The Age of Bendis: 2000-2012...

Brian Michael Bendis - the Man himself

The Age of Bendis

Sure, you have your Golden Age of comics (1938-1955), your Silver Age (1956-1969), your Bronze Age (1970-1983) and your Copper (or Modern) Age (1984-?).  Each one has its merits.  But I would argue that we are now in the midst of the greatest periods of comic-booking.  Behold, I present to you the Age of Bendis (2000-2012)!

But first, a moment of personal recollection...

I first started reading and collecting comic books way back in 1965  Then in 1976, upon the discovery of the existence and attractiveness of the female of the species, I boxed up my comics, put them into a closet, bade them farewell, and started dating.  Looking back, I ask my younger self, "What were you thinking???"  Comic books and girls are not mutually exclusive categories.  You can have girls AND comics, too.  The fact that I am now happily married AND a lover of comics proves the point.

Avengers Disassembled, 2005

Fast forward to the summer of 2004, when I walked into Dave's Comics here in Richmond, and realized that the fanboy flame still burned within me.  My passion for comics was reignited.  I started off with recommendations for graphic novels from Dave and his trusty assistant, Marlon.  They guided me through many of the collections of comic events and key stories that I had missed from the late 1970s to the present.  I read Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Kingdom Come, The Watchmen, Batman: The Long Halloween, Batman: The Killing Joke, The Avengers: The Kree-Skrull War, Crisis on Infinite Earths, Batman: A Death in the Family, and many, many others that I cannot list here.  Suffice to say, during this period of 2004-2005, I ended up with over three long boxes of graphic novels and trade paperbacks.  You could say that I caught up pretty quickly.

One trade stood out in particular, Avengers Disassembled, by one Brian Michael Bendis.  It was a collection of a crossover miniseries which took the familiar team of the Avengers and essentially blew them apart.  Needless to say, the storytelling also blew me away.  I was awed by it.  In some ways, it reminded me of the Marvel I had grown up with, especially with the heroes turning against each other and having one big throw down.  But one a deeper level, it felt like it was this subversive tome, trying to undo the Marvel Universe and re-make it again in some new and different order.

The New Avengers #1, 2005

About this same time, I had begun to collect single issues again.  First DC, then Marvel, and then some of about everything.  When I told the good folks at Dave's Comics how much I had enjoyed Avengers: Disassembled, they recommended that I check out the new series of The Avengers by the same writer.  And I dutifully added The New Avengers to my pull list.

Issue #1 of The New Avengers made me absolutely giddy with delight!  Here was Captain America putting together a whole new team of Avengers.  When all was said and done just a few issues later, this new team consisted of Cap, Iron Man, Luke Cage, Wolverine, the Sentry, Spider-Woman, Ronin (Maya Lopez) and (gulp!) Spider-Man!  Who had ever heard of an Avengers team that looked like this?  It was awesome and cleverly told.  I was hooked.

At this point, I became a Bendis-oholic.  I simply couldn't get enough of this Brian Michael Bendis guy.  So I started reading The Ultimate Spider-Man (caught up in trades), Powers (both Image Comics and Icon), Daredevil, and basically anything else with his name on it.  And I'm proud to say that I am still addicted though these many years hence.

Powers #1, 2000

Brian Bendis has been at the forefront of so many of the Marvel events and inovations over the past decade.  Helping to launch the Ultimate Marvel universe in 2000 with Spider-Man re-imagined as a teen.  Bendis then re-invigorated the Daredevil franchise, running from 2001-2005.  Also in 2001, He took a Marvel B (or even C) character, Jessica Jones, and made her a detective in Alias, to amazing success, even though it was a Max imprint and geared for adults.  In 2004, he brought his creator-owned books published first at Image Comics, Powers, to the new Marvel creator-owned imprint, Icon Comics.  Powers is a detective mystery series about cops who police the superhero community.

With his hands deeply into the Avengers franchise, Bendis proceeded to take the Marvel universe from one event to another.  He wrote the stories for The Avengers/X-Men cross-over event, House of M in 2005.  Secret Invasion was published in 2008.  It was Bendis response, of sorts, to the earlier published Kree-Skrull War.  This along with House of M and Avengers Disassembled formed a trilogy of sorts.  Dark Reign follow Secret Invasion in 2008, as well as the intriguing comic title, The Dark Avengers.  The events of Dark Reign were brought to a conclusion with yet another event - Seige - in 2009.  In 2010, he relaunched the New Avengers as well as a newly constituted Avengers series bringing Marvel into a new Heroic Age.  In addition to these which I have mentioned are the many other Marvel titles that he wrote, such as Ultimate Marvel Team-Up, Ultimate X-Men, and Ultimate Fantastic Four to name a few.  I'm sure I will get called out on those I have not mentioned.

Scarlet #1, 2010

Grant Morrison in his book, Supergods, says that when Bendis commits to a book - he really commits.  Take Ultimate Spider-Man (in all it's varied forms), Bendis has been writing that title(s) since 2000, and he's still going.  His partnership with artist, Mark Bagley, lasted over ten years until issue #111, when Bagley left for other pursuits and was replaced by Stuart Immonen.  This partnership between Bendis and Bagley lasted longer than the Stan Lee-Jack Kirby partnership on The Fantastic Four in the 1960s, which went for 102 issues.  Or take his commitment on Powers, which has now lasted over 12 years and two different publishers, as well as his partnership with artist, Michael Avon Oeming.  Then there's the Avengers franchise which he took over in 2004 lasting until this coming summer in 2012, when he will hand over the reigns to a new creative team.  That day will be a sad day indeed.

And Bendis is still going!  He created Scarlet in 2010 with artist Alex Maleev.  He co-wrote, Takio, with his daughter in 2011, a graphic novel geared for kids.  And he's partnered again with Bagley on a new title, Brilliant.  

If this brief survey of his enormous work doesn't convince you that the years, 2000-2012, have been the Age of Bendis, then I don't know what will.  He is, simply, the greatest writer of the modern era of comics.  I will concede that we live in a time of some truly great talent, a new kind of Golden Age for comics if you will, but no one has done more for the medium than Bendis.  Let's hope that this Age of Bendis is not concluding, but still evolving and continuing.

Thank you, Brian, for all the joy you have brought to fanboys and fangirls everywhere!  Here's to the future!

Dan DeCarlo: Comic Creators Profile

She's Josie #4, 1963

Comic Creator Profile

Put simply, Dan DeCarlo was "the" comic artist who established the style of what Archie Comics looked like.  I grew up with Archie and his pals in the 1960s and 1970s.  I loved the antics of Archie, Jughead, Reggie and Moose.  But I really appreciated the beauty of Betty, Veronica, Sabrina and Josie.  Josie was my favorite - mainly because I have a thing about redheads.  As you will read below, Dan created and named Josie after his French wife, whom he met while serving in Europe in World War II.  He also created Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Cheryl Blossom.

I just loved DeCarlo's art.  I think his style was a major factor for why I read Archie Comics so much as a kid.  And also for why I still collect Archie comics from that era.  I shared my love of all things Archie (and DeCarlo) with my own five children.  As soon as they could read, I began buying them Archie Digests, which reprinted older material, at the check-out line at the grocery store.  They grew to love Archie as much as I did.

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December 23, 2001

Dan DeCarlo, Archie Artist and Creator Of Josie and the Pussycats, Is Dead at 82

By Eric Nash

Dan DeCarlo, a top cartoonist for Archie Comics for more than 40 years and a creator of the characters Josie and the Pussycats and Sabrina the teenage witch, died on Tuesday in New Rochelle, N.Y. He was 82, and lived in Scarsdale, N.Y.

The cause was pneumonia, said his wife, Josie.

Mr. DeCarlo defined the look of the prototypical American teenagers Archie, Betty, Veronica, Jughead and their friends at Riverdale High after taking over as chief artist at the comic book company in 1975, when the characters' creator, Bob Montana, died. Archie made his first appearance as a gap-toothed, bow-tie-clad teenager in loud checked trousers in Pep Comics in 1941.

The Archie cast was a combination of real people Mr. Montana remembered from his high school years in Haverhill, Mass., and the idealized small-town America of the Andy Hardy movies. Mr. DeCarlo brought his own distinctive, clean-lined cartoon style, which was soon adopted as the house style for the characters, especially the leggy females with wide eyes and snub noses.

Mr. DeCarlo was renowned for his curvaceous depiction of the female form, so-called ''good girl'' art, which had its origins in the pinup style of World War II. ''He was always interested in drawing shapely girls,'' Mrs. DeCarlo said.

In 1946 he worked for Timely Comics (later Marvel Comics) on cheesecake titles like ''Millie the Model'' and ''My Friend Irma,'' and free-lanced for The Saturday Evening Post, Argosy and Humorama.

''It was the time of Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield, so he was drawing that voluptuous type of woman,'' Mrs. DeCarlo said. ''When he went to Archie, he was drawing teenagers, so he changed his style a bit,'' she said. ''But he always had curve.''

Mr. DeCarlo gave the blond Betty Cooper her distinctive ponytail and kept up with what teenagers were wearing, from miniskirts and Nehru jackets in the 1960's to baby T-shirts and cargo pants in the 90's.

Mr. DeCarlo was born in New Rochelle and attended New Rochelle High School and the Art Students League for three years before he was drafted into the Army in 1941; he worked as a draftsman and had a sideline, painting company mascots on the noses of airplanes.

Josie and the Pussycats #46, February 1970

He met his wife, Josie Dumont, a French citizen, in Belgium shortly after the Battle of the Bulge. His French was minimal. ''We communicated with drawing,'' Mrs. DeCarlo said. ''He would draw things for me to make me understand what he had in mind. He was really so amusing. Instead of just using words he would use cartoons to express himself. Right away we knew that we were meant for each other.''

The ever-stylish Josie DeCarlo was the inspiration for the leader of the Pussycats. ''We went on a Caribbean cruise, and I had a costume for the cruise, and that's the way it started,'' Mrs. DeCarlo said about her cat suit, immortalized by the animated cartoon's bubble-gum theme song, ''Josie and the Pussycats/ Long tails and ears for hats.''

''The hairdo came after,'' Mrs. DeCarlo said. ''One day I came in with a new hairdo with a little bow in my hair, and he said, 'That's it!' ''

The exact circumstances of Josie's creation became the subject of a lawsuit involving Mr. DeCarlo and Archie Comics shortly before the cartoon was made into a feature film this year. Mr. DeCarlo said that he created the character on his own in the late 1950's and tried to sell it as a syndicated comic strip called ''Here's Josie.'' At least one syndicate turned him down, he said. ''You know, I threw that letter away,'' he once said. ''If I still had that letter, there wouldn't have been any case. I would have been a shoo-in.''

The position of Archie Comics was that Mr. DeCarlo created the character for them as ''work for hire,'' so the rights belonged to the company. The fallout was rancorous even by the standards of such suits over intellectual property rights: Archie fired Mr. DeCarlo in May 2000 after 43 years of work.

''They could have worked it out,'' Mrs. DeCarlo said. ''My husband was not asking for millions of dollars. They paid him well, but Dan felt that it was not enough. He was looking for them to realize that he was getting on in years and that he deserved to get something back.''

Sabrina the Teenage Witch #8, September 1972

He was listed as a creator in the end credits of ''Josie and the Pussycats,'' which did poorly at the box office. He did receive a bonus and credit as co-creator of Sabrina the teenage witch, which became a popular live-action television show.

The couple's twin sons, Dan Jr. and Jim, both deceased, also worked on their father's comics as inkers.

Mr. DeCarlo is survived by his wife, Josie, and two grandchildren.

Despite his falling out with the company, he loved Archie and his pals. ''Those characters that he drew for Archie were always the subject for our conversation at the dinner table,'' Mrs. DeCarlo said. ''We always wanted to know, what are they going to do tomorrow, what are you drawing, how are they going to dress? Everybody would voice his opinion. They were like part of our family.''