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Brian Michael Bendis
Writer Brian Michael Bendis has reshaped the comic book industry with his work on Daredevil, Ultimate Spider-Man and New Avengers. SciFiNow chats to the long-time Marvel devotee...
How and why did you get into the comic book industry?
Well, it sounds a bit goofy, but I was making comics when I was about five-years old. I was one of those guys who decided that he wanted to make comics, no matter what I found out about the industry, or the reality of the job. Nothing dissuaded me. I don’t know what you’d call that kind of person, but I have very specific memories of making elaborate comic books – Marvel comics, mostly. When my brother and me were in grade school, we made the comics and sold them after school, for a quarter, so we were actually in the comic book business at a young age. You know that feeling you get when you read a really great comic book? Giving that feeling is a thousand times as good. It’s a very addictive and unique experience. That’s what I wanted to do. I would read a book with George Pérez or Howard Chaykin’s name on it, and think: “That’s it. I want to do what they do.” The next step was to work, tooth and nail, until I got here.
Is it true you used to make radio shows with your brother, putting on the voices of Marvel characters?
Yeah, that was on the internet [quite recently]. Do you remember they used to have those comics, with records?
That’s a little bit before our time, but yes...
[Laughs] That’s before they had MP4s! They used to have records, with Star Trek and the Fantastic Four on, that were a little bit like radio shows, but you could read along with it. We had other comics we liked, that didn’t have records, so we would take our toys and do all the voices and make our own show. There was this Fantastic Four one we were doing where, at the end of the story, Reed and Sue were kissing, so I would kiss my hand and say “Oh, Reed!” in Sue’s voice. My mom would hear the kissing, and thought that me and my brother were making out in the name of art [laughs]. We were like, what are you talking about? That’s a very true story, and I’m sure many people will read this and think: “Wow, that’s nerdy”.
It certainly proves you’re in the right business, anyway.
Yeah. People on the internet say stuff about me using comics as a stepping-stone, but I’m here. This is it. This is the goal. I don’t care about the budget, or anything. I just want to write X-Men! With movies and television, people are like: “If you get 70 per cent of what you wrote in there, it’s considered an A.” Well, no, it’s considered a C! That’s why everything sucks.
Due to the structure of your writing, do you think it’s better read in trade form, rather than the single-issue format?
I don’t aim for it, but I can totally see it. There was an inherent language to comics, from the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties, where there was no such thing as a trade paperback. When people read an issue of Marvel Team-Up, for example, they were only going to read it in that issue of Marvel Team-Up. There were a lot of good things about this, but there was also a lot of exposition-filled nonsense, that was just poor writing. Every generation is desperate to mature the medium to another level and, for us, the trade paperback market had just hit its watership mark, which hasn’t slowed down at all. There’s a great many people who only read the comics in trade paperback. I really do follow the Stan Lee cliffhanger philosophy, in wanting the reader to come back [next issue], but I write for both formats.
The book format must allow for more experimentation, though. There was an entire issue of Ultimate Spider-Man where we’d see Aunt May at the psychiatrist’s. That’s loose, compared to the olden days, right?
The funny thing with that issue is that I wrote it for myself. That was written as a writing exercise, to figure out Aunt May as a character, as well as her dimensions. It wasn’t intended to be published. I sat on it for two years, but we were sitting pretty on sales at the time. I was itching to publish it, thinking that I’ve really got to get it out there, and not be scared of it. It was like, “Here’s the Aunt May issue, kids!” My first instinct was to not publish it, but this was incorrect. Maybe I needed to wait. If I’d have published it in the early part of Ultimate Spider-Man’s lifespan, everybody would’ve said, “Are we going to have an issue with Aunt May, every year? Jesus Christ!” There was a better place in the story for it.
Talking of Ultimate Spider-Man, you ended a record-breaking, 111-issue run with artist Mark Bagley in 2007. What’s it like to work with his replacement, Stuart Immonen, and how do you feel it has affected the comic overall?
The difference is as you see. They’re two completely different people, but they’re both equal as peers, in both their professionalism as well as in their storytelling abilities. What we didn’t want to do when Bagley left was two things: firstly, we didn’t want a Bagley clone, because that would’ve been insulting and a disaster. I didn’t want to be like one of those guys who breaks up with a girl, but only starts dating people that look like that girl. Secondly, it had to be somebody who could handle the workload: Stuart submits a page of art a day. It’s spectacular. It should be a lesson to his peers, who don’t seem to be able to get in a page a week. The book hasn’t missed a beat. In the recent ‘Amazing Friends’ arc, people seemed to have been totally won over. We’re getting the best reviews we’ve gotten in years.
With Mark Bagley going to DC, is this the last collaboration we’ll see for a while?
I’ve just started missing Mark now. We’ve gone right from Ultimate Spider-Man to the Spider-Man 3 DVD comic we did, to Mighty Avengers and then a special Spider-Man project that we’ve not announced yet. There’s another few Bagley issues in the can, which are really special. Now he’s left. Now I’m sad. I’m waiting for the time, 20 years from now, where the editor-in-chief of Marvel hires us out of nostalgia, when we’re way past our prime…
Do you feel that the Ultimate universe has become too convoluted, or can a new reader still dive in?
I think you can. The comic language used in the Ultimate Universe has been poured onto all aspects of mainstream comics. The recap page, for example. There’s a lot of stuff there that has influenced the main Marvel universe. I know the shiny newness is off the penny but, at the same time, we get these trade paperback numbers that are just gargantuan. We know that there’s a great many comics readers that only buy from bookshops now. Ultimate Spider-Man is still a pretty giant gateway book for Marvel.
Let’s talk about Secret Invasion. Why is it not just another event comic? What have you learnt since doing House Of M in 2005?
I’ve learned an awful lot. You know, it’s weird how the perception of the event comic can change in just two years. House Of M was almost an earlier type of event comic, if you understand my meaning. The difference is that I hoped to craft it better – I didn’t want to put on a big show or anything. It was story first. It was only after I presented the story that it was decided – by my bosses, but I was easily convinced – that this should be the big summer hoo-hah. The overall, reaching story device is the Skrull stealing the identities of these heroes, so I wanted to keep it down low. I thought I’d done my events, you know what I mean? I thought it was [Jeph] Loeb’s turn, or something.
Is there anything that you’ve tried to pitch to Marvel in the past that was shot down for being too crazy?
I can’t think of anything… Yeah, there’s been stuff that’s been rejected, but I have this tendency to not let things go. I’ve never pitched an event that’s been shot down. There’s a storyline I want to do in Ultimate Spider-Man now that’s a little mature, which I got tentative approval on. I don’t want to ruin it, yet, but yeah; people have this impression that I can do whatever I want, but that’s not the case. Joe [Quesada, editor-in-chief] is particularly hard on me as a peer, and as a boss. He cares a great deal about my work and me doing the best I can. I need Marvel to let me know if I’m f*cking it up, and Skrulls was a hard sell to Joe. That wasn’t a genre that he was particularly keen on. This is his tenure as editor-in-chief, after all. If you can convince him that this is a kick-ass thing to do, you can convince anybody.
How do you feel about the reaction to the ‘One More Day’ storyline in Spider-Man comics? Do you think it’s something that’ll pay off in the future?
It already has paid off. Dan Slott showed everyone that a great Spider-Man storyline can be made out of this. Listen, having been in the centre of an internet hurricane a couple of times in my life, it feels like madness when it’s going on – then, it suddenly feels like the hurricane is gone. It’s hard to say… you know, I really don’t have much to do with it. My version of this is when Hawkeye bought it [in Avengers Disassembled], and a monsoon hit me in the face. I don’t regret it at all, and as time goes on, you see the internet reaction change. Internet hysteria does not match reader reaction; that would be my perception of ‘One More Day’, as well.
You write upwards of four books a month. How do you do that, without burning out?
I write one a week, more or less. There are couple of reasons that I don’t burn out. Firstly, burning out and writer’s block, they’re just mental illnesses. Secondly, I feel that I accomplish something by writing. When I’m not writing, it’s something else. It’s not like I become a monster, but I don’t feel good. I’m way ahead of my deadlines on most things, and that gets me away from any sort of pressure, or any of the other negative things that come with writing on a schedule. Right now, as we’re talking, I’m seven months ahead on Ultimate Spider-Man, so I could literally go five months without writing it, if I chose to. I went almost a whole year without writing Daredevil while I was working on Daredevil. I was so far ahead, I didn’t need to write it. I went away from Daredevil for a very long time, so to me there are almost two completely separate runs in there. Since about 1999, I’ve been writing four titles at a time. Keeping ahead of the game is a big part of being able to do it.
Do you ever look at your creator-owned work, like Powers, and think that it needs an endpoint?
Well, I’ve never had to end anything. I was lucky, even though it didn’t make me any money, that Jinx and Goldfish ended of their own accord. Powers is a different animal. It’s a procedural, but there is an ending for Powers. We’re nowhere near it right now, but it’s not so much that it has to end; it’s more like we don’t have to go on forever. I am of a BBC mindset, in that a couple of series is all you really need.
You assume that the BBC is all we know...
No! [Laughs] It sounds like I’m talking down to you, but I see The Office as being perfect in length. It’s really all you needed. I ran up against this feeling organically, when I was doing Alias. It was like, “Shit! It’s over!” I didn’t even realise I was writing the end of it until I got to the last page. I handed it in, called Joe, and said: "I think I’m done! That’s weird!"
Speaking of Alias, will Jessica Jones ever get her own series again?
Yeah, maybe. I can’t say much, because I don’t want to ruin Secret Invasion.
What’s the status of Alter Ego, the long-mooted TV adaptation of the comic?
Dead. DEAD! You know, it was a very good experience for me. I enjoyed writing that pilot an awful lot, but nobody enjoyed reading it. We were in development long before Heroes came out, and everyone involved thought it was a slam-dunk mixture of genres, but they had no interest in it whatsoever. It really got tossed right in the garbage. When Heroes broke, I remember one of the producers cut a note to the guys at Fox, and went: "Man, you had it!" It happens. But hey, one day, who knows.
With Jessica Jones, you created a new character that just slotted right into the Marvel universe. Was doing that a childhood desire of yours?
That’s always a lot of fun, to add a toy to the toybox. To find a genuinely unique character that isn’t just like Spider-Man, or like Batman, is really something else. The really rewarding thing is when other writers use those characters. In New Avengers #4, I created Maria Hill, and she started popping up in everyone’s comics. I was like, “Yeah! Maria!” Originally, Alias was supposed to be a Jessica Drew (Spider-Woman) series, but the story I wanted to tell didn’t really match up to Jessica Drew’s background as I’d hoped it would. A new character was created who could fit in without it feeling like one of those horrible retcons. Here she is now, appearing in all of these big Marvel events – it’s kind of cool, considering where she came from.
What is the status of your film projects?
Well, Jinx is written and is cooking at Fox, but there’s nothing to announce or anything. Torso, though, looks the healthiest right now. I was lucky enough to have lunch with David Fincher a month ago, in LA, and I’m a huge fan of him. It was all about Torso… it really looks like he may do it. If that is actually happening, I would go see this movie, regardless of it being a book I worked on. This is a David Fincher movie: I’d go see that! So, that’s really exciting. On the other hand, I was recently hired by HBO to do a pilot for them, which I just handed in, so we’ll see what happens there.
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