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Brian Michael Bendis on making history with 'Fortune & Glory: The Musical'

Comic Books

Brian Michael Bendis on making history with ‘Fortune & Glory: The Musical’

The sequel debuts today on the writer’s own Substack.

When it comes to making comics history, Brian Michael Bendis has done it time and time again. That includes co-creating numerous characters, including Miles Morales, and creating innovative comics, like his graphic novel Fortune & Glory. That graphic novel maps his past efforts working within the Hollywood entertainment system that earned numerous Eisner Award nominations. The sharing of his life and history continues today on his Jinxworld Substack with a sequel titled Fortune & Glory: The Musical. The project seeks to shed light on his involvement with the musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, but also serves as a larger historical record of his rich life and career.

I spoke to Bendis exclusively last Friday to unpack what we’re in store for with Fortune & Glory: The Musical. Set to be released in weekly chapter-based chunks (with an eventual Dark Horse Comics print release down the road), the series is rounded out by artist Bill Walko, color artist Wes Dzioba, and letterer Josh Reed. Together, the dream team tackles the musical as well as delve into the often “lost” history of comics, especially that from the 1980s and 1990s.

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So, why choose a doomed musical to explore such essential comics lore?

Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark is the framework on which I flashback to ‘How the hell did I get here?,” Bendis said. “The journey of a young creator learning all the lessons they’ve learned.”

He added, “I grew up in a period of autobiographical comics where people were really the butt of the joke and the shithead of the story.” Like Harvey Pekar’s groundbreaking American Splendor, and the original Fortune & Glory, Bendis aimed to wrestle with the truth while also finding humor and lessons from his own past.

Brian Michael Bendis 'Fortune & Glory: The Musical'

Courtesy of Brian Michael Bendis.

Fortune & Glory, it’s like a period piece,” Bendis reflected. “I wrote and drew a graphic novel years ago about the weird chapter in my life where I’d become an independent comic creator. Not just me, but Hollywood was calling all of us. Not the Hollywood that you’re seeing now where every day. Like The Good Asian is getting an adaptation, Hollywood looks at all of it as prime real estate.”

Bendis said he’s spent years thinking about making this sequel partly because of the reaction he earned but never expected with Fortune & Glory.

“People were really connecting with me on a human level,” he said. “And that was the first time I really felt like, ‘Oh, the art human level connection is very, very powerful.'”

Originally planning to write and draw the sequel, Bendis said the big difference this time is that he has kids.

“Even though my time is mine, it just felt that drawing this graphic novel on top of everything would just be time away from my children,” he said.

Brian Michael Bendis 'Fortune & Glory: The Musical'

Courtesy of Brian Michael Bendis.

Having previously worked with Walko on a Stan Lee story for the New York Times, their synergy made sense for Fortune & Glory: The Musical.

“He’s drawing my very personal memories, and that could be daunting,” Bendis said. “Literally like drawing something and handing it back to the person who lived it and saying, is this right? But he handled it perfectly. He got it. He got all the references. He understood all the spaces that I was sharing with him.”

Similar to the chaos and rigamarole of dealing with Hollywood first shared in Fortune & Glory, Bendis said the sequel found a similar level of inspiration from being professionally unprepared.

“I did not know how to write a Broadway musical,” he said. “I did not study the art form of Broadway musicals, nor did I get a chance to learn it because I was fired soon after I was hired. But what I did learn was some very valuable lessons about myself and collaboration.”

Creation, Bendis said, is rather messy, but that’s the start of making something truly great and then getting better.

“If I’m faced with an artform I don’t understand, I remember that I’m in an art form that a lot of people don’t understand,” he said. “To this day. People are like, ‘People make comics?’ Instead of staying in that lane, I go, ‘No, embrace this,’ you have now been offered a chance to embrace an art form, embrace it the way you wish people would embrace comics.”

Fortune & Glory

Courtesy of Brian Michael Bendis.

Framing the story around Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark opened the door for Bendis to tell so many anecdotes about comics and his life, and what he learned, too. He’s brushed elbows with some true icons.

“Like when I was a young man and met Walt Simonson, and he changed my life,” Bendis said. “Or when I first met Joe Quesada. My first art teacher was at a convention where a very angry Gil Kane taught us anatomy — all these stories that are building blocks. And here’s what happened. It’s interesting. And here’s what I learned; here’s how I applied it and here’s how I fucked it up for the musical. What I’ve learned as a college professor and a teacher over the years is that you only learn from failure.”

Bendis’ lot in life professionally also somewhat shifted the approach to Fortune & Glory: The Musical over Fortune & Glory. While Fortune & Glory is set during a time when he experienced success with his hard-boiled comics like Jinx, its follow-up details a period of peak success for Ultimate Spider-Man.

“Where a lot of success was born out of previous failures while actual devastating failure was happening right in the middle of it,” Bendis explained. “Privately. I got to share with everyone my experience of failure during success and how that all manifested itself.”

Fortune & Glory

Courtesy of Brian Michael Bendis.

Now that Fortune & Glory: The Musical demonstrates that Bendis has so many more anecdotes to share, might he already be thinking about a third story? (God knows the world is addicted to the trilogy.) And if so, what exactly would Bendis write about to complete this hugely personal trilogy?

“Substack,” Bendis joked. “No. I do feel in my heart, and I danced around a little bit in this project, what Miles has brought to my life. There’s something there. I do feel like with some distance, I’ll be able to craft the story of this in a way that’s interesting.”

He added, “It took me 20 years to figure this one out, to figure out what the angle was. Maybe my time at DC Comics is a story. In fact, I know it is. But I do know I definitely need perspective.”

While we wait for inspiration to strike for a third graphic novel, we know we’ll have plenty of history to unpack, learn, and discover with Fortune & Glory: The Musical.

“I want you to feel how I felt in these beautiful moments,” Bendis said. “I know they’re real. I’ve experienced them. You gotta earn them. You gotta work towards them. Let me cheerlead you towards that. ‘Cause it’s unbelievable.”

For an extended edition of this interview, don’t miss the AIPT Comics podcast this Sunday, March 12.

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