Brian Michael Bendis

If you picked up a Marvel comic in the past five years Brian Michael Bendis is probably the reason why. After starting out in the indie world with his line of Jinx crime comics, Bendis hit the big stage launching Marvel's Ultimate universe, teaming up with artist Alex Maleev for a run on Daredevil that more than holds its own against Frank Miller's legendary work on the series, and serving as the architect behind the House of M and Civil War story arcs. (If you like to see a little more gore, nipple and costumed crime fighters dropping f-bombs in your comics, get up on his superhero/noir series Powers.) Now Bendis has hooked up with Maleev for his four-part miniseries Halo: Uprising. As with most Bendis premieres, the first issue sold out after its release. While you wait for the second issue (dropping in stores on November 21st) find out what the man had to say about writing a script for a taciturn, faceless space marine and what kept the Halo comic from turning into just another crappy marketing ploy.

Complex: When Marvel had to issue a second print run of Halo, did you add another notch to your belt of sold-out comics?
Brian Bendis: What you don't want to be is the guy who couldn't sell a Halo comic, so that was good. [laughs] There are other comics that, if they do well, it's a really good thing. But this is one of those things where, boy, if you can't move Halo in the eye of the Halo frenzy that's going on, seriously get out of comics.

C: Fanboys are awful quick to register their disgust on the Internet. How has the response been so far?
Brian Bendis: I kind of braced for getting some lectures. Anytime you write a new character, the number one fan of that character will let you know what they're thinking. People found out I was using Quicksilver and I'd get "Excuse me, I run the Quicksilver website and you can go to hell." It is a new audience [for the Halo comic] and we heard from them. I would tell you if I got hammered, but it was pretty good.

C: By owning Powers outright you can do anything you want with your characters. Were there any restrictions when dealing with Microsoft, Bungie, and Marvel?
Brian Bendis: I'm sure there are things, but those things to me aren't like a restriction. More or less they are a creative challenge. You can get pretty bloated and sloppy with total autonomy all the time, you know? And I have the same thing with Marvel. I can't do whatever I want. I know some people think I get to do. But these are shared characters, some of which are shared over five or six titles a month. So I can't kill Spider-Man or have Spider-Man choke a hooker just to get an erection. It would be inappropriate.

C: As much as we all want to.
Brian Bendis: Yeah, please. With the Master Chief we were told that the story took place after Halo 2 and prior to the beginning of Halo 3. Which is cool. They kind of gave us the ending, which is sometimes the hardest thing to come up with, and then we backtracked up to the beginning. It was our job to come up with material in between that matters and has some kind of emotional depth. The real key is to use the medium to explore things about the Halo universe that just cannot be done in the way the game is framed and the point of view of the game, which is always first person. So we were able to go down to Earth and really see how all this madness is affecting people, how something that was like a beautiful place is now turning into a war-torn hell.

C: Since you are really well known for your dialogue, how did you write for a character that really doesn't talk that much?
Brian Bendis: He also rarely uses Yiddish, which is another one of my strengths, so? him going "Oy, stop with the kicking!" or something. Not appropriate. That was in the first draft, they didn't care for it. I am known for kind of a pitter-patter. But I also write a lot of characters that are much more stoic or have military backgrounds and speak when spoken to. So it wasn't too hard to use that as the tone. It's kind of cool and also gives Alex [Maleev] room to really show off. It's cool because you could really strip it down. The Master Chief would say like five words but finding those words is just as cool as having the pitter-patter.