Brian Michael Bendis helped define the modern Marvel voice, then carried the same crime-comics instincts into creator-owned work through Powers, Torso, and JINXWORLD.
Known for: Miles Morales, Jessica Jones, Ultimate Spider-Man, Into the Spider-Verse
When I was 12 years old, Walt Simonson did that to me and he completely changed my life. He did not have to. He just absolutely stopped what he was doing and took me seriously for a few minutes. And that was it. I was in comics.
Brian Michael Bendis on Splash Pages Comic Book Club Splash Pages interview March 8, 2026
Bendis started in crime comics — Torso, Powers, Jinx — before Marvel gave him Ultimate Spider-Man in 2000. That book ran 160 issues. When he eventually took over the main title, he killed Peter Parker and replaced him with Miles Morales, a kid from Brooklyn who nobody knew yet. Miles now has an Oscar-winning animated franchise. That’s not nothing.
The Jessica Jones story started with Alias, a Marvel MAX book Bendis launched with Michael Gaydos in 2001. Jessica was a burned-out ex-superhero working private investigation, living on the margins of a universe full of people in capes. The character drifted around for years before the Netflix show turned her into a household name. Bendis won a Peabody for that one.
For close to two decades he was one of Marvel’s main architects. Avengers, New Avengers, the big event books — House of M, Secret Invasion, Age of Ultron. Then in 2018 he moved to DC, which genuinely surprised people. He took on Superman, launched Young Justice, and co-created Naomi with David F. Walker and Jamal Campbell.
He’s still at Dark Horse through JINXWORLD, back in crime and sci-fi with collaborators like Alex Maleev. In 2026 he returned to Marvel for Avengers #800 — his first Marvel work since 2018. His newsletter is at jinxworld.com.
The first arc with Miles as Spider-Man. Bendis set up the handoff across dozens of issues and sticks the landing here — Miles's world, his family, and what being Spider-Man actually costs him. Start here if you haven't read Miles.
This is where Jessica Jones was born. A private investigator in the Marvel universe who wants nothing to do with superheroes. Bendis and Gaydos built one of the most distinctive voices in superhero comics. The Netflix show lifted this almost directly.
The one that started everything. Stan Lee and Steve Ditko told Peter Parker’s origin in 11 pages in 1962. Bendis took that same story and gave it room to breathe — seven issues of high school, family, accident, consequence. If you’ve ever wondered what it would look like to take superhero comics seriously as a storytelling medium, this is the answer. Mark Bagley draws it like a movie.
A true crime graphic novel about Eliot Ness's most famous unsolved case — a serial killer in Depression-era Cleveland. Bendis's crime roots before he was a superhero writer. Reading this alongside the episode is worth it.
The run that made Bendis and Maleev a team. Street-level crime noir, Wilson Fisk's fall and return, and Matt Murdock's identity exposed to the press. Widely considered one of the best Daredevil runs ever. If you haven't read it, start here.
