultimate Spider-Man since its best-selling launch, and has also written for Ultimate Fantastic Four and Ultimate X-Men, as well as writing every issue of Ultimate Marvel Team-Up, Ultimate Origin and Ultimate Six.
Ultimate Spider-Man
The first title of the Ultimate Marvel universe repositioned Spider-Man for the 21st Century, and was produced - from the original material by, primarily, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko - by Bendis and artist Mark Bagley, who drew 110 issues, before leaving the book. The remaining issues were pencilled by Stuart Immonen.
Adapting the 11-page debut/origin story of Peter Parker into a 180-page epic of decompressed storytelling, spanning seven issues, (with Peter only becoming the titular hero after the fifth issue), Bendis' approach became a bestseller, often surpassing in sales those of the mainstream Marvel universe title Amazing Spider-Man.[8]
Bendis continues to write every issue and, despite initial attempts to keep the comic free from continuity baggage, instead transformed the title by adapting mainstream storylines and characters into their Ultimate counterparts, often with slight differences.
The Bendis/Bagley partnership of 110 consecutive issues made their partnership one of the longest in American comic book history.
Ultimate Marvel Team-Up
Bendis cites Ultimate Marvel Team-Up (the "Ultimate" iteration of long-running Marvel title Marvel Team-Up) as "[t]he first book that I actually created for Marvel that was specifically for the purpose of this addiction that was growing for me."[2] The book was his idea, after being asked by Marvel "what do you want to do next?," and Bendis pitching
"this Marvel Fanfare idea" in an attempt to draw together "a different artist from every walk of life of comics and just try to enter their world for them, and ask them, "What do you want to draw?"[2]
This, he says "was always a wild experience. It was exhausting. It was very hard, it was the hardest job I ever had."[2] Artists featured in the series included Matt Wagner, Chynna Clugston-Major, Bill Sienkiewicz and John Totleben, among others.
Avengers & events
In 2004, Bendis (with artist David Finch) oversaw the closing issues of the flagship Marvel team title The Avengers as part of the largescale crossover "Avengers Disassembled" storyline. This led directly to the Bendis-helmed relaunch of one version of the eponymous team in the pages of New Avengers (2004).
A key moment in Avengers #502 sees the death of Avenger Hawkeye, which high-profile demise saw something of a fan backlash, but also brought to the fore, in Bendis' experience a "segment of the comic-buying community that I'm not a part of which goes, 'Kill more of them, it's awesome!'"[2] Of the fan response to the "Disassembled" storyline, Bendis says "I can't say I'm disappointed with the reaction to it, because it has been a very impassioned reaction, so it's fun to be a part of."[2]
In 2005, with artist Olivier Coipel, he wrote the "Disassembled" follow-up Marvel/X-Men 8-issue event series "House of M", now retroactively considered the second act of a three-act super-event, culminating in the Bendis-written 2008 event Secret Invasion
After the events of Marvel's "Civil War" storyline, Bendis helmed another Avengers revival, launching a companion title to New Avengers with Frank Cho entitled Mighty Avengers (2007). Both Avengers teams consider themselves the "true" Avengers in the wake of the confusion wrought by both the "Avengers Disassembled" storyline and - more importantly - the aftermath of the "Civil War".
Unconnected to the 1980s Marvel event title Secret Wars, Bendis also wrote Secret War (illustrated by Gabriele Dell'Otto), serialized between 2004 and 2005. It has been stated that the miniseries serves as a prelude to the 2008 event (and "Avengers Disassembled"/"House of M" sequel) Secret Invasion, which is written by Bendis and illustrated by Leinil Yu.
Bendis revealed some of his post-Secret Invasion plans at the Diamond Comics Distributors' retailer summit in September 2008. These included leaving Mighty Avengers with issue #20, as part of the Secret Invasion aftermath, "Dark Reign", that would see the launch of Dark Avengers, a title he will write, with Mike Deodato providing the art.[9][10][11]
Bendis will be launching Spider-Woman in 2009, the first comic book to be offered simultaneously on the internet and in comic stores.[12]
Powers
Aside from his early, black and white crime comics, Bendis' best-known creator-owned project is the superhero police/noir detective series Powers, co-created with and drawn by Michael Avon Oeming. Powers has been nominated for and won major comics industry awards, including Harvey, Eisner, and Eagle Awards.
Debuting from Image Comics in 2000, in 2004 Powers moved to Marvel's all-new - invitation-only - creator-owned imprint Icon, where it was relaunched as "Powers Vol. 2" alongside another ex-Image series, David Mack's Kabuki.
As well as winning praise and awards, Powers has been referenced in the song "Powers" by singer Brodie Foster Hubbard.
Non-comics work
In addition to his primary work for comics, Bendis has produced written work in several other mediums. These include:
- Activision's Ultimate Spider-man videogame, which Bendis wrote due to his role as writer of the comics series.[1]
- A screenplay adaptation of A.K.A. Goldfish for Miramax.[13]
- A screenplay adaptation for the film version of Jinx for Universal Pictures with Oscar-winner Charlize Theron attached to both star and produce.[1]
- A pilot script for the 2003 animated Spider-Man TV series. (below)
Spider-man animation
Bendis was the co-executive producer and series-pilot writer for Mainframe Entertainment's 2003 CGI animated Spider-man show, Spider-Man: The New Animated Series that aired on MTV and YTV.
Bendis was approached to write the pilot while "unaware the pilot [initially] had no home," (he thought it had already been greenlit), chosen for the role due to his position as Ultimate Spider-man writer, even though the series featured an older - college-age - Peter Parker than in the Ultimate universe.[2] Visually similar to MainFrame's ReBoot, this cartoon iteration of "Spider-Man is a more mature version of the Web-Slinger's exploits than most. The characters drink (except Spidey - spiders react… oddly to drugs), get laid, and - shock horror! - use the occasional (mild) naughty word. In a departure from most American animated series, Spider-Man takes a straight soap opera approach to storytelling."[14]
This approach not only reflects the soap opera roots of the original Stan Lee and Steve Ditko series, but owes a lot to Bendis' Ultimate incarnation. Bendis describes the initial approach from the company, saying "they wanted to do a TV show that had the language of Ultimate Spider-Man but in college."[2] Hired merely to write the pilot, Bendis found himself almost obliged to accept the role of executive producer, saying "they were stuck with me contractually -- and I didn't understand any of it."[2] Written to tie-into the then-unreleased 2002 film Spider-Man, Bendis describes the situation after the Tobey Maguire-starring film was released as a Catch-22 situation for the cartoon:
| “ | So I wrote it, and then the movie ended up making a fortune, and became, like, this generation's Star Wars, and the need for the show became unnecessary. The show became "Well, if it's better than the movie, that hurts the movie, and if it's worse than the movie, it hurts the movie."[2] | ” |
Bendis himself also tired of the animation process, feeling that there were "way too many corporations involved" ("MTV, MTV legal, Marvel, Marvel legal, Marvel East Coast, Marvel West Coast, Sony, Sony Animation... I didn't enjoy it at all."[2]) and stopped attending meetings, stressing that "I never actually quit; I just stopped coming."[2] His "pilot" episode "ended up being the third show they aired. So the first show aired was a show I had not written, looked at or even seen... [b]ut my name is on it like three times... and I had nothing to do with it at all," leading him to feel sorry "for some guy who wrote this episode" whose positive reviews were credited to Bendis.[2]
Awards
Bendis has won a number of prestigious Eisner Awards, including:
- Talent Deserving of Wider Recognition (1999)
- Best New Series (for Powers with Michael Avon Oeming) (2001)
- Best Writer (2002, 2003)
- Best Continuing Series (for Daredevil with Alex Maleev) (2003)
He is a recipient of the Cleveland Press "Excellence in Journalism" Award (2000)[1] and has been named "Best Writer of the Year" by Wizard Magazine (2000-2003) and Comics Buyer's Guide (2001-2003) on numerous occasions since the year 2000.
Activision's Ultimate Spider-Man (which he scripted) won the E3's people's choice award.
Select bibliography
Creator-owned works
- Fire (published originally by Caliber and later by Image)
- Fortune and Glory
- A.K.A. Goldfish (published originally by Caliber and later by Image)
- Jinx (published originally by Caliber and later by Image)
- Powers (published originally by Image and later by Icon/Marvel)
- Parts of a Whole
- Torso (published by Image)
Image Comics
Marvel Comics
- Alias #1-28
- Avengers vol. 3 #500-503, Finale
- Daredevil vol. 2 #16-19, 26-50, 56-81
- Daredevil: End of Days (with David Mack)
- Daredevil: Ninja #1-3
- Dark Avengers #1-6, 9-present
- Elektra vol. 2 #1-6
- Halo: Uprising #1-4
- House of M #1-8
- Mighty Avengers #1-20
- New Avengers #1-present
- New Avengers: Illuminati #1-5 (with Brian Reed)
- The Pulse #1-14
- Secret Invasion #1-8
- Secret War #1-5
- Secret Warriors #1-6 (with Jonathan Hickman)
- Spider-Woman: Origin #1-6 (with Brian Reed)
- Spider-Woman Vol. 4 #1-present
Ultimate Marvel
- Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man #1-present
- Ultimate Fantastic Four #1-6 (with Mark Millar)
- Ultimate Marvel Team-Up #1-16
- Ultimate Power #1-3
- Ultimate Six #1-7
- Ultimate Spider-Man #1-133
- Ultimate Spider-Man Annual #1-3
- Ultimate Spider-ManRequiem #1-2
- Ultimate Spider-Man Super Special one-shot
- Ultimate X-Men #34-45
- Ultimate Origins #1-5
DC Comics
- "Citizen Wayne" in Batman Chronicles #21 (Elseworlds story)
References
- ^ a b c d Bendis, Brian Michael and Oeming, Michael Avon, Powers TPB Vol. 9 - Psychotic (Icon, 2006), ISBN 0-7851-1743-1
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w Brian Michael Bendis interviewed by Michael Dean, The Comics Journal #266. Accessed June 21, 2008
- ^ Rabbi Sam's "Jewish Lifecycle Ceremonies". Accessed June 21, 2008
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Bendis, Brian Michael and Oeming, Michael Avon, Powers TPB Vol. 3 - Little Deaths (Image, 2002), ISBN 1-58240-670-7
- ^ a b c d e f g h Bendis, Brian Michael and Oeming, Michael Avon, Powers TPB Vol. 5 - Anarchy (Image, 2003), ISBN 1-58240-331-7
- ^ a b "An Interview with Brian Michael Bendis by Adrian Reynolds" Part 1. Accessed June 16, 2008
- ^ a b c d e f "5,137 Pages of Brian Michael Bendis" by Rich Kreiner, The Comics Journal #271, Saturday, 15 October 2005. Accessed June 21, 2008
- ^ ICv2 News - ICv2's Top 300 Comics & Top 100 GN's Index. Accessed June 27, 2008
- ^ Marvel Announces 'Dark Reign' at Diamond Retailer Summit, Newsarama, September 9, 2008
- ^ Prepare for a Dark Reign, Marvel.com, September 9, 2008
- ^ Getting Dark: Brian Bendis on Dark Avengers & Dark Reign, Newsarama, September 29, 2008
- ^ [http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=19934 Comic Book Resources, February 8, 2009
- ^ "An Interview with Brian Michael Bendis by Adrian Reynolds" Part 2. Accessed June 16, 2008
- ^ "Spider-Man: The New Animated Series" review by Matthew Craig (from "Robot Fist" magazine). Accessed June 27, 2008
External links
- Official website
- The Official Brian Michael "Bendis (message) Board"
- Bendis PopImage Interview pt.2, June 2000
- Brian Michael Bendis: Comics' Funk Soul Master at Comics Bulletin
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