Brian Michael Bendis: The Marvel Years
by Phil Perich for the Capes and Lunatics Blog
This past week the BIG news hit the internet: long time and prolific Marvel Comics writer Brian Michael Bendis announced his upcoming departure from Marvel Comics when he signed a contract with rival DC Comics. Why was this so shocking? When you think about the man and his career, he has influenced much of what Marvel has done in the last 2 decades.
With Great Power…
Bendis’s mainstream Marvel career began when he was hired to write the new Ultimate Spider-Man series which launched Marvel’s Ultimate line in 2000. Set in an alternate universe, the Ultimate line featured modern retellings of some of Marvel’s classic heroic tales, including Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Avengers (named the Ultimates in this universe), the Fantastic Four and more. And while Bendis wrote all of the Ultimate characters at one point or another, he is most known for his run on Ultimate Spider-Man. His 111 issue collaborative run with artist Mark Bagley set an industry record. And then in 2011 Bendis made history again when he apparently killed off that universe’s Peter Parker and made a young boy named Miles Morales the new Spider-Man. And while the Ultimate universe was eventually destroyed in the Secret Wars event, Miles still survives, thrives and works alongside Peter Parker in the main Marvel Universe.
And There Came A Day…
In 2004, Bendis would reboot the Avengers franchise when he destroyed the team during the Avengers Disassembled event that ran through the Avengers book and all the solo members books. But from the ashes rose the New Avengers team. Bends would have Captain America and Iron Man build an original Avengers team with members that had never been full time Avengers before including fan favorites Spider-Man and Wolverine. He also returned Luke Cage and the original Spider-Woman Jessica Drew to the mainstream Marvel Universe for the new team. And in the aftermath of the original Civil War event, the Avengers franchise grew to include multiple Avengers teams including the New Avengers, Mighty Avengers, and even the Dark Avengers which was Norman Osborn as the Iron Patriot leading a team of villains posing as heroes, an evolution of the Thunderbolts model. Several classic heroes, some of who had been thought dead were returned to the Marvel universe during Bendis’s Secret Invasion event where the alien shapeshifting Skrulls had infiltrated the superhero community. Bendis also used the Age of Ultron miniseries to introduce the Neil Gaiman character Angela who had previously appeared in the Image Comic Spawn. Gaiman had sold the rights to Marvel after a court battle with Todd Mcfarlane.
Come As You Are…
Anyone here love all the Marvel Netflix series? Me too! Bendis had a huge influence on most of those characters and their stories. As i said before, Bendis had brought Luke Cage back to prominence in the New Avengers series, but in 2001 Bendis would write an original comic series named Alias where he would create the character of Jessica Jones. Jones was a private investigator just like in the Netflix series and also shared a dark history with the Purple Man, but in the comic Bendis would also retroactively write Jessica into the historic early years of Marvel Comics. And in 2006, Bendis took over writing duties for Daredevil, where very early on in his run Bendis would have a New York City tabloid newspaper out Matt Murdock as the “Man Without Fear”. The events of that would haunt Matt Murdock for almost ten years before writer Charles Soule would use the Purple Man and his children to give Matt his secret identity back.
Hello Kitty
After his run on the Avengers books, Bendis went on to write more team books. Taking some of the characters from Dan Abnett’s Guardians of the Galaxy run, Bendis would forge the team that the public is familiar with today from the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies. During this series, Bendis teamed Star-Lord and his crew with Tony Stark and later brought in the aforementioned Angela. Bendis also breathed new life into the mutants of the Marvel Universe with the All New X-Men series where he had the Hank McCoy of the present day bring his younger counterpart and his teammates from their first days as X-Men forward in time. Between that and present day Cyclops skirting the line between proactive hero and mutant terrorist, Bendis shook up the X-Men Universe. And after months of working as a teacher for the young time displaced X-Men, Kitty Pryde met and fell in love with Star-Lord. Bendis’s next Guardians of the Galaxy series opened with Kitty Pryde leading a new team of Guardians that including Venom and Ben Grimm the Thing.
The Iron Age
Even though Bendis wrote Iron Man on a monthly basis in the various Avengers books, he didn’t get a crack at Iron Man’s solo adventures until 2015. Not one to shy away from history making story arcs, Bendis once again took what came before and built upon it when he revealed the identity of Tony Stark’s biological mother, Amanda Armstrong a singer who gained famed after working part time for Shield. Not too long after that reveal, Bendis put Stark into a mysterious coma at the end of Civil War II. At that point two different characters attempted to fill the void left by Iron Man’s absence. Bendis created character Riri Williams, the 15 year old prodigy who would create her own version of Iron Man’s armor and operate as the hero Ironheart and the (supposedly) reformed villain Doctor Doom who sought redemption as the self appointed predecessor of Tony Stark, the Infamous Iron Man.
So in summation, what is the legacy (so far) of Mister Brian Michael Bendis? Teller of fantastic stories? Creator of fresh and powerful characters, many of whom are women and/or people of color, something comics were lacking for many years? This blog only scratched the surface of his accomplishments to this point. From the series Powers that became a show on the Playstation network, to his Spider-Woman and Moon Knight series (two of my favorites), Bendis has had a long and distinguished career and I can’t wait to see what he creates at DC Comics.
What are YOUR thoughts on the announcement and what books do you want to see Brian Michael Bendis write for DC Comics? Let me know!
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