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 over a decade.
Starting out with crime and noir comics, Bendis eventually moved to mainstream superhero work. With Bill Jemas and Mark Millar, Bendis was the primary architect of the Ultimate Marvel Universe, launching Ultimate Spider-Man in 2001, on which 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", 2008's "Secret Invasion" and 2009's "Siege".
Though Bendis has cited comic book writers such as Frank Miller and Alan Moore, his own writing influences are less rooted in comics, drawing considerably on the work of David Mamet, Richard Price, and Aaron Sorkin, whose dialogue Bendis feels are "the best in any medium."
In addition to writing comics, he has also worked in television, video games and film, and teaches writing at Portland State University.
Brian Michael Bendis was born on August 18, 1967 in Cleveland to a Jewish-American family. Despite rebelling against a religious upbringing, he attended a private, modern Orthodox religious school for boys. He decided he wanted to be a comic book industry professional when he was 13, working on his own comics, including a Punisher versus Captain America story that he revised several times. An fan of Marvel Comics in particular, he emulated idols such as George Pérez, John Romita, Sr., John Romita, Jr., Jack Kirby and Klaus Janson. He later discovered crime comics by Jim Steranko and José Munoz, which he traced back via Jim Thompson's work to the source novels of both Thompson and Dashiell Hammett, which helped cement his love for crime stories. 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.
While in high school, he submitted for a "Creative Writing assignment" a novelization of Chris Claremont's X-Men and the Starjammers story, which gained him an A+ grade for imagination and inventiveness. 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."
Best known as a writer, Bendis started out as an artist, doing work for local magazines and newspapers, including caricature work. He worked at the Cleveland Plain Dealer as an illustrator." Although he did not enjoy caricature work, it paid well and funded his interest in writing crime fiction for graphic novels. He eventually moved into both writing and illustrating his work, before he began producing work for Caliber Comics, including Spunky Todd.
Through Caliber, he met many of his longtime friends and collaborators within the comics industry, including Mike Oeming, Dave Mack and Marc Andreyko, 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. In 1995 he illustrated Flaxen, from a script by James Hudnall, with David Mack providing inks to the story featuring former Playboy Playmate Susie Owens as mascot of the Golden Apple Comics chain [of comic shops] in Los Angeles.
Bendis' best-known early work, Jinx, starring the titular bounty hunter in a crime noir version of the Sergio Leone film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, began publication in 1996, and ran seven issues from Caliber. 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" undergoing a period within that of "nine years" living as a stereotypical 'starving artist'.
Image Comics and Oni Comics
In 1996/1997, Bendis moved from Caliber to Image Comics, where Jinx was published by Image's Shadowline arm, which not only published his work in trade paperback, but also collected his previous crime comics in phone book-like format. Impressed with Bendis' A.K.A. Goldfish, Image founder Todd McFarlane sought out Bendis, which led to his writing Sam and Twitch, which, although set in the Spawn universe was approached by Bendis primarily as a crime comic.
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.
At Image, he also produced five more issues of Jinx.
In 1998, Bendis co-wrote and illustrated 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.
That same year saw the debut of the superhero police/noir detective series Powers, co-created with and drawn by Michael Avon Oeming. Powers won major comics industry awards, including Harvey, Eisner, and Eagle Awards, and was referenced in the song "Powers" by singer Brodie Foster Hubbard.
Marvel Comics
Around the time Bendis began Sam and Twitch, his friend David Mack began working for Joe Quesada's Marvel Knights imprint, of which Bendis himself was a fan. Based on Bendis' work on Jinx, Quesada invited him to pitch ideas for Marvel Knights, which included a planned, but ultimately unproduced Nick Fury story.
Marvel Comics President Bill Jemas, on the recommendation of Quesada, hired Bendis to write Ultimate Spider-Man, which debuted in 2000, and was specifically targeted to the new generation of comic readers. Bendis adapted the 11-page origin story of Peter Parker from 1962's Amazing Fantasy #15 into a seven issues story arc, with Peter Parker becoming the titular hero after the fifth issue, making the book a bestseller, often surpassing in sales those of the mainstream Marvel universe title Amazing Spider-Man. The Bendis/Bagley partnership of 110 consecutive issues made their partnership one of the longest in American comic book history, and the longest run by a Marvel creative team, beating out Stan Lee and Jack Kirby on Fantastic Four. Bendis continues to write every issue, adapting mainstream storylines and characters into their Ultimate counterparts.
Bendis subsequently wrote other books in the Ultimate line, including Ultimate Marvel Team-Up, which Bendis himself pitched to Marvel as a follow-up to his success on Ultimate Spider-Man, as well as Ultimate Fantastic Four, Ultimate X-Men, Ultimate Origin and Ultimate Six.
Quesada also offered Bendis and Mack the writing chores on Daredevil, which he took over from Mack in 2001, writing most of the subsequent 55 issues until 2006. 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' name is one of the names used for boxers mentioned by a corrupt boxing manager in the 2003 Daredevil movie.
Also launched in 2001 under Marvel's non-Comics Code R-rated MAX imprint was Bendis' Alias, which featured former-superhero Jessica Jones operating as a private investigator. The series ran for 28 issues before many of the characters moved to Bendis' mainstream Marvel Universe series The Pulse. All 28 issues were collected in one volume in April 2006.
In 2004 Powers moved to Marvel's creator-owned imprint Icon, where it was relaunched as Powers Vol. 2 alongside another ex-Image series, David Mack's Kabuki.
That same year, Bendis oversaw the closing issues The Avengers as part of the crossover storyline "Avengers Disassembled". This led directly to the Bendis-helmed relaunch of one version of the eponymous team in the pages of New Avengers. Bendis work on this storyline included the death of Avenger Hawkeye, which proved controversial.
In 2005, with artist Olivier Coipel, Bendis wrote the X-Men crossover, "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 Mighty Avengers with Frank Cho in 2007.
Bendis also wrote Secret War, which was serialized between 2004 and 2005. It has been stated that the series, which is not connected to a similarly-titled 1984 series, serves as a prelude to the 2008 event Secret Invasion.
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, and his writing "Dark Reign", a series that would launch his Dark Avengers.
Bendis launched Spider-Woman in 2009, the first comic book to be offered simultaneously on the Internet and in comic stores.
Bendis is currently writing the ongoing Avengers and New Avengers "Heroic Age" relaunches. Bendis launched Scarlet with artist Alex Maleev, his first creator owned comic book in over a decade.
In addition to his primary work for comics, Bendis has produced written work in several other media, such as video games, TV and film.
Bendis was the co-executive producer and series-pilot writer for Mainframe Entertainment's 2003 CGI animated Spider-Man show, The New Animated Series that aired on MTV and YTV, which features a college-aged Peter Parker, and was written to tie-into the then-unreleased 2002 film Spider-Man. The pilot episode Bendis wrote became the third episode aired. His dismay at being credited for something written by someone else, and the multitude corporations and legal departments involved in the animation process soured him on the show.
Bendis' video game work includes Activision's Ultimate Spider-Man video game, which Bendis wrote. His film work includes the screenplay adaptation of A.K.A. Goldfish for Miramax, and the screenplay adaptation of Jinx for Universal Pictures.
Bendis also teaches a course on writing graphic novels at Portland State University. Among the works he employs as teaching guides are the works of Scott McCloud and Will Eisner.
Bendis met his future wife Alisa in 1995 through the Cleveland chapter of the Hillel Foundation, where Alisa worked and Bendis was a staff illustrator. The two were married within a year. Alisa Bendis runs the business end of JINXWORLD, 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. They have a daughter.
