The last time comics author Brian Michael Bendis worked with his longtime collaborator, artist Alex Maleev, the result was Scarlet, a two-volume series that was dark and dystopian, telling the tale of a corrupt police state and a new American civil war. The second volume hit in 2016, as the Donald Trump presidency began, seemingly presaging the darker moments of the last several years.
“I promised Alex the next one will be fun,” Bendis recalls.
Now, the writer, who is perhaps most associated with his best known creation, Spider-Man Miles Morales, is back with that “fun one,” a six-issue mini-series from Dark Horse Comics titled Masterpiece that reunites him with Maleev for the first time since 2016. The story takes Bendis back to his crime story roots while offering a bevy of original colorful characters with the writer’s patented snappy dialogue.
The story centers on a brilliant, orphaned 16-year old girl named Emma, AKA Masterpiece, who is known for her webcomics and creative inventions. When one of the world’s most famous billionaires tracks her down and confronts her with the news that her mother and father were two of the greatest, most charismatic criminals of all time, he also tells her they also happened to steal from him and now he wants revenge. With this dastardly villain threatening Masterpiece into pulling an impossible heist, the young woman rounds up a group of her peers and her parent’s old associates to turn the tables.
The first issue of the comic, which also features Ian Herring on color duties, hits Dec. 13.
Bendis made his name with crime comics in the 1990s before finding stardom with Marvel. He says that fascination, especially stories based on real events or people, never left him. One idea in particular was the question of what happens to a family left behind when one member commits a high-profile heist then disappears into the ether, a la D.B. Cooper, the infamous robber who hijacked a plane, demanded a ransom, then parachuted out, never to be heard from again.
“I had been talking with Alex, coming up with lots of ideas for characters, then I found a story engine that put them in one universe,” Bendis says.
The comic once again has him guiding the voice of a young protagonist, much as he did when he relaunched Peter Parker with Ultimate Spider-Man, created young Morales as a new Spider-Man, or conceived Riri Williams, the young Tony Stark-esque heroine who become Ironheart. Bendis finds that age to be primed for drama, even though he doesn’t see himself writing in the YA bracket.
“You find out how great love can be, how shitty people can be, how much the world can suck,” he notes. “It’s the most passionate and raw time.”
Bendis and Maleev are considered one of the top writer-artists duos in comics, a 21st century combo that evoke the mastery and synergy of such pairs as Chris Claremont and John Byrne on Uncanny X-Men or Marv Wolfman and George Perez on Teen Titans. Bendis and Maleev tackled Daredevil from 2001 to 2006, winning several Eisner Awards for their run, which along with Bendis’ long-running work on Ultimate Spider-Man, helped establish the writer as a major comics author.
The writer calls his 25-plus year friendship with Maleev “the most important professional relationship in my life.” After Daredevil, the pair worked on Spider-Woman, Moon Knight, and several other titles.
“Anytime we’re given an opportunity to work together, we take it very seriously to make sure it’s everything it should be. I don’t want to waste a moment of his time. A lot of thought goes into what we do,” says Bendis.
With is high-concepts, plethora of unique characters, and rat-a-tat dialogue, the comic may seem ripe for Hollywood attention. But Bendis says adaptations, despite the hoopla of Morales movies such as Across the Spider-Verse, are far from his mind when he is writing.
“I’ve learned not to chase the Hollywood dream through comics,” he says. “Comics really thrive when creators see the comic as the end all and be all. That’s what all my heroes have taught me.
Check out a look – the first two pages and two variant covers – below.
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