Brian Michael Bendis, creator of some of the most popular Marvel characters of the 21 century (Miles Morales, Jessica Jones, Iron Heart), proprietor of his own Jinxworld story universe, co-creator of Powers and author of best-selling young adult graphic novel series, is tackling a more modest topic in his latest work Fortune and Glory: The Musical, due out January 21 from Dark Horse Books: his own journey through the world of comics.
Fortune and Glory: The Musical, drawn by Bill Walko, is nominally about Bendis's involvement in an early effort to produce Spider-Man as a Broadway musical, which eventually became the notorious production Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. But over the course of its 144 pages, it traces the arc of GenX comic fans who watched comics evolve from nerd subculture to the engine of the entertainment industry, and gives us a front row seat to the series of events that propelled a kid from Cleveland to the highest heights of the comics business.
"I had a mission for what I wanted to do in these space and I got to do most of it, so it's hard for me to see that as anything but a giant blessing," said Bendis in a recent phone interview. "Before the Internet, before everything you'd ever want to read or know was instantly available, we had to nerd out and obsess and dig around if you wanted to know how to make comics. It turned me into what I wanted to become."
Bendis, today best known as a writer, went to art school to prepare for a career drawing comics, and plied his trade as artist, writer and occasional letterer and colorist for smaller publishers through most of the 1990s, including doing some creator-owned projects. In the early 2000s, with Marvel Comics still reeling from near-bankruptcy, he got the proverbial call to the big leagues from editor Joe Quesada, who asked him to take over writing Daredevil, but not-so-gently recommended that he leave his art ambitions behind.
"He said flat out the art is not good. In that moment, I was like, 'are you are jerk or are you a good friend?'" Bendis recalls, noting that it turned out to be the latter. It was also a good business decision, because Bendis's work caught on quickly with fans, and he soon found himself relaunching the company's flagship title Spider-Man as part of an initiative by then-Marvel President Bill Jemas to reinvent the characters for the modern age. His Ultimate Spider-Man became an instant gigantic hit, setting the stage for Marvel's resurgence in the early 2000s. His work on that and other Ultimate titles laid the narrative foundations for the MCU, a project in which he was involved from the very beginning.
It was in the glow of that early success that Bendis got embroiled in the centerpiece of Fortune and Glory: The Musical: an invitation to work on a Broadway musical adaptation of Spider-Man to be directed by Julie Taymor (fresh off her success with The Lion King), with music by Bono. It seemed like the kind of thing he should say yes to, despite some immediate misgivings about the creative direction of the project and his entire lack of experience doing anything related to musical theater. Hilarity ensued, and, forgive the spoilers, things did not end up the way everyone may have wanted.
The story is specifically about Bendis's own experience, but it was also typical of the approach that many outside the publishing industry took to adapting comics before the MCU showed them the way. "The lessons over and over again are that the people who succeed deeply respect the medium they are adapting," he said. "As soon as you hear the words 'IP' or 'content,' just walk away because something bad is gonna happen."
In the years that followed, Bendis had a chance to do things the right way both in the pages of Spider-Man, which he wrote for over 15 years, and in the onscreen adaptations of characters he created for Marvel, notably Miles Morales in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, SHIELD agent Maria Hill in the MCU and ABC's Marvel's Agents of SHIELD, and Jessica Jones in three seasons of the edgy Netflix series in the mid-2010s.
Bendis says he's especially proud of the latter, because of the respect the producers had for the essence of the character even as they brought the story into a different medium. "The filmmakers were able to get across the trauma of her life in ways that were very healing to people who experienced something like it. The reaction was overwhelming and came back to us from every direction. When you achieve something like that, you want to chase it, because it's a great feeling. And so when I'm in situations where people are developing or adapting things, I can feel them asking the right or wrong questions, and I will gently guide them where I can. I'm not saying the comic book people know all the answers, but there's a lesson in our experience that people might want to keep an eye on."
Unlike many creators in the history of comics who left with a bad taste in their mouth after creating valuable IP for employers under work-for-hire contracts, Bendis felt like he went into the situation with his eyes open and received enough benefits from his experience at Marvel to make the deal worthwhile.
"A bunch of creators left stunned and angry and frustrated over the years and some of them are absolutely 100% correct in their space," he said. "I took those lessons that were yelled at us since we were kids. I walked in with my lawyer, and my wife, who actually knows how to run a business, and we said look, I'll create this for you, but here's the deal. And so on certain things I've created for Marvel, they take care of me. Other things, I just put them in the toybox and other people have benefited the way I benefited from the stuff that [Spider-Man co-creator] Steve Ditko invented."
Partly out of Bendis's respect for Marvel's ownership of the IP, and partly for humorous effect, Fortune and Glory: The Musical is full of fake Post-It notes from editor Daniel Chabon, imploring Bendis to cover up depictions of trademarked Marvel characters, imagery and logos.
"A bunch of creators left stunned and angry and frustrated over the years and some of them are absolutely 100% correct in their space," he said. "I took those lessons that were yelled at us since we were kids. I walked in with my lawyer, and my wife, who actually knows how to run a business, and we said look, I'll create this for you, but here's the deal. And so on certain things I've created for Marvel, they take care of me. Other things, I just put them in the toybox and other people have benefited the way I benefited from the stuff that [Spider-Man co-creator] Steve Ditko invented."
Partly out of Bendis's respect for Marvel's ownership of the IP, and partly for humorous effect, Fortune and Glory: The Musical is full of fake Post-It notes from editor Daniel Chabon, imploring Bendis to cover up depictions of trademarked Marvel characters, imagery and logos.
In the mid-2010s, Bendis decided to capitalize on the acclaim and readership he'd built at Marvel to launch his own line of titles under the banner JinxWorld, which he originally took to Marvel's rival DC, but eventually brought to Dark Horse, a publisher he had long admired.
"I came from independent comics, so it's always been the 'home business' for me," he said. "I like making comics with my friends and exploring ideas that I like." He said his Jinxworld line at Dark Horse features several new graphic novels done in collaboration with artist Alex Maleev, as well as a new book called Masterpiece, which he described as a multi-generational family heist drama, and another called The Ones with Jacob Edgar, exploring the fictional "Chosen One" trope he has always found amusing.
Bendis, who teaches comics at Portland State University, also found time to contribute to the booming YA graphic novel scene with a series called Phenomena drawn by André Lima Araújo, from Abrams. He says a few option deals are in the works, but has learned enough from his years in the entertainment industry to not talk about it as "real" until you're actually watching it.
"God bless Miles; he opens up a lot of doors, and people take some of the stuff very seriously when we bring it to them, so that's pretty cool," he said.
Alas, his current projects do not include any Broadway musicals.
Fortune and Glory: The Musical by Brain Michael Bendis, illustrated by Bill Walko, from Dark Horse Books, is available January 21, 2025.