WHEN BRIAN MICHAEL
Bendis was 5, he drew
a picture of Spider-Man
of which he was very
proud. Naturally, he immediately
wanted to show it off to his father. But
instead of promptly posting the draw
ing on the fridge, Papa Bendis felt
compelled to question Spidey’s curi
ously distorted anatomy. Why was
sese, and Quentin Tarantino. Bendis’
hyper-stylized panels flow like movie
scenes. The dialogue is effusively natu
ralistic, and the black-and-white art is
so inky, it all but stains your fingers.
Come fall, this Renoir of noir brings
his hard-boiled style of storytelling to
Marvel Comics’ Spider-Man (Mark
Bagley and Art Thibert will handle the
drawing). Though his work to date has
been decidedly adult, Bendis swears he
can do adolescence: “I haven’t really
written anything from my teenage neu
roses yet,” says Bendis, 33, who was
“roughly the size of a Smurf” until
age 17. “But [the neuroses] I got are
definitely in the realm of what’s
one arm so much bigger
than the other? “’Cause,”
Bendis huffed, “that’s
where he keeps his webs!”
He then stomped off.
“That,” laughs Bendis,
“was the precursor for a
lot of my career.”
In fact, Bendis’ theme
song could be Frank Sina
tra’s “My Way,” since doing
it his way has paid off in
spades. The fast-talking
Cleveland-based writer/
artist has emerged as one of
the most distinctive voices
in comics—a purveyor of
critically acclaimed crime
fiction that marks him as
the funny-pages descendant
of Sam Fuller, Martin Scor
JINX
BRIAN! , ,
MICHAEL
BENDIS p
FRAME G.RABBER
Bendis and baby
T
3
Hard-Boiled
Egghead
By setting his vividly noir tales at the dark end of
the street, comics auteur BRIAN MICHAEL BEND1S
proves that crime does pay. BY JEFF JENSEN