Brian Michael

Following Marvel's "Marvel NOW!" relaunch of its titles, Bendis took on writing duties on All New X-Men, which saw the return of the original 1960's X-Men to the present, Uncanny X-Men, whose focus shifts to Cyclops' team of X-Men going rogue after the events of "Avengers Vs. X-Men", and Guardians of the Galaxy, picking up where his Avengers Assemble run left off.

Brian Michael Bendis was born on August 18, 1967 in Cleveland, Ohio to a Jewish-American family. Bendis grew up in University Heights where, despite rebelling against a religious upbringing, he attended the Hebrew Academy of Cleveland, a private, modern Orthodox religious school for boys. He decided he wanted to be a comic book industry professional when he was 13, working on his own comics, including a Punisher versus Captain America story that he revised several times. A fan of Marvel Comics in particular, he emulated idols such as George Pérez, John Romita, Sr., John Romita, Jr., Jack Kirby and Klaus Janson. He later discovered crime comics by Jim Steranko and José Munoz, which he traced back via Jim Thompson's work to the source novels of both Thompson and Dashiell Hammett, which helped cement his love for crime stories. These in turn led him to discover the documentary Visions of Light, which taught him the explicit visual rules of film noir, an important influence on him creatively.

Through Caliber, he met many of his longtime friends and collaborators within the comics industry, including Mike Oeming, Dave Mack and Marc Andreyko, and began the first in a series of independent noir fiction crime comics when he published two issues of Fire in 1993 and five issues of A.K.A. Goldfish in 1994 with Caliber. In 1995 he illustrated Flaxen, from a script by James Hudnall, with David Mack providing inks to the story featuring former Playboy Playmate Susie Owens as mascot of the Golden Apple Comics chain [of comic shops] in Los Angeles.

Bendis met his wife Alisa in 1995 through the Cleveland chapter of the Hillel Foundation, where Alisa worked and Bendis was a staff Illustrator. The two were married within a year. Alisa Bendis manages JINXWORLD, the company through which Bendis produces his creator-owned and licensed comics work. They have four children. Of their three daughters, his oldest, Olivia, is his biological daughter, while he and his wife adopted their two younger daughters, one of whom is African-American, and the other of whom is Ethiopian. Their names are Tabatha (adopted in June 2011) and Sabrina. Bendis mentioned in a July 2013 post on his Tumblr account that they had a newborn son, who is named London.

In 1996/1997, Bendis moved from Caliber to Image Comics, where Jinx and his other previous crime comics were published by Image's Shadowline arm in trade paperback. At Image, he also produced five more issues of Jinx.

In 1998, Bendis co-wrote and illustrated the Eliot Ness-starring Torso with Marc Andreyko, again for Image, and in 2000 he produced three issues of the autobiographical Fortune and Glory for Oni Comics.

Marvel Comics President Bill Jemas, on the recommendation of Quesada, hired Bendis to write Ultimate Spider-Man, which debuted in 2000, and was targeted at the new generation of comic readers. Bendis adapted the 11-page origin story of Spider-Man from 1962's Amazing Fantasy #15 into a seven issues story arc, with Peter Parker becoming the titular hero after the fifth issue, making the book a bestseller, often surpassing in sales those of the mainstream Marvel universe title The Amazing Spider-Man. The Bendis/Bagley partnership of 111 consecutive issues made their partnership one of the longest in American comic book history, and the longest run by a Marvel creative team, beating out Stan Lee and Jack Kirby on Fantastic Four. Bendis subsequently wrote other books in the Ultimate line, including Ultimate Marvel Team-Up, which Bendis pitched to Marvel as a follow-up to Ultimate Spider-Man, as well as Ultimate Fantastic Four, Ultimate X-Men, Ultimate Origins, Ultimate Six, the first three issues of Ultimate Power, and the Ultimate Comics: Doomsday metaseries. In 2011, Bendis and Artist Sara Pichelli created the Miles Morales character as the new version of the Ultimate Spider-Man. As of June 2013, Bendis continues to write every issue of Ultimate Spider-Man in its current form, Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man.

Quesada offered Bendis the writing duties on Daredevil, which he took over in 2001, writing most of the subsequent 55 issues until 2006, collaborating mostly with Artist Alex Maleev. As a major Daredevil author, Bendis' name is one of the names used for boxers mentioned by a corrupt boxing manager in the 2003 Daredevil movie. Also in 2001, Bendis helped launch Marvel's non-Comics Code-approved, adult MAX imprint with Alias, featuring former superhero Jessica Jones operating as a private investigator. The series ran for 28 issues before many of the characters moved to Bendis' mainstream Marvel Universe series The Pulse. In 2004 Powers moved from Image to Marvel's creator-owned imprint Icon, where it was relaunched as Powers Vol. 2 alongside another ex-Image series, David Mack's Kabuki.

Bendis was the co-executive Producer and series-pilot Writer for Mainframe Entertainment's 2003 CGI animated Spider-Man show, Spider-Man: The New Animated Series that aired on MTV and YTV, which features a college-aged Peter Parker, and was written to tie-into the then-unreleased 2002 film Spider-Man. The pilot episode Bendis wrote became the third episode aired. His dismay at being credited for something written by someone else, and the multitude of corporate and legal departments involved in the animation process soured him on the show.

Also in 2004, Bendis oversaw the closing issues of The Avengers as part of the crossover storyline "Avengers Disassembled". This led directly to the Bendis-helmed relaunch of one version of the eponymous team in the pages of The New Avengers. Bendis' work on this storyline included the death of Avenger Hawkeye, which proved controversial. In 2005, with Artist Olivier Coipel, Bendis wrote the New Avengers / X-Men crossover, "House of M", which would retroactively be considered the second act of a three-act super-event beginning with "Avengers Disassembled" and culminating in the Bendis-written 2008 storyline "Secret Invasion". Bendis also wrote Secret War, which was serialized between 2004 and 2005. The series, which was not connected to the 1984 miniseries Secret Wars, served as a prelude to Secret Invasion. After Marvel's 2006 "Civil War" storyline, Bendis helmed another Avengers revival, launching Mighty Avengers with Frank Cho in 2007.

Bendis re-teamed with House of M's Coipel for the 2009 crossover series Siege, which brought the "Dark Reign" storyline to a close, and with it Dark Avengers. Springboarding out of Siege, Bendis relaunched both Avengers and New Avengers as part of the "Heroic Age".

Also in 2010, Bendis launched Scarlet through Icon Comics, his first new creator-owned comic book in over a decade, re-teaming once again with Maleev. In February 2011, Icon released the all-ages graphic novel Takio by Bendis and his Powers collaborator Mike Oeming and in mid-2011 a maxiseries called Brilliant with Artist Bagley. Bendis' other 2011 projects included a new Moon Knight series with Maleev, which concluded with issue 12. In 2012, in conjunction with Marvel Studios' feature film The Avengers, Bendis began writing a new Avengers comic, Avengers Assemble. Bendis wrote the first eight issues of Avengers Assemble, a series that premiered in March 2012 that featured a new incarnation of the Zodiac, as well as the return of the Guardians of the Galaxy, which teamed with the Avengers against Thanos.

Bendis is one of the Writers on the Ultimate Spider-Man animated series, which debuted in 2012.

In 2013, he was named on IGN's list of "The Best Tweeters in Comics", in part for his frequent Twitter posts highlighting the work of other creators.

His film work includes the screenplay adaptation of A.K.A. Goldfish for Miramax, and the screenplay adaptation of Jinx for Universal Pictures. In 2014, he wrote the plot of the Disney Infinity: Marvel Super Heroes video game.

He was credited as a developer and wrote several episodes for the TV adaptation of his comic, Powers that starred Sharlto Copley and ran on PlayStation Network for two seasons from 2015 to 2016.

In November 2017, Bendis announced via Twitter that he would be working exclusively with DC Comics.