Brian Michael Bendis

Full Transcript

[SPONSOR: Deadly Grounds Coffee — 00:00:07–00:03:40]

Leo [00:03:43]: Hey, hey, happy Tuesday everybody and welcome to Splashgate. We have an amazing schedule for you. Holy crap, what the heck was that? Anyway, okay, we’ll quickly go through the run. Kari, how’s it going?

Kari Sanders [00:03:59]: Going great. Happy St. Paddy’s Day, everybody. Happy Tuesday. Glad to see you all here. We have an amazing show like Leo was saying and we got a lot of people here tonight. So let’s just skip on around and see how our other goth is doing.

Jar Jar Jeremy [00:04:12]: I’m not the other goth, but hey, how’s it going? Happy to see you all. Hi Sophia in the comments. Let’s get to the show.

MJ [00:04:35]: Sorry about that, guys. Really bad windstorms and the internet was out for a bit, but I’m back and we’ve got power even, so I’m really looking forward to tonight’s show.

Leo [00:04:46]: Awesome. Mr. Drew, who do we got with us today?

Drew Mollo [00:04:49]: Well, first things first, everybody — happy St. Patrick’s Day to you all. Here’s a Guinness. Love y’all. All right, so everybody, we geek out a lot at this show. We have a lot of great guests, legends in the industry, big people. Inkers, you know, salt of the land. The guest we have on tonight is one of my personal all-time favorite writers of the last decades — plural. There’s very few things at Marvel he hasn’t touched in terms of characters. Everything is fantastic — Spider-Man, Avengers, Ultimate X-Men, Ultimate Spider-Man, Ultimate Fantastic Four. Alias, Daredevil, Man of Steel, Batman — the list goes on and on. I had to change my shirt because I was so excited. But everybody, the one, the only, the extremely chatty but still smiling Brian Michael Bendis.

Brian Michael Bendis [00:05:57]: Hey, that was very nice. Thank you, thank you guys.

Brian Michael Bendis [00:06:11]: All right, I’m an open book. Whatever you guys want to talk about, whatever’s on your mind — let’s chat.

Drew Mollo [00:06:17]: Well, Brian, I need to start with the first time I met you. It was 2016, Special Edition. I had some books just in case you were there. So I’m waiting in line, I meet you, it’s amazing. But the thing that got me was I was wearing this Gorillaz Demon Days shirt. And you’re like, oh, that’s such a cool design. Can I take a photo? And you took a photo of it. That shirt was an anniversary present from my girlfriend of 10 years. I texted her right after, I was like, babe, I love you. And she was like, okay, why today especially? And I told her — there is a photo of the shirt that got me, a symbol of our love and my geekdom for Gorillaz, in Brian Michael Bendis’s flip phone.

Brian Michael Bendis [00:07:36]: Flip phone. Flip phone.

Drew Mollo [00:08:14]: I just need to say that meant the world to me as a fan. And I just want to tell you, 10 years later, here you are again, and I’m so much better dressed and the shirt still fits.

Brian Michael Bendis [00:08:32]: Good on all fronts. Gorillaz were just on SNL last week and they killed. There’s a big comic book contingent to Gorillaz because of Jamie Hewlett’s participation in it. Is this the first comic book creator whose work has been this prominently shown on SNL? It’s amazing.

Brian Michael Bendis [00:11:21]: John Siuntres has been pioneering this space that we’re all sitting in right now for many, many years. I was there early days with him before “podcast” was even a word. It’s also generational — Stan used to put people from media and friends into his comics. Roy Thomas did it. It was always little Easter eggs for people who knew. So it seemed perfect. And his voice is in my head, so that’s the voice I’m going to write.

Kari Sanders [00:11:55]: You are a king of Easter eggs, sir.

Brian Michael Bendis [00:12:39]: I’ve been both the author of and the victim of Easter eggs. It’s always done with love. It’s always a loving thing.

Drew Mollo [00:13:16]: The thing I especially loved about Sam and Twitch — how little Spawn is in it. You had the great Angel Medina doing it. And Spawn shows up and he’s like, I need your help. And Sam is like, we’re in the middle of something. And he’s like, fuck off, get lost. And I’m thinking to myself — this is Al Simmons. He has killed angels, demons. And yet this overweight human detective is just like, fuck off. Cool.

Brian Michael Bendis [00:14:35]: Yeah, it was a great opportunity. I was new to collaboration. I’d done my own comics for most of the ’90s — writing and drawing, lettering, designing every aspect. Jinx, Torso, all those books. So when I started getting the call to collaborate — writing for someone like Angel Medina, who I could not draw like, if you paid me — I needed to learn some things. Those 18 issues were like super-preparation for what was about to come: Ultimate Spider-Man, Daredevil. Todd was a great boss in that he let us just go do it, and if he didn’t like it, he’d fire us.

Brian Michael Bendis [00:15:46]: I got to figure myself out on those pages, including hiring Alex Maleev for the last few issues — someone whose work I was aspiring towards. By the time we got to Daredevil, we had figured it out. We got to hit the ground running in a way that was a gift. How do I communicate myself to an artist who’s better than me? How do I communicate subtext? How do I write towards them versus towards me? All of that was very beneficial.

Kari Sanders [00:16:58]: The decision not to use word balloons in Sam and Twitch — it was bold.

Brian Michael Bendis [00:17:52]: I tell my students — I teach comics writing with David Walker here in Portland — that every balloon is a Post-it note right on top of the art. You’re literally covering up art. It’s the only medium that does that. So you have to really consider: what are you doing with that Post-it note that you’re sticking on maybe one of the most beautiful drawings in the world? Having the balloons gone was a great exercise.

Kari Sanders [00:20:18]: How did you decide to bring Squirrel Girl into New Avengers?

Brian Michael Bendis [00:20:37]: This is one of my favorite memories at Marvel. The idea came from having multiple children quickly, and for the first time ever, we needed help. We had a nanny in our house when our kids were little. And I was like — oh, Jessica and Luke would have a nanny. They’d need one with superpowers. So I went to everyone: it would be cool if it was someone in the Marvel Universe who needed a gig. Squirrel Girl just immediately popped up. Oh hell yeah, Squirrel Girl’s it.

Brian Michael Bendis [00:21:22]: We made it like a teasing announcement — we were going to reveal who the nanny was at Wizard World Chicago. The applause in my memory was so loud and sustained that I started looking around the room because I thought Stan Lee walked in. This can’t possibly be for Squirrel Girl. But I was wrong. It was 100% Squirrel Girl-related enthusiasm. I almost cried.

Brian Michael Bendis [00:22:39]: My favorite line of dialogue I wrote between Luke and Jessica about Squirrel Girl — I think he says she’s half squirrel, and she says, you’re half nuts. I don’t know why that made me so happy, but it did.

Kari Sanders [00:37:39]: Jeffrey has just read your Uncanny X-Men run and is loving the current X-Men series. What else needs to be done to get it back to what it was in the ’90s?

Brian Michael Bendis [00:37:56]: I was gifted a new take when I walked in: the original X-Men coming forward in time to experience what the X-Men become. That idea had been floating around the room for years before me. When it was my turn, they were like, yeah, you can have it. I was like, what a gift.

Brian Michael Bendis [00:38:38]: I think the best thing X-Men can do — and really any franchise, but X-Men in particular — is look forward. Talk about the moment in time that we’re in, not the moment in time that we were in. Every time there’s a rewind, whether in television or movies or comics, it’s a minefield. You’re trying to recapture the glory days of Death of Phoenix when you should be looking for what would matter to these characters right now. My advice is always: look forward, break stuff. Just like everyone you liked did when they were writing the book. I think the reason House of X was so successful was because no one else had done that — and yet it was very much X-Men.

Kari Sanders [00:49:34]: While we’re talking about Miles, we need a Miles and Gwen alternate universe six-issue series.

Brian Michael Bendis [00:50:02]: I’m back doing Marvel stuff. I’m not going to be on multiple monthlies the way I was. That mountain is absolutely climbed. I have some curated projects that I’ll be doing over the next couple of years, and I’m excited to show you what they are. Me and Sara Pichelli, wink, are reunited for a major project past Superman.

Brian Michael Bendis [00:51:15]: When I left Marvel, I did say out loud to some creators — you have my permission to fuck all this shit up. I made hay out of my time. And that’s kind of what the job is. So I just let everybody know: nothing would delight me more than you break everything I built and do something with it, because that’s what this is supposed to be.

Brian Michael Bendis [00:52:01]: Cody Ziglar, who is the last writer of Spider-Man, just delighted the shit out of me with every choice he made. Literally choices I know I would never get to. I was like, this is fantastic. So I’m excited to revisit the characters with Sara. Coming right away, coming soon — Spider-Man/Superman, with Miles and Clark Kent/Superman meeting each other for the first time, drawn by Sara.

Brian Michael Bendis [00:53:31]: Just a couple months ago, I got to go to Italy for a little bit of a tour, and I got to reunite with Sara. We made a baby, and the baby went out in the world, and it’s like way out of our hands. Whatever we were hoping for, it’s way beyond what any dream we could possibly had — to the point where it’s hard to even talk about. So we got together in Italy and had a moment where we were able to go — huh, what? Yeah. And it was kind of great.

Brian Michael Bendis [00:55:37]: This actually happened to me with the Andrew Garfield Spider-Man movies too. I got called into a Sony meeting, didn’t know what it was about, there were like 40 people at a table. The head of Sony just goes: Brian, organic or non-organic web shooters? And I went, oh, non-organic. And the room exploded like it was a jury decision — people were slamming books on the table. I pointed out that non-organic web shooters are more of a character device. He fixes a problem with his intellect. It’s more interesting. And you’ve already done the other thing. I felt like I did a pop culture mitzvah — I got them to see the light.

Brian Michael Bendis [00:57:27]: I don’t mind the conversation at all. It’s only when they start treating comic creators like they’re the villain in the story — because you’re not getting exactly what you want the minute you wanted it. It gets a little abusive sometimes. Hey, that’s a human being who cares. I promise, I don’t know a comic creator in the world who doesn’t care with their whole heart about what they’re doing and the characters they’re writing.

Jar Jar Jeremy [01:05:21]: You guys have a daunting task in comic books. You have to keep up with stories from sometimes 50+ years ago. How do you keep all that straight?

Brian Michael Bendis [01:05:44]: The biggest thing is that it’s a living, breathing, changing universe. So what they did was, as soon as books were done, we all got PDFs — reading four or five months ahead of everybody. We had a sense of where things were headed.

Brian Michael Bendis [01:07:26]: John Cleese wrote a book called On Creativity. He talked about writing a sketch for Monty Python and pulling it out of the typewriter only to realize — oh no, I’m not creating. Peter Sellers wrote this 20 years ago. I’m remembering. I literally said to Tom Brevoort: you will know better than me if you ever catch me accidentally writing an old Roy Thomas comic that I think I’m creating but I’m actually remembering. Please tackle me.

Kari Sanders [00:59:11]: Who’s the biggest troll at the Marvel retreats?

Brian Michael Bendis [00:59:17]: There are a couple creators who want to protect their childhood memories and who hear a story coming along and you can see it’s agitating them. I remember saying stuff in the room and looking at Tom Brevoort like, he’s gonna fucking kill me for that. And then we ended up being amazing partners — to the point where Tom was such a strong editorial voice in my head that he was still in my head while I was writing Superman.

Brian Michael Bendis [01:04:16]: Everyone came at it differently. I was more emotionally involved with the characters, and there are people who have the facts of their lives memorized. Jonathan Hickman’s a methodical planner. Matt Fraction is too. Notebooks full of charts. Because everyone comes at it differently, you put them all together and you get something special. And also — if an idea could survive that room, it can survive the internet.

Brian Michael Bendis [00:59:37]: We spent three days working on something that wasn’t working. And in four minutes out of that conversation, Civil War popped right off the other end. Like in four minutes, the whole thing came together. You hear about songwriters — Dolly Parton saying, I wrote Jolene in five minutes. Because of the 20 years that led up to it. And being in a room with 40 writers and the best idea just flying out at the end — incredible.

Brian Michael Bendis [01:09:30]: These are morality plays, like Aesop’s fables — stories about someone learning to be their best selves. For Superman, my philosophy — which I stole from many other people — is that he’s the best version of us. He’s thinking the best thoughts. And it was a great job to have during the pandemic, when it was hard to come up with good thoughts for yourself. But I was forced for many hours a day to think the thoughts of the best person.

Kari Sanders [01:12:11]: I still love your run on X-Men. Issue 13 has one of the best speeches by Kitty Pryde regarding her mutant identity and her pride in that.

Brian Michael Bendis [01:12:20]: People goofed on me for how much Kitty Pryde I put in, but — as a Jewish person, I saw Kitty Pryde and Ben Grimm as representation that startled me. Spider-Man — I don’t care what anyone said, that’s Stan. That’s Stanley Lieber as Peter Parker. So with Kitty Pryde particularly, because I was at that age when Claremont introduced her, and because she was figuring it out on page as we went — I was a little Jewish person trying to figure it out as I went. I couldn’t wait to express that when I got to it.

Brian Michael Bendis [01:13:51]: When I got to that page — where she tells a story about not visibly looking Jewish — I had been faced with someone thinking they were safe to be antisemitic with me. And me being deeply horrified. That story she tells happened to me. And it’s a very rare occasion in a Marvel comic where I’m actually telling you a true story through a character. And I was grateful to be able to do it, and overwhelmed by the response. Because your best work is right on the edge of super embarrassing. That feeling never goes away. But when you’re writing right up to the edge of, oh, I don’t know if I should even share this — and then you’re right to share it. It makes people feel better and more human.

Leo [01:16:34]: I absolutely loved Batman Universe. It was one of the first books I started collecting when I got back into comics. How did you approach writing that Batman?

Brian Michael Bendis [01:17:36]: That is one of my favorite things I did at DC. When I came to DC — which was never the plan — Dan DiDio called and literally made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. In high school, Dark Knight Returns, Batman Year One, and The Killing Joke all came out within 12 months of each other. My brain melted. That was Batman. What am I going to say after that?

Brian Michael Bendis [01:21:36]: I read a Batman encyclopedia with an intro by Frank Miller. And Frank Miller said — I’m paraphrasing — that Batman is one of the only characters in all of pop culture where you can do Lego Batman and you can do horror Batman, and the audience goes: yeah, that’s Batman. That observation freed me from whatever The Dark Knight Returns had put on me in the ’80s. And then I started writing my Batman. About three issues in, I went: I’m writing Brave and the Bold. That’s my Batman. Jim Aparo on Brave and the Bold.

Drew Mollo [00:29:31]: Brian, you’re legendary for being rooted to the spot at cons — wanting to give everybody their 10 seconds. That man is making sure everyone who has a book of his is heard. In the Yiddish term, that’s a mensch.

Brian Michael Bendis [00:29:56]: 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. I’ve had other creators do that for me — George Perez, people who just took a minute. And it was all I needed to keep going for like a year.

Brian Michael Bendis [00:30:28]: So when I’m in line with people — A, you did me the honor of buying some books. I’ll never get over it. It never gets old. So the least I can do is stop what I’m doing and talk to you for a minute. But also — one of you might be a young creator who just needs a minute to hear the thing you needed to hear. And if I can get you from A to B, that’s what you’re supposed to be doing.

Kari Sanders [01:44:35]: I’m going to steal a moment for Torso. You guys have to read it if you haven’t. It’s black and white, it’s beautiful, it’s true crime. We have Eliot Ness involved.

Brian Michael Bendis [01:47:42]: Those pages you just showed — I am the letterer and the artist. And writing most of the dialogue there. Mark Andreyko and I co-created Torso together, but at that time I was still figuring myself out. Torso is really back in our lives right now because they just announced Netflix is putting together a version of it from our book. Mark and I just had a very long Zoom meeting with the screenwriter who’s taking over — who they haven’t announced yet but is a fancy Academy Award person. David Fincher was attached for a while. It was actually greenlit under David Fincher. Paul Greengrass — I was working hard with Corin Hardy before the pandemic to try to get it made.

Brian Michael Bendis [01:49:03]: I did ask when Netflix bought it last summer — I said to my lawyer, are we in the conversation for longest-optioned-not-made book? And he went, no, Dune, 55 years. But the fact that I even had to ask that question was haunting, because I would really like them to make it. This version right now feels very strong.

Brian Michael Bendis [01:55:10]: Letting go and letting everyone soar — everything changed in my life. But 99% of the time, it was better than what was in my head. That’s the part I got addicted to. I’m like — I had this image in my head of what Mark Bagley is going to do here. And Mark Bagley hands it in and I go, oh, that’s even better than I thought.

Brian Michael Bendis [01:56:24]: I still do layouts, to make sure that what I’m asking for can be done visually. Little stick figures just to confirm: will this all fit? A page is real estate — very valuable real estate. And even for the wordiest pages, the amount of editing I do once the art is in is incredible. Once I see it — oh, I don’t have to say it. It’s all there. If you can see it, you don’t have to say it. It’s a visual medium. Get out of the way.

Leo [02:04:26]: If you’re looking for more information on Brian, everybody we interview gets a page on our site. You can find all the information on how to follow him, including his website, Jinxworld — recommended reading, all our interviews, any news we cover — it’s all going to be a dedicated page just for him.

Brian Michael Bendis [02:05:16]: I’m on Bluesky and Instagram the most. But really the place where you can have the most — if you buy any issue of Powers 25, you get a code that takes you to the free Jinxworld Discord, which is filled with free comics and scripts and great conversation. And at jinxworld.com, we’ve been curating and posting classes — I think over 40 now — featuring all of my friends and peers, sharing knowledge. Most of us are just dying for you to also try to make your own comics and experience what we’ve experienced.

Brian Michael Bendis [02:06:46]: Don’t forget: all the announcements including Friday’s are on Bluesky and Instagram. And I appreciate every book you’ve bought, every time something I’ve done annoyed you and you shared that online. I deeply appreciate it.

Drew Mollo [02:08:32]: Brian, if I can take a minute — Kari particularly worked very hard to schedule this and make this happen. I just wanted to thank you for your time and consideration, and every nice thing you said. Thank you for all the warmth and generosity you’ve shown me the last couple of hours.

[END OF TRANSCRIPT]

Note: Drew mentions at end “tomorrow we have the great Fred Van Lente coming on” — confirms this aired March 17, 2026. Drew mispronounces Pornsak Pichetshote near end — corrected in any published content.