Brian Michael Bendis – A Decade of Marvel Comics
The Popular Writer Marks Ten Years With Spider-Man and Friends
Oct 18, 2009
Since his first published work with Marvel in 2000, Bendis has proven to be one of their most consistently top-selling and prolific script-writers, producing multiple comics a month with a range of top artistic talent. His work on Marvel characters have included his lengthy run on Ultimate Spider-Man, which stands at 130 issues and rising, as well as stints on Daredevil and Avengers.
His success has been largely attributed to his use of dialogue, being unafraid to let the character interaction provide the ‘action’ in an issue, whereas other writers might feel compelled to add a fight scene every month, even if it adds nothing to the plot. This approach has proven controversial, especially within traditionally action-heavy series such as Avengers, but continues to succeed, and appears to be an influence on many others in the industry.
In the Beginning...
Prior to his Marvel Comics debut, Bendis was becoming known as one of the rising stars of the independent comics scene. His work, primarily in the noir and crime genres, including Jinx, Goldfish and Torso, and he provided the art for many of his own stories.
His move to the larger comic publishers came when he was hired by Todd MacFarlane to work at Image Comics on Sam and Twitch, featuring the policemen from the successful Spawn series. He also soon started working on Hellspawn, a more horror-themed take on Spawn, although his work on both these titles ceased soon after he started at Marvel.
However, around the same time and also from Image, he launched Powers, a series combining the crime and superhero genres, with art by Michael Avon Oeming. This proved a huge success, with Bendis’ successful Marvel work feeding attention back to Powers, and it continues even now.
Early Marvel Work
Originally, Bendis was hired by Marvel to work on Daredevil, a superhero title that shared many of the crime noir themes of his independent work. This run, working with Sam and Twitch artist Alex Maleev, would last nearly fifty issues, winning multiple Eisner Awards and would be regarded as a highlight of both Bendis’ own works and the entire Daredevil series. Bendis and Maleev have recently reunited for a new Spider-Woman series.
However, in the end, his first Marvel work to see print, in 2000, was Ultimate Spider-Man, drawn by Mark Bagley, which re-imagined the character’s origin as if he were a teenager in contemporary times. Reaction to both Bendis’ naturalistic teenage dialogue and the more deliberate pace was overwhelmingly positive. The addition of Bagley, an established and popular Spider-Man artist, made the series still more appealing to existing fans of the character.
As well as kick-starting a whole Ultimate line of comic books with Ultimate Spider-Man, Bendis was also instrumental in the birth of the Max Comics brand in 2001. This was Marvel’s first effort at a range of superhero comics aimed at mature readers. His contribution was Alias, a series about a retired superheroine named Jessica Jones who ran a detective agency, and often found herself drawn into superhero based cases. Alias was one of the most successful, acclaimed titles in the Max launch line-up, and continued for over two years. The character of Jessica Jones has subsequently appeared throughout Bendis’ other Marvel work.
Works, Subsequent to Present
In 2005, Bendis took on his most high-profile project to date, the Avengers series, which he reworked substantially from the very beginning. Relatively new characters were introduced, such as The Sentry, not to mention established Marvel mainstays like Spider-Man and Wolverine, even though they had little prior involvement in Avengers. Despite the hesitance of some readers, the relaunch, entitled New Avengers, was a success and spawned multiple spin-offs, such as Mighty Avengers and Dark Avengers, also featuring scripts by Bendis.
Meanwhile, Bendis brought the long-running Powers title to Marvel, after several years at Image, making him completely exclusive with the company. Ultimate Spider-Man also continues to this day. Bendis and Bagley worked together for 110 straight issues, setting a Marvel Comics record for longest creative collaboration in the process. Subsequently, artists Stuart Immonen and David Lafuente have upheld the same high standards.
As his tenth anniversary at Marvel beckons, a collected edition of milestone issues from his time there is planned, along with new hardback reprints of his earlier indie work. A major Avengers storyline, Siege, begins in January, which will apparently tie up storylines going back to the very start of his time writing the team.
So, with ten years under his belt, Brian Bendis is showing no signs of slowing down. Hopefully this will be a very happy anniversary for him, and begin another innovative, successful decade.
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