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Pretty interesting read from the Free Times for comic nerds:
BOLDED FOR TRUTH! Hitoler know it. I know it. EFF DREW CAREY!
Ulitimate Bendis: How A Jewish Kid From Cleveland Became the Hottest Name In Comics
Articles / On The Cover
Posted by Webmaster on Jan 24, 2006 - 11:23 PM
By James Renner
TWO WEEKS AGO IN GOTHAM CITY
A bald thirtysomething man sits at a conference table with his colleagues, mapping out the fate of the universe. Marvels universe, that is. Domain of the X-Men, the Avengers, Dare Devil, Luke Cage, the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man, to name a few. These are Marvel Comics top writers. Its their job to decide how to ***** with everyones favorite superheroes in 2006.
The smooth-scalped man, the one who looks like Professor Charles Xaviers illegitimate son thats Brian Michael Bendis. Currently, he writes Ultimate Spider-Man. Hes just finished a legendary run on Dare Devil. And his passion project a true-crime graphic novel set in his hometown of Cleveland is about to be made into a big-budget movie.
He and the other nerds around the table begin to talk. The mood becomes more excited. More animated. In the middle of the fray, a new idea emerges, one that will change the destiny of mutants and men forever. What if a fear-mongering government enacted a superhero registration act, forcing all masked avengers to reveal their identities to the feds? All-out comic civil war, of course.
It was really like a retarded version of Twelve Angry Men, says Bendis, recalling the meeting upon his return home. Twelve comic writers in a room arguing about the future of comics. It really is the House of Ideas. Marvel is as fun as you want it to be.
FLASHBACK NEARLY A QUARTER CENTURY TO A SMALL BEDROOM IN UNIVERSITY HEIGHTS
where a wispy-haired 14-year-old toils over a hand-drawn comic version of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Hes wise enough already to know that Marvels official adaptation sucks. But 40 pages into his own take, he hasnt even gotten to directed by Stephen Spielberg. Its his first lesson in pacing.
Though Bendis mother allowed him to spend his summer days at Kovacs Comics, the rabbis at the Hebrew Academy of Cleveland and Mesivta High looked on at his character sketches with bemused disdain. The only time his skill was embraced was when hed draw caricatures at bar mitzvahs. It was the lowest form of art, drawing drunk people, complains Bendis. Id be drawing some woman, and her drunk husband would come up to me and say stuff like, Dont forget her mustache! I hated it. I really did.
At 19, Bendis enrolled in the Cleveland Institute of Art and worked part-time at Super City Comics downtown. It was difficult to convince the fine arts faculty to let him draw comics for independent study. Nothing of the sort had been approved before. But after months of pestering, they relented. During production of Parts of a Whole, an illustrated collection of short stories, Bendis first realized his strengths and limitations. Much like Peter Parker, his talents had to be slowly tested and understood.
I knew my drawing skills were very poor, says Bendis. But I discovered writing was coming easier to me.
Jim Williams noticed as well. Williams was the manager at Super City Comics during Bendiss employ. Whenever they worked together, Bendis would show Williams his new panels. Thought-bubbles populated the pages at weird intervals, wrapping around characters like some back-page Highlights for Children puzzle.
Conversations in Bendiss comics did not simply move the story forward, they felt real. People interrupted each other. Slang abounded. Profanity ruled. Complete sentences were shunned.
A lot of time, dialogue can be tedious, explains Williams, who now owns Comic Heaven in Willoughby. But hes strong. When he had Spider-Man and Captain America talking together, you believed it.
Bendis sold homemade copies of Parts of a Whole at Super City Comics. Later, he sold a graphic novel about Amazon women, Quiver.
Im extremely grateful to those people who bought it, says Bendis. But I dont want to talk about those comics. Theyre not good.
The first comic he will discuss is Fire, which follows the adventures of a young man recruited by the CIA to become a spy. Bendis was inspired by the Bob Woodward book Veil, a true account of the spy agency during Reagans administration. It scared the shit out of me, Bendis recalls.
Fire was followed closely by AKA Goldfish, a dark-as-midnight thriller featuring a grifter named David Gold who returns to town to claim his son. The artwork is layered with real photography of Clevelands underbelly, providing a sense of hyper-realism. Bendis perfected this process in the sequel, Jinx.
Caliber Press, an independent comic book publisher, distributed Goldfish and Jinx to stores nationwide. In return, Bendis got his first royalties. I would get $90 checks, Bendis recalls. It was sad, but I didnt care. Goldfish made just enough to break even.
To supplement his Super City salary, measly royalties and annoying bar mitzvah caricature gigs, Bendis pimped for American Greetings. For a while, he drew a line of Strawberry Shortcake birthday cards. He also sketched advertising placards for Bernie Shulmans discount stores (now known as Marcs).
In 1993, Bendis traveled to a comics convention in Chicago to promote his Caliber books. It was there he befriended a 19 -year-old artist named David Mack, another Caliber creator, who would play an integral role in shaping the rest of his life.
ITS NIGHTTIME AND SNOW FALLS SILENTLY
ONTO AN EMPTY ROAD
when suddenly a beat-to-shit compact car swerves into view. Behind the wheel is David Mack, a handsome Gen-Xer with dark hair. A scarf is wrapped around his head. Mucus hangs from his nose, periodically flinging about the interior. The car has no heat, no radio. In the passenger seat sits Bendis, similarly bundled against the cold. Its 1995, and the two friends are returning from a convention in Canton, but the snowstorm outside has other plans. A moment later, the car careens off the highway and into a snow bank.
Mack and Bendis climb out of the only working door and begin to push the vehicle back onto the road. Mack wonders if their luck will ever change.
After their meeting in Chicago, Mack and Bendis kept in touch over the phone, critiquing each others work, motivating each other to become better artists, better storytellers. Mack taught Bendis how to get past his busy ink stage of over-drawn figures to become more confident with penciling. Bendis taught Mack methods of writing ultra-realistic dialogue. They collaborated on an H.P. Lovecraft Call of Cthulu comic for Caliber. Bendis created art for Macks Caliber comic, Kabuki, before convincing Mack he should do it himself.
They traveled to conventions together often, but Mack always drove. At 28, Bendis did not have a license, preferring to ride his bike. Mack lived in Cincinnati at the time, so it was an extra hour out of the way to lug Bendis from Cleveland to Canton and back in a car that probably wasnt even street-legal.
Slowly, they got back onto the highway, more determined than ever to make a name for themselves, if only to afford a better car for Mack. It is this scene that Mack likes to return to whenever Marvel sends a limo to his house. If each of them knew how soon their careers would take off, they wouldnt have looked so gloomy.
BENDIS Used friends and himself as basis for characters.
MEANWHILE, AT THE DAILY PAPER
In 1997, the editor of the Plain Dealer Sunday Magazine, Anne Gordon, was looking for an artist to illustrate a feature blasting Rock and Roll Hall of Fame co-founder Jann Wenner. She hired Bendis, who was already freelancing for Cleveland Magazine. I had two days to draw six pages, says Bendis. I got it done. And it went over well. Jann Wenner, we heard, rolled it up and threw it at someone.
Plain Dealer brass were so impressed, they hired Bendis to create a new comic strip for their magazine. Breakers became a weekly full-page feature in the Sunday edition at a time when traditional comic strips were losing space in the funny pages.
Breaker was drawn in a cartoony style nothing like his graphic novels and the topics varied from week to week, based on the whim of Bendiss muse. Mostly, it was very local and slightly political, a strange, dialogue-rich editorial cartoon.
Breakers lasted two years. It should have lasted two weeks, says Bendis. I was causing more trouble than I thought.
In fact, the very first Breakers threw the mayors office into a tizzy. Mayor Michael White had just built a multimillion-dollar shorefront bike path that ran from downtown, up MLK, to Case Western Reserves campus, terminating suspiciously close to the mayors own residence. To some, it seemed, White built himself a nice alternate route to work.
I thought it was hilarious that he built this trail to run from his house, says Bendis. So I drew Mike White on a Pee Wee Herman bicycle, riding through the bad section of town. You could tell it was a bad neighborhood, because the bunnies in the drawing had guns. For extra flair, the names of Whites wives were tattooed on his arm, the exes crossed out. Unfortunately, it was an election year, and the Plain Dealer had just endorsed White for reelection.
Oh boy, the shit hit the fan, he says. The mayor was on all the television stations, holding up my comic strip, saying, How dare they! The stations even teased the story on their promos. Some narrator would say, Coming up at 11, the ink with the stink.
A few weeks later, Bendis drew himself and his wife in bed after their Jewish wedding, counting money.
I thought the rule was you can make fun of your own, Bendis explains. But the Anti-Defamation League called. They were not happy. I told them, Come on. Give me a break. Im circumcised. They said not to do it again.
His editor left the paper in 1999, and he was soon asked to follow. Too bad. Later that year, Bendis was awarded his first Eisner the Academy Award for comic writers. Talent Deserving Higher Recognition the award said.
The next day, I was drawing caricatures at a bar mitzvah, quips Bendis. I had to pay the rent.
That same year, Bendis finally finished a new graphic novel a year in the making. It had a one-word title that said it all: Torso.
IN A DINNER THAT WOULD BECOME KNOWN AS THE PASSOVER SEDER OF DESTINY
Bendis, his wife Alisa and an assortment of friends discuss creepy local crime lore. Among the guests is Marc Andreyko, a comic-book writer from Medina. A lanky man with large glasses and a goatee, Andreyko leans forward and asks Bendis if hes ever heard of the Torso Killer.
When Eliot Ness worked here, there was this killer who chopped up a bunch of people, says Andreyko.
Eating here, Alisa interjects.
Eliot Ness was chasing him around, continues Andreyko. It was big, big news at the time.
Eliot Ness versus a serial killer? Thats a goddamn movie, says Bendis.
Yeah, why hasnt it been a movie yet? asks Andreyko. Untouchables made a fortune.
Its Untouchables meets Seven, says Bendis.
For the full story of Torso from inception to Hollywood, pick up Fortune and Glory, Bendiss satirical look at his experiences with Tinseltown. Suffice it to say, Bendis and Andreyko spent a considerable amount of time researching this part of Clevelands history and adapting it as a black-and-white graphic novel.
By the time it was finished in 1999, major Hollywood studios were competing for the right to option the book, and Bendis and Andreyko flew out to LA to pitch the project. At one such meeting, a smarmy executive tried to convince them that Paramount owned the name Eliot Ness, because Ness was a character from the Untouchables.
Eliot Ness is a real person, countered Bendis.
No, I dont think so, said the exec.
And that was one of the better pitches.
Teen movies were big at the time, explains Andreyko, on the phone from LA. We had people ask, Well, what did Eliot Ness do in high school? So I would say, Well, Eliot Ness and Al Capone actually went to the same school. Capone was captain of the football team and Ness was this little nerd he picked on. And they would say Really? And then I would say, No.
It was then that Todd McFarlane, creator of Spawn and comic-biz legend, contacted Bendis and Andreyko and asked to be a producer on Torso. With McFarlane on board, Miramax pounced. Bendis and Andreyko got their checks and then nothing happened.
BACK IN CLEVELAND, AS DEPRESSION SETS IN
our hero gets a call from old friend David Mack.
At this time, Mack has a plum gig with Marvel, the biggest publisher in comics, writing Dare Devil after Kevin Smiths heralded run. Mack had given copies of Jinx and Torso to Joe Quesada, editor of the Marvel Knights line of comics. Quesada recognized potential.
Quesadas going to call you, Mack tells Bendis.
There are several versions of the conversation that transpired next, like witness statements of some historic event. As Quesada recalls, it went like this: Hey, this is Joe Quesada from Marvel.
Bendis: Hiya.
Quesada: Listen, I have to tell you, you cant draw worth a damn, but youre a fantastic writer.
Quesada laughs, remembering the delivery of this zinger. I think he was a little sore at first, but he got over it. And hes become the best writer in the business. Quesada, in the meantime, has become Marvels editor-in-chief.
So Bendis took over Dare Devil when Mack was through. The underbelly of Hells Kitchen portrayed in his stories mirrored the industrial decay hed studied for years in Ohio.
Marvel also wanted the original comic, Powers, which Bendis had created with Mike Avon Oeming, illustrator for Kevin Smiths Bluntman and Chronic. First distributed through Image Comics, Powers told the story of two homicide detectives assigned to investigate crimes involving superpowers and superheroes. A new imprint, Icon Comics, was created for Powers at Marvel so Bendis and Oeming could retain their rights as creators something unheard of at this level of the business.
Brian kind of had the concept ready before I came to him, says Oeming, of Powers impetus. He knew he couldnt draw it, that his style was not right for it. But I didnt want to do superheroes. Thankfully, I went with it. No matter what I do now, Powers will be written on my tombstone.
Today, each issue of Powers sells roughly 30,000 copies, easily outperforming the majority of books at both Marvel and DC.
In 2000, Quesada contacted Bendis again. This time, Quesada asked him how hed like to rewrite Spider-Man. From the beginning. Marvels Ultimate line would use fresh writers and illustrators to retell the origins of franchise characters.
When I was 8, I talked about Spider-Man all day, says Bendis, still giddy six years and nearly 100 issues later. On Ultimate Spider-Man, Bendis finally earned enough scratch to make a living. No more bar mitzvahs. Spider-Man hit bigger than anything before. Soon after, Marvel offered me a contract. Ive been with them since.
I moved to Portland three years ago. I needed to get away from the Cleveland weather. I was just sick of snow and lake- effect wind. And if youre reading this in Cleveland lake-effect snow is shit, people. They dont have that everywhere. You have to get out of there!
FINALLY, WE RETURN TO THAT CONFERENCE ROOM INSIDE MARVELS NEW YORK OFFICE
Bendis, the bald super-writer, is gathering his things to leave. Hes flying back to Oregon soon. Back to his family.
He owns a car now, much to his chagrin a present from his wife, who manages his home office. Caricatures and the Plain Dealer are only memories now. Hes got this superhero civil war thing to think about. How exactly will it affect the Avengers? Which side will Spiderman be on? This is not mere geek reveling, but business. Even a writer at the top of his game is perplexed by fans and their often-scathing critiques.
You get thousands of people instantly telling you what they think, he says. I know when I hand something in, I cant take shortcuts. Ive won awards for things people ***** hate. And there are things I cant stand that people love. Youre on this constant journey to make things better. You dont want to be the guy that fucks up Spider-Man. Thats a bad call to get.
So far, hes kept his boss happy.
When you look at the best-selling comics in the industry, most of them are Brians, says Joe Quesada. His naturalistic dialogue was not really seen in comics before his arrival. Now, there are a lot of people trying to emulate his style. But most importantly, his work ethic is amazing. I dont think he believes in writers block. He just sits down and writes and writes and writes.
In fact, Bendis is on track to break Marvels record for longest tenure on a single comic. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby co-wrote 103 issues of Fantastic Four. Ultimate Spider #89 hit stores this week.
HAR DEE HAR HAR, BRIAN A Breakers strip of which were especially fond. Really.
Wizard Magazine, an insider zine for extreme comic fans, lists Bendis in their top 10 of contemporary writers. Hes been on the list for two years, says Mike Cotton, senior staff writer for Wizard. Usually hes number one. Hes had a great deal of influence on the industry. People dont know what hes going to do next. He changes the motivations of characters we know. And hes not afraid to kill off characters. He killed Hawkeye about a year ago.
Recently, Miramaxs option on Torso expired and a new pair of producers Don Murphy (Natural Born Killers) and Bill Mechanic (Fight Club) purchased the rights. Because of the Miramax arrangement, though, Bendis and Andreyko cannot write the new script. That duty went to Ehren Kruger (The Ring). And as foreshadowed at the Passover Seder of Destiny, Seven director David Fincher has signed on to make Torso. Mechanic says Fincher loved Bendiss graphic novel.
Heres a great piece of history with a great American icon, Mechanic says from his office at Pandemonium Films. Its kind of the opposite of Untouchables in a way. One makes Ness a star, the other ruins him. This has all the earmarks of being something totally amazing.
Mechanic says much of the movie may be filmed in Cleveland. But deals are still being made. Kruger is still writing. It will likely not happen this year. Last week, rumors circulating online claimed that Matt Damon is being considered to play Ness, and that the movie might be shot in black and white. So, more Sin City than, say, Batman and Robin.
Recounting his rise to the top, Bendis censors himself a few times. He hints at secrets known only to Marvel hotshots, secrets that will have fan boys screaming in ecstasy. But he keeps them safe. If they appear in an article today, its all over the web tomorrow, and then the surprise is ruined.
There is one secret he will divulge the reason he named his Plain Dealer comic strip Breakers.
I lost my virginity on the Lake Erie breakers, says Bendis. Right on those rocks by the water. Cleveland will always have a special place in my heart.
Of course, coming from a man who makes his living writing comic books, any tales of lost virginity should be taken with a grain of salt.
BOLDED FOR TRUTH! Hitoler know it. I know it. EFF DREW CAREY!
