By almost any of the gauges that have evolved to assess popular and commercial impact in comics, Brian Michael Bendis is a success. These days, he and his projects regularly score at or near the top of contemporary fan-based surveys and are usually well represented in the balloting for industry awards. An impressive number of the titles he writes at this moment are high on monthly sales charts. Moreover, an astonishingly large percentage of his early work remains bound, in print and readily available. Because of his contributions during the recent uptick in Marvel Comics' bottom line, he is arguably among the half-dozen most notable writers the company has ever employed.

He is also, as the title suggests, incredibly prolific. Taking his measure for present purposes has involved a large degree of catch-up for me. It initiated a campaign of forced-march readings that was far from ideal for either of us.

There's a disclaimer sometimes advanced by writers, even if never spoken aloud, to discount criticism and unfavorable reactions of certain readers. The waiver, in its simplest form, runs "Well, I didn't write that for him/her/whomever." Several thousand pages ago it was clear that Brian Michael Bendis does not write for me. I'm not a member of the audience he attempts to address (and I assume the versa is true as well) unless that audience is identified solely as persons with money in their pocket from which they can be parted.

Still, he having written and I having read, neither of us gets excused from the responsibilities of our respective positions. Maybe not you either. As the Prince of Verona summed it up after his city's star-crossed lovers met their tragic end, "All are punish'd."

So while it would be more humane to skip ahead to Bendis' later, higher profile fictions, the little-acorn/mighty-oak aspect to his primeval efforts demands attention. In fact, let's spend inordinate time with one, Jinx, as it richly embodies much of the attraction and misgivings that shape and make distinct the greater Bendis' canon.

In the beginning Bendis created -- for lack of a better catch-all -- contemporary skullduggery comics. With Caliber Comics, he published two issues of Fire in 1993 and five issues of A.K.A. Goldfish in 1994. He then released Jinx in1996. It ran seven issues from Caliber and five more after a move to Image Comics (399 pages all told and dutifully read).

Bendis' hallmarks are prominent from the very first. Chief among these is his reliance upon and flair for dialogue. Bendis' comics must be among the most voluble in the medium, even with their pronounced caesuras. They are exceptional in their attempt to capture the naturalness of up-to-the-minute speech. His is a mannered verbal mimicry of a narrowed, imaginary social American stratum, that of pop-culture street level. The sheer amount and style of talk have antecedents in television and movies, two media which accommodate copious dialogue much better and more fluidly than comics. In Jinx, Bendis sets a personal standard for extended, elliptical monologues not associated with plot (Thank you, Mr. Tarantino).

Bendis strives diligently to reflect aspects of common speech, like its give-and-take tempo and fluid informality -- so much so that casualness and spontaneity often appear valued above polish, as if typing comes too easily for him. Bendis shows relatively little interest in developing the expressive possibilities of language. Beyond the one-pitch timbre linked directly to a character's attitude and stance, individual voices struggle for personality. Even swearing, which Bendis can make entertainingly imaginative and exceedingly colorful, is generally so pervasive that it suffers from a loss of punch and charm.

In lit-crit speak (and this is the last you'll hear of such from me regarding this author) Bendis aims for the tone and texture of modern speech, achieving a fidelity that routinely compromises substance and content. Talk is the broadcast articulation of plot and stage direction laced with atmospheric if inconsequential open-mic babble. As a beginning, Jinx will serve as the verbal flatline from which the developing writer will chart his progress.

As with most of Bendis' comic projects, Jinx is "high concept," which elsewhere he succinctly describes, relative to Hollywood movies, as "You can say the pitch in a sentence." Accordingly: the title character Jinx is a female bounty hunter, a role ripe with action and romance possibilities.

The bare bones of concept are fleshed out through another Bendis speciality, plot machinations. When going well, he can spring unanticipated developments that can alter the narrative radically, immediately, and with potentially substantial impact from that instant forward; when going poorly, he writes silly comic books.

Tales unfold in accentuated successions of crests and troughs, strong beats and prickly rests. Exertion is peppered with wild acts and atypical deeds. Interludes are becalmed if precarious respites, often accompanied by the murmur of voices. These alternations can be as beguiling as the undulation of a slowly advancing snake: You can be fascinated by immediate incremental movements and lose track of the overall progression of the snakey story. Such lulling is important for entertainment purposes, lest mood or spell be broken by intrusions like attention, real world awareness or common sense. As one of the Jinx characters explains it to a pair of inept hustlers, "The key with this stuff is timing and presentation. You can't give your mark a second to collect his thought. You keep the shine and dazzle movin'... 'cause the minute you stop..."

Finally, Bendis consistently proves himself willing (though here not yet so able) to push visual and verbal conceits to unconventional and novel limits. Such devices can be relatively elaborate, design dictated, headstrong or just bullishly intrusive. As express solutions to narrative problems, they tend to be heavy handed; as indulgences, they are largely unforgivable. Usually they are called upon to bulk up slender material, part of the shine and dazzle. Often they seem gimmicks rigged to tread narrative water, functioning as place holders, space fillers as an issue is measured into beats.

That's a lot of caveats dinting the high points of a skill set, but Jinx is very far from Bendis' best work. Certainly many a comic writer has parlayed thinner abilities into long and successful careers. And make no mistake, Bendis is an applied, determined, opportunistic writer. His tools are honed to purpose. Beginning with Jinx, he demonstrates more facility for and interest in practical application of his art than he does to any delicacies of meaningful personal expression, let alone to some bootless pursuit for what is profound, true or real. He leans on his strengths to tell a story, goes to those strengths quickly, taxes them often, falls back on them in a pinch. As a model, think of a young baseball pitcher with distinct but limited mastery, maybe with one, single dominating pitch: However impressive, it's not suitable for every purpose on all occasions, but is still relied on heavily and eventually to peril. Neglecting other traditional aesthetic and substantive narrative qualities, Bendis' cultivated abilities are in continual danger of coming off as compensatory. Leaned on more heavily still, they become counterproductive and, at their most stressed, can be abrasively disappointing.

Forgoing other pitches, Bendis relies upon dialogue in Jinx to define and refine characters, announce rationale, disclose plot, impose rhythm and pacing, maintain narrative impetus and amusingly divert. That's a lot to manage, given any complexity of material, even if word balloons form decorative patterns along the page. Patter vacillates between prolonged, inane authenticity and extended, skittish cleverness. As to the former, an exchange between two toughs begins "So?" "So." "So?" before getting down to brass tacks: "How much?" "A lot." "How much??" "A lot." "How much??" As for the latter, puerile discourses on nonsense such as David Hasselhoff and the letterbox format seem like stand-up comedy routines gone ugly wrong. As raconteur, Bendis is anything but judicious.

At critical junctures, talk simply fails miserably: Jinx divulges her deepest, darkest secret to her bedded romantic interest, the character Goldfish from an earlier series. The best this beau can muster is "Wow." When she escalates with "sniff" he responds "I know I keep saying this... but... wow!" In the very end, even Bendis seems to lose confidence or involvement, coherence-wise, in this level of verbal non-communication. On the brink of detailing yet another of the story's astonishing co-incidences, the premier villain concedes verbatim: "I mean at this point... who knows and who cares how, 'cause here's the funny part... I mean imagine my surprise..." and so on and so very much on.

Concentrating on the dazzling motion of the snake, accountability and internal consistency can slip to secondary matters for writer and reader alike. Logic and plausibility become less guiding precepts than muted navigational nagging. The succession of dynamic plot points soon resembles a string of meat hooks, fortuitously positioned, from which characters and deeds hang. Examples?

• An imminent, gun-to-the-face murder of a protagonist is interrupted by -- bursting onto the scene from out of nowhere -- a crashing automobile, the occupants of which have themselves already been shot up someplace else for unrelated reasons.

• As late as 10 issues along, unknown characters pop up unannounced, players of such formidable stature that the mere sight of them leads an established thug to jump over the railing, several stories up, in the atrium of a multi-level mall. (He might have merely turned and run away... but for the plot's sake he needed to be subsequently apprehended by police. Plus the sight of him jumping and falling in a comic-book version of slo-mo is cool 'n' shit.)

• A small bag which, at first, needs to be "as light as a feather," moments later turns out to be stuffed with $12,000 in $20 bills (as verified by a blizzard of the photocopied currency).

Each of these dramatically stunning bits of business is rationally stunning as well. Each serves as representation of my chief difficulty with Bendis (there are plenty more, but they take too long to 'splain, like a car trunk full of cash and questions of how much physical space $3 million in crumpled loose $20 bills would take up): when dazzle does not supercede one's alliance to the real world, when diversions do not override commonly shared, easily available, or intuitive knowledge, stories teeter, credibility fails, and interest disappears.

Pointing out errors in comics has a long and honored tradition ("On page 4 you clearly show Green Arrow shooting his last boxing-glove arrow but on page 6...") and consistency can be the bugaboo of small etcs., yet a distracting number of unconscionable coincidences, oversights, blunders and outright failures of narrative ingenuity plague Bendis' writing. Later, with practical editorial input, artistic collaboration, and presumably experience, these choking boners will be reduced in number and scale to allowable genre standards. I dislike playing the voice of the reality dweeb when considering a body of work this large and will do so -- no matter how chock full my notes may be -- only when I can'ts stands it no more.

As these problems could be picked up by a conscious reader, they might have been caught by a decent editor. Once caught, such a problem, out of respect for all concerned, could easily have been written around (or maybe a $100 bill could have been borrowed before heading off to Kinkos to diminish weight and volume problems?), but many of these hitches should never have slipped to external diligence, any second line defense. The cautionary rule of thumb on the bulk of Bendis' tales, beginning with and particularly this one, is that a reader does not need so much a willing suspension of disbelief but, as occasion demands, a willful dissociation from waking world reality.

Bendis uses violence as visual and thematic event. It lacks impact, at least for major players, up until climactic reckoning. That jumper in the mall, for instance, lands several stories below, smashes through a plate-glass store front, yet remains healthy enough to beat the bejesus out of a fellow tough in a holding cell immediately following.

Characterization in Jinx is weak and, as noted, heavily dependent upon what is indicated in word balloons. Stereotypic figures fall into comfy roles, telegraphing the acts that largely substitute for development. (In case I don't stress this often enough when the time comes, in Bendis' later work this will not always be so much the case. His more recent superhero work, for instance, shows characters outgrowing their comic-book conventions and stretching to incorporate trends from television, popular genre fiction and movies.) An internal life is disdained. The lone figure given to any reflection, the bounty hunter in her diary, comes off like a conflicted adolescent. It is impossible to be engaged by any of 'em.

Bendis himself supplies the art for Jinx, a shotgun marriage of photocopies and rough freehand drawing. The icy precision of the former clashes horribly with the latter, which vacillates between crude, heavily inked renderings and slight, sketchy semblances. Bendis gives ample evidence that he possesses a lively and developed visual sense. He clearly has an awareness of the look to the story he wants to tell, but gives little sense that a page of comics is a precious piece of narrative real estate to be developed scrupulously and conscientiously: See the four consecutive "splash" pages consisting entirely of a character's head being blown open, or the series' opening four pages of a single $20 bill floating on a black background. Both strongly cinematic images are stubbornly ineffectual, in that the art cannot approach film's immediacy, appearing cheesy in conceptualization and sprawl.

One casts around for an explanation for such art, such writing, such a comic. Bendis relates elsewhere that his early goal was to create comics, and that his childhood was filled with incessant drawing. The most charitable way to construe Jinx is that the guy just wanted to make comics in the worst way (Must... resist... punch... line...).

A darker view of Jinx is that it is a better example of the hustler's craft than that of an artist's endeavor. A comic this bad, one that is not obsessively preoccupied with getting one whit better, insinuates a certain lack of regard for its audience and its medium. Or, alternatively, it originates from a practitioner who doesn't know any better, who isn't called to task, who isn't all that attuned to the differences between good comics and the other thing, or at least does not apply such awareness to his own work... that is to say, someone clueless and adrift without creative mooring or rudder, without much in the way of internalized artistic self-awareness, one who instead depends upon and is informed by outside influences for affirmation and direction... oh. Sorry. I'm confusing one person with the bane of an era...

Still one casts around for the reasons for the broad lack of due diligence in Jinx, its grammatical mistakes and non-idiomatic English ("It's a give-in"), its artistic lapses (called upon to sketch in a portion of an exterior of a restaurant that had previously been seen in photocopy, Bendis' renders the partially obscured sign as "...tarant"), its scenes where progressive panels contradict one another, where spatial relationships and distances aren't consistent, where relative positions shift for expedience... cripes, even the cover blurbs lifted from Spin can't be copied in English ("Dead on dialouge").

The poor showing of Jinx flags deep-seated issues that will haunt all of Bendis' subsequent work. He'll get better. He'll get help. Things'll improve.

But not right away.

In some ways, Bendis's next series responded to the failings of Jinx by aggravating them. Torso was a six-issue series (I read the final four; 165 pages) from Image in 1998. It was co-authored with Marc Andreyko with Bendis once more supplying the graphics.

The title had its high concept hook: Eliot Ness, transplanted from Chicago without his Untouchables, is called upon to end a string of gruesome murders in Cleveland in 1935. Though the tale is based, at some primal level, on an actual situation, there's evidence that the casual relationship Jinx had with human behavior and the laws of gravity has been extended in Torso to include recorded history (my favorite abuse comes from the series' denouement, where the heinous villain voluntarily checks himself into a state mental institution and thus, we are informed, "cannot be held accountable for any criminal act" and, AND... "it is against state law to publicly accuse, malign, or defame the man in word or print." Kids, do not be tryin' this in your home jurisdiction).

Sloppiness, one-dimensional "high concept" characters, and plotting conveniences abide to distraction (check out that severed head bobbing in the river; it rides so high in the water that it would have to be made of styrofoam). At least "ne're do wells and forget me knots" is corrected when the expression comes up one issue later.

Bendis' art has grown, if anything, sullenly less germane. Visual conceits have lurched beyond designer flourishes to introductory-class artsy-fartsy. Presentation is more meretricious, less advantageously frightful, less hand-crafted. The period photos reprinted from the Cleveland Public Library, however, make for a pleasant relief.

Far more hospitable material for Bendis' art can be found in the three issues of 2000's Fortune and Glory (126 pages in TPB). In this autobiographical comic from Oni, he ventures into the outer rings of Hollywood hell to pitch his comics for movie development. The rigors of realism are abandoned for a spare and wholeheartedly cartoony style, one better matched to the caricatures of La La Land's support staff and to the figure Bendis carves of himself.

Bendis' participation in the events lends a fidelity and persuasiveness to this story that was lacking in Jinx and Torso. More sure of his sources, he needs to embroider less. Writing is crisper, more direct and convincing. For explanation and exposition, he breezily addresses readers through a dropped fourth wall. As a result, dialogue is relieved of some of the responsibilities it is saddled with elsewhere and responds by sounding more natural. Comedic timing is enhanced. As repetition has inherent humorous possibilities, repeated images here feel at least more sympathetically in tune and less like lazy contrivances.

Autobiography can be the most self-serving of genres. Despite a coy and calculated portrayal, Bendis' character arouses some genuine empathy for its resemblance to a cork in the great uncaring Tinseltown ocean... or, more accurately, to an itinerant peddler in an alien environment. More forthright, though, are moments of what one can only assume to be unintended insight: "I don't think there's a big huge difference between writing comics and writing movies" and "I fell in love with the sound of my dialogue" confirm dire suspicions.

As a cork, Bendis appears without grounding, without center, without roots. His pole star of longest standing is eclipsed. Early on he calls comics "what I always dreamed of doing since I was a wee young un'." Later, though, he lapses comatose during grinding negotiations with a film studio, drained when his "boyhood dream come true isn't 'this' close to either happening or disappearing." Success of any stripe, in any medium, may well suffice.

Discernment is in shorter supply in Total Sell Out (154 pages), a dredge net full of material retrieved from unguessable depths. In it, short pieces are divvied into segments highlighting collaborations, autobiography, "Schtick," portfolios, and puff essays. For the insatiable devotee it represents a sampler of Bendis' trivial preoccupations, shallow opinions, recitations stripped of insight, autobiography played for laughs, pop culture fascinations, limp satirical jabs and visualized disappointments along the order of those detailed above. For the satiable, it has its smiley-face moments.

As an archival collection the book fails comprehensively. Pieces aren't dated. Sources are uncited. Some contributors go uncredited save for boiler plate acknowledgments on inside covers. Grammatical errors were not corrected in reprinting. Seemingly all effort was spared.

The best thing here is a 10-page crime story done with James Hudnall with surprisingly efficient art by Bendis (in another eight-pager written by Warren Ellis, he is less adept at rendering the festering insanity). There's evidence, probably from very early in his career, that Bendis can draw with some versatile competence -- right down to recognizable celebrity sketches -- given sufficient time and commitment. The autobiographical material (his weekly pages in the Cleveland Plain Dealer?) is at least amicably frivolous, small compensation in an inclusive retrospective that is otherwise materially unwarranted, historically dubious, artistically indiscriminate and a financial back-of-the-hand to purchasers.

Along those lines, a 1995 collaboration, Flaxen, featured a Hudnall script with Bendis' pencils as inked by David Mack. Its 24 pages featured the super adventures of former Playboy Playmate Suzie Owens in her adopted role as mascot of the Golden Apple comics chain in Los Angeles. It reads every bit as good as it sounds although Bendis' art, firmed up and rounded into form by Mack, meets minimum industry standards. Here again, Bendis, given someone else's script, can move a story along with some sense of continuity and purpose.

In the trajectory of Bendis' career, a new stage was reached with the shift to Image Comics and a laying down of frontline visual responsibilities. As he himself relates, "The day I stopped drawing I became hugely successful."

He began writing two series for Todd McFarlane and several things happened immediately. The most significant was that he gained the input of a collaborating artist. Furthermore, by writing for characters not his own, Bendis added the responsibility of caretaker to his resume, in that he would answer to a vested owner about developing a property as a tangible asset with the future in mind.

Beginning in 1999 Bendis wrote some 19 issues of Sam and Twitch (of which I read the first eight in an inhospitable black-and-white trade paperback; 176 pages). The titular pair were a team of cops with Laurel-and-Hardy body types who patrolled the beat of superhero Spawn's universe. Bendis' inclination toward crime fiction must have intuitively appeared a good fit.

Despite the potential advantages of oversight and collaboration, this initial "Udaku" arc has many of the mundane disappointments exhibited by Jinx and Torso: characters polished to the point of stereotype; slick if diarrhetic dialogue; dubious premises (a "South African family that's been running shit over there for like five hundred years... but it ain't none of that apartheid shit. It's just plain, old-fashioned gangster shit") developed though spectacular if ridiculous episodes; a lack of internal logic that facilitates outlandish behavior; fantastic coincidence (two dropped guns accidentally firing to crucial effect?); indestructibility (Sorry! Protagonists only!); a conclusion which fairly invites sequels; and a reprint edition that again doesn't correct petty if blatant fudge-ups (now, was that three chopped-off ears or four?).

The fiction Bendis makes of science is fresh, however. Early in the story, amputated body parts are found to live on, appendages cut from "goddamn living, breathing, human biological weapons" (sound farfetched? "Hey, Hitler was working on it sixty fucking years ago"). They got to be weapons see, because, as humans, they explode when punctured. Like a water balloon. But filled with nitroglycerine. Or they detonate, on their own. Like dynamite. Or radiate heat waves. If they need to. But always wearing white fedoras!

Artist Angel Medina proves an unfortunate choice to lend a visual coherence to Bendis' descriptions. He's too loose and busyfied to instill clarity (at least in this B&W treatment) when proceedings get frantic. Meanwhile his author does him no favors in the tasks he conjures up. I once blamed a Bendis collaborator for confusing visuals (most particularly running panel progression across the spine over facing pages with insufficient directional signals) but I now see that such awkwardness is written in, script-directed, and carried out by an overly deferential artist.

Medina makes unmistakably clear what Bendis' earlier art could not, which is that Bendis, as a matter of course, thinks of, creates, and writes comics cinematically... very, very cinematically. Often excruciatingly, compulsively, page-gobblingly so. Bendis wants his stories to look like this (with his own art, I thought the drift toward such a look was more out of necessity, dictated by what he did or didn't have photographs and photocopies of). To be sure, this makes for some exotic effects where page count can accommodate and when a scene lends itself to this sort of explicit visual spelling-out. But mostly it makes painfully obvious how limited the impact of the comics medium can be when moving pictures serve as the model of first and chief resort (see, if possible, R.C. Harvey on the two media and their fundamental differences over timing, pacing and progression in TCJ #84) and this is even if you are swiping from the very best movies.

Looking ahead to a superhero-strewn future, a sequence involving the guest appearance of Spawn is handled with a brio that bodes well for Bendis' more genre embedded work.

Bendis also wrote the first five-plus issues of McFarlane's Hellspawn. Reading only the first and sixth issues (and not being familiar with the Spawn theater) I find them generally incomprehensible on a page-by-page basis. Such confusion is unusual for Bendis-scribed books and would seem highly undesirable especially at the beginning of a new series. Part of the disorientation stems from the divergent strands Bendis lets dangle in individual issues; it's a tangle that he does not suffer as a rule, just as the smart juggler won't put more objects into the air then can be comfortably managed.

Adding to the sense of fragmentation is the aggressively unconventional illustration of artist Ashley Wood. Great painted tableaus, suggesting an appreciation for formal art-school training, invariably dwarf the interred dialogue, making words appear thin and naked. Purposefully sordid and grotesque, the pictures effectively commandeer a reader's attention (although in issue #1 Bendis does get to reprise an icky, prurient male-privileged monologue). This is the reverse of the usual balance in the relationship of words and pictures in Bendis projects so far. Nor does the author seem overly driven to reclaim focus: Each issue features a rambling prattle a deux that stretches through the comic yet does not appear to have much to do with advancing or conjoining the story ("Fastbender: Who then?" "Hertz: Who?" "Fastbender: Who was Kahn?" "Hertz: Who? He was that -- Dude, that guy..." etc.).

Bendis left the title just as McFarlane was attempting to inject Mike Moran/Miracleman into the Spawn universe (see TCJ #241), reportedly because a portion of the book was written, rewritten or added to by a co-author without Bendis' knowledge. His action seems as honorable a response to such an intrusion as can be imagined, given one side of the story.

With Powers a number of distinct potential advantages comes together under one title for Bendis. This was an open-ended, creator-owned series begun with Image in 2000. It afforded the author the opportunity to mesh his established personal interests in crime and cop dramas with the superhero genre. Bendis would create the book, its characters, its sensibilities and its milieu from whole cloth, his playground to do with as he chose. It would presumably be the least trammeled vision of the comics he wanted to offer a buying public. As such, I read on an ongoing basis from its inception, through its 37 issues and an annual (1007 pages) as a means of keeping some tabs on an author whose profile was rising rapidly within the industry.

Rereading the series in the context of Bendis' larger body of work, one can see Powers as an extension of his basic narrative approach. Again there is a strong indebtedness to films and television; in fact, Powers' chief attraction may be the incorporation of sensibilities of other mass media into superhero comics, as opposed to merely rearranging the building blocks of established funnybook tradition.

The series strongly exhibits the refinements of his professional experience. It's a more confident presentation, more comfortable with its preoccupations, bolder in its delivery, in every way a purer distillation of Bendis' talents. The jokes, the use of language and the sheer excesses make a more concerted appeal to kindred spirits. The wonderfully uninhibited and unremittingly jejune letter columns continually affirm a sense of personal satisfaction tinged with the evangelism of salesmanship.

On a practical level, Powers is just as irrevocably linked to artist and co-creator Michael Avon Oeming. His solid, cartoony retro-figuration harken back to the barrel-chested, squared-jawed, one-dimensional heroes of fandom's collective if amorphous yesteryear. It is a look well suited to the depth of Bendis' characterization.

Additionally this straightforward, Saturday-morning stylization offers high contrast to the exotic tinge Powers adds to the genre, which is the humanity of the superpowered, particularly in the flaws of its heroes. They possess sexual appetites, often outsized ones. They are pricked by petty jealousies and addled by greed, sometimes centering around no more than licensing deals for action figures. They can be frustrated, confused and ominously troubled. To present such paragons and corresponding miscreants -- to say nothing of attracting jaded genre readers-- the series featured beaucoups of earthy language, occasional supernudity, as well as more specialized visions of sexuality rare to capes 'n' cowls, things like golden showers and monkey pudenda, all sans, it should be noted, cover content-warnings.

As curiosity, this is sensational. Iconoclastic if not perverse ingenuity is plainly at work here. Revered heroes are capable of going nuts and running catastrophically berserk at any moment. Faded heroes work the convention circuit or less glamorous jobs still. Doomed heroes exit graphically. Certain superpowers are especially effective when used on gay men. Bendis uses such matters principally as utilitarian or scandalous ingredients in routinely linear narratives. More subtle and deeply seated implications for life on a wider scale are not developed with conviction (by way of unfair comparison, see the series Top Ten).

Characterization remains functionally broad. Superhero mayhem falls to police detectives Christian Walker and Deena Pilgrim. He's the hulking stalwart hewn from a largely inarticulate mass of uprightness. She's the feisty and overcompensating newbie, often resembling a sawed-off male with size issues, a sidekick with hormonal imbalances. Their relationship becomes most interesting specifically when it veers from the practiced roles of buddy pictures.

There's one acknowledged embarrassment that bears reporting. In a quieted moment, Bendis orchestrates the series' most intimate and significant scene between his protagonists, a pivotal exchange that addresses genuine feelings and difficult realizations. Unfortunately, the scene is originally printed lacking a full page of heart-to-heart. Diligently supplying it next issue, Bendis allows that "So far no one has really seemed to notice which argues the point that the scene might have been overwritten. :)" In fact it is better example of what is by now an established element in Bendis' work: talk without noticeable impact, graphic white noise, empty narrative calories. The excision also identifies an inattentive readership grown indifferent for one reason or another. (It would be additionally embarrassing for this critic to admit how often during first readings pages clung together unnoticed in trade paperbacks of Bendis' titles, dropping out immediate facing pairs of pages with never a sense that there were any atypical difficulties with the text.)

Here, on his biggest stage thus far, Bendis is adept at page-filling, hitting those narrative beats, positioning characters and deeds, and broadcasting essential intelligence. In a series where information is carried in speech by a number of heads, voices are largely indistinct with blue smartass being the fallback tone. Bendis uses TV voiceovers often yet shows little ear for telegenic vocalization. Announcers, news anchors and spot reporters impart the necessary bites or editorial sermonettes sounding less professional than even local Fox Network on-air personnel. For variety's sake, certain players are ethnicisized to the point of parody ("Den I get'a knocked out'a my lazy boy, right in da middle of da Vill and Grace"); it's a tendency that began early (see black people in Jinx) and shows no sign of abating gracefully (see Albert Einstein as some kindly Yiddish hillbilly).

Perhaps because he is relieved of the artistic realization, Bendis is more ambitious in his experiments in storytelling. Oeming's clear and open style acts to make them appear less ostentatious, less labored, less intrusively contrived; it gives them the look of, well, comics. Still, their deployment is hit-and-miss. The issue that mimics People magazine features a smart layout with prose compromised by proofreading and a journalistic logic that even that publication would not tolerate. In contrast, the fake Internet pages seem spot-on, rude and risible (at least to someone who doesn't have Internet access).

As with titles past, the more familiar you are with the real world, the more difficulty you are going to have getting past glitches, stumbles, clichés and convenient happenstance. A big chunk of the Powers annual is presented as if it were a trial transcript (for anyone wondering, given that facility for and reliance on dialogue, how Bendis would make out writing screenplays, here's Exhibit A). The courtroom drama is essentially dashed when the prosecuting attorney introduces devastating surprise evidence. Now, the American judicial system has procedures in place (such as disclosure, and EBTs, the "evidence before trial") where opposing sides swap basic pre-trial information in order to prevent spring-loaded evidence -- like this'n -- from guaranteeing a mistrial or appeal. For excitement's sake, no such safeguards exist in Powers' venue, but there's no harm done as further court action was avoided when suicide provided all the justice and finale necessary.

Invariably the story arcs in Powers start better than they finish. A crime begins with lurid or grisly salaciousness that promises an additionally juicy and freakish follow-up. This isn't detective fiction. Investigations proceed without the sprinkling of clues, leaving out that play-along-at-home aspect (Jr. Crimestoppers take note: the inside covers of Powers offers brief recaps and are routinely recommended for missed or never revealed information... Oh!! The doggie died?). Resolutions arrive from odd, damp corners of left field, an unaccountable stroke of mind reading here, the surrender scene from the movie Se7en there. Dissipated drama, frittered suspense, truncated explanation and tidied denouement come in the forms of crazed confessions under routine grilling, unexpected death, blacking out and slinking away. Such fizzlements may risk offending conventional notions of fair play; worse, they leave the reader unsatisfied, as the mongered feeling of being entitled to righteous, spectacular vengeance goes unfulfilled. Two arcs do finish well, both for being tied securely to the emotional state of stolid Walker (in the best genre tradition, however, the second ending involves the reappearance of a dead character, which negates the emotional impact of the first and replaces it with the sense of having been duped). Powers has since moved on to Marvel Comics under its brand new Icon line, the firewall imprint that will keep the Invincible Iron Man and his ilk safe from strong language.

To an outside reader, Bendis' move to Marvel was accomplished precipitously and to major impact. Likely the usual dance of management and labor -- feelers, proposals, mutual acquaintances, etc. -- was hurried along by the momentum of a high-profile rollout, that of the company's "Ultimate" line, specifically Ultimate Spider-Man (read for the most as three hardcover volumes; 807 pages).

According to Bill Jemas, then company president and initiator of the imprint, the Ultimates was "Marvel's teen initiative," an aggressive campaign to win younger readers who weren't up to speed on 40 years of character continuity: "We can't to sit back [sic] and wait for a 12 year old to wander into a comic shop, drift over to the right rack and find the Ultimate X-Men." The line focused on the most popular of the company's youngish heroes -- as originally conceived by Stan Lee -- over which a "Year 2000 context" was draped According to editor Ralph Macchio, that shift for Spider-Man "would make him supremely identifiable to the young audience we coveted."

Jemas initially shepherded Ultimate Spidey and is given story credit along with Bendis through the first seven issues (thereafter he continues as "Inspiration" and hovers over his author as check-signing muse). Bendis is credited with scripting throughout. Thanks to Jemas' original plot outline as printed in the first hardcover, one gets ample sense of what was envisioned as a Year 2000 context, providing new appreciation for what, in surely delicate circumstances, Bendis stitched together from a floppy sow's ear.

Lee and Steve Ditko's 11-paged origin story of Spider-Man from 1962 is also reprinted in the first hardcover. Reading it, one is freshly impressed with its directness, compactness and economy. The basic emotional underpinnings are crisply portrayed and deftly accessed. Year 2000's context is comparatively bloated with teen melodrama, morbidly detailed and redundant. To show Peter Parker's alienation, the six scattered panels of social isolation in Lee and Ditko's original are replaced by a like number of pages of degradation and humiliation, whereby the once-and-future hero is constantly depicted as the target of jock sadism and wearer of whole trays of lunchtime food. Solace consists of Rockwellian interludes with saintly Ben and May Parker, including an entire page of the family sitting down to and extolling the healing properties of banana bread.

I don't want to get sidetracked on the success and failure of this retro-birth (otherwise Mark Bagley's art would need to be explicitly addressed, especially since he, as an experienced genre artist, appears least wedded to his author's graphic suggestions) so much as focus on Bendis' contributions. Still: Myth, legend, and archetype undergo inflation and elaboration at peril (imagine, say, the 40-odd sentences of the Book of Genesis' first seven days drawn out to novel's length). As outlined by Jemas and engineered by Bendis, this Ultimate retelling is self-conscious, stilted, goofy, gassy, occasionally bewildering stuff. Again, it wasn't written for me, and probably not you either, but it's still painful to contemplate members of the buying public relating to this taco-bespattered boy the way their ancient ancestors might have identified with Lee and Ditko's shunned bookworm.

With issue eight and the beginning of the second arc, Bendis becomes the solo writer of the series (coincidentally enough, once Jemas leaves, the hardcover no longer displays credit boxes for individual reprinted issues). Plotting, writing and, to a lesser degree, pacing all improve noticeably, as if Bendis had been waiting to get out from under.

Yet, at the same time, for perhaps the first time, Bendis' writing exhibits the benefits of active editorial input. The hardcovers include an exchange of letters which delineate the degree of higher-level involvement. Specific topics mulled in the first book include Bendis' penchant for multiple strings of trailing dialogue balloons, his potty mouth, and his affinity for overheard television broadcasts imparting crucial information. (Jemas had also pushed to make the burglar who Peter neglects to collar a separate criminal entirely from the killer of Unca Ben, thereby eliminating that brilliantly unbelievable coincidence from the rest of the routinely unbelievable origin. Bendis wisely follows form and convictions.)

What is obvious in the prose supplements is that all concerned had given more thought and invested more attention to the characters, scenes and events than would be transferred to the printed page (else why, one issue after showing procedurally correct technique, would a blood sample be shown as extracted with a sudden, willy-nilly needle stab, as if one were instead injecting a powerful sedative into a frenzied lunatic?). Such commitment by and cooperation among multiple parties resulted in Bendis' most purposeful writing to date. In the past, there's always been the feeling that Bendis brought his comics into existence with resolute determination, high spirits and deceptive ease. Here is the behind-the-scenes documentation that Bendis the craftsman is hard at work for corporate interests, shaping his most focused writing.

On a mechanical level, one tool taken up by Bendis to great effect was the internalized monologue. It is the means by which the reader gains much insight into Peter Parker as a brand new, Ultimate character. Bendis captures aspects of the teen psyche well, particularly the wild fluctuations of youthful self-valuation as occasioned by circumstances that ceaselessly flutter between the utterly fantastic and the remorselessly mundane.

While it's difficult for me to directly compare Bendis' treatment of the Spider-Man character with those of the recent past, several aspects immediately seem new and vital. The jokes are more contemporary and sharper, more strewn with up-to-the-minute media references. Riffs on and wrinkles to genre clichés surprise and please. Bendis proves himself singularly willing and able to imagine the behavior of his young hero... certainly depantsing a villain is something that might appeal to a teen flush with reckless confidence.

The anchoring of Peter Parker in his world of teen concerns is also carried out with diligence: It takes less pages to dispatch archenemy Kraven the Hunter than it does to absorb an after-curfew scolding from Aunt May. The resultant grounding complicates both Parker's personal and secret lives. Such difficulties virtually define the book's most interesting feature, the special traumas of being heroic while hardly more than a child. The issue in which he, through a series of routine school interactions, cannot escape from French class to apprehend a supervillain is clever and novel. When Peter is shot in costume, there's less of an oblivious gloss put over what this might mean to a fifteen-year-old.

What this Ultimate effort reminds me of more than anything else is a practical fusion of comic cultures. The series mimics Eastern manga sensibilities from its look (Those eyes! That hair!) to its content (page-swallowing teen hyperdrama). The West provides the superheroics, particularly that of a "golden age" strain, with its ready ignorance of logic, physics, probability and human anatomy (is there any American of any age who could read of the Spider-saving of Mary Jane at the Brooklyn Bridge and not think of a Thanksgiving wishbone snapping?).

The appendix of the third hardcover gives an eye-opening glimpse of how the one-time House of Ideas works 'em up nowadays. In a dozen pages of internal communications, Jemas proposes to Bendis that he introduce the character Venom to the title ("I'd also like to turn our licensees loose on Venom for toys and costumes and all that stuff").

Jemas' memos are candidly overbearing: "And as usual, I'm envisioning this being 80% high school love triangle and soap opera and only 20% super stuff." He warns that a "flashback into newly made up continuity" was an anathema "inconsistent with the fundamental creative briefing for the Ultimates." Moreover, the story "should make little or no reference to our ever growing Ultimate continuity." The back and forth grows to include comments from editor in chief Joe Quesada which are sometimes in accord, sometimes at odds with, and sometimes independent of those of Jemas.

Apart from any issues of individual artistry, it is interesting to see Bendis' ingenuity in the high-wire act of corporate creativity and team vision. Most impressive is his role as script doctor for Jemas' rambling narrative and scattershot notions, winnowing, weighing then cementing things in place after mortising in ideas of his own. In the process he does manage to ditch a measure of Jemas's creepy relish for some story elements ("I'm picturing Eddie sniffing around the girl of your choice;" "Eddie seeks out Peter for a path into the sweet land of high-school girls"). Also lost are remedies for legitimate concerns raised by Jemas and Quesada (likewise whether anyone ever points out to Jemas that "usury" doesn't mean what he thinks it does).

Overall, one sees how staunchly the Ultimates rationale -- that of eased accessibility for any young reader at any point -- was protected, either by theoretically defensible (no backstory; the story goes on from here!) or more dubious prohibitions (no mention of ballooning continuity!). One almost feels sorry for Bendis, whose storytelling instincts certainly seem surer than those of his superiors.

All this suggests an ominous issue for the Ultimate line, one beyond elaboration in a single article on a single author: No matter how it's hawked, the Ultimate imprint, at least what's discussed here, is inextricably indebted to the past, bound to prior comics done by previous creators for previous regimes reflecting transitory sensibilities. This new line is dependent on characters and concepts lifted from earlier sources, sources that, while amenable to adaptation and tinkering, possess virtues unassailable by any new "Context." The most obvious is originality. The arcs thus far have taken their shape via a one-by-one reintroduction of Spider-Man's most popular cast members with snap-on attachments ("from a more hip, younger Aunt May to a punk version of gorgeous Gwen Stacey"). Such referencing takes less thought and less creativity with less risk and proportionately less opportunity for innovation, advancement and achievement. It's an old groove with implants for everybody. Jemas supplies an overly-detailed brainstorm for the long build-up in his Venom outline to Bendis before switching to bald shorthand in the clinch: "Black costume takes over Peter's life -- you know that drill."

Yup. Readers, too. A great deal of the commercial success of the Ultimates line can be traced to older fans of previous lore, curious as to what changes were made or not made to the originals. What is sacrosanct and what expendable? What have they changed in Spidey's origin? Who does or doesn't get killed on the Brooklyn Bridge? What panels are homages? What lines repeated verbatim? How long will older fans straddling the two divorced eras hang on with Spidey 2.0?

After John Byrne made his ballyhooed, deck-clearing reorigin of Superman, it didn't take all that long before Bizarros and superdogs started seeping back into the gospel. Though the Spider-Dune Buggy has yet to make an appearance, there's only that one general direction to take as the genies leave this bottle. The Lee/Ditko Spider-Man has withstood all manner of festooning for 40 years. The Ultimate clock is already ticking, loudly. It lasts as profitable imprint until such trappings as gorgeous punks are no longer enticements for the coveted audience (Uh... time's up?) thereby forcing a Brand! New! 2007 or 2009 or 2010 context... or until Bendis, its mainstay and flame-juggling tightrope walker, picks up and decamps, depriving the line of an organizing intelligence and insuring the dilution of product. Whichever comes first.

Among Bendis' Ultimate Spider-stories, those of the Ultimate Team-Up are more satisfying as traditional genre fare, offerings that overtly serve fewer masters with fewer extraneous demands. The title's premise is retained from its prior, non-Ultimized days: Spider-Man pairs with other characters in his fictive universe. While it is plain that certain aspects of that Ultimate universe are already decided and are hereby set in stone for posterity (a black Nick Fury, for instance), Bendis' stories flourish under looser editorial restrictions. He sets the teen-angst/superstuff ratio as he sees fit. There are back stories. The series' inherent concept is predicated on the inflation of the Ultimate roster of characters, though most undergo even less cosmetic changes than Nick Fury from their non-Ultimate incarnations. Things are lighter on their feet, snappier, funnier. Stories are tied up in an issue or two issues for the most with their soap-opera aspects similarly constrained.

The series gains intrinsic interest from its team-up of rotating artists (for instance, whole issues from Ted McKeever, John Totleben, and Terry Moore; segments from James Kochalka, Craig Thompson, and Scott Morse). There's a small essay to be written on the comparative contributions each collaborator makes to Bendis' script and dialogue, from Bill Sienkiewicz's montage pages supporting great ribbons of interlocking word balloons, to Jim Mahfood's cartoony hijinks, cramming in-jokes everywhere, finally giving comedian Bendis the visual support he has lacked.

The 12-issue series was closed out -- in apparently something of a surprise to readers -- by an extra-long Special (326 pages to the title in all). It functions as coda, particularly as an in-class speech by Peter Parker addresses the subject of heroism across a gallery of pin-ups. For an author who goes off as readily as Bendis, this is a comparatively rare moment where a relatively serious topic and philosophical position is conscientiously developed. He delivers a persuasive imitation of a 15-year-old's voice striving for academic credit and, at the same time, gift wraps the ethos of this new Ultimate world with a big bow of thin ribbon.

With a seven-issue miniseries Ultimate Six in 2003, Bendis reprises name and concept of the first Lee/Ditko Spider-Man annual from 1964. Here, a collection of Spidey villains is opposed by both Spider-Man and the Ultimates, this imprint's version of the Avengers. The Ultimates readily benefitted from a comic of their own by author Mark Millar and artist Brian Hitch. Apart from being Avengers' analogues, the Ultimates are most notable for being ruthless fighters for the good, a mien lifted directly from the Authority, ruthless fighters for the good created by Warren Ellis and Hitch for DC/Wildstorm.

Among brutal bad guys and callous good guys, teen Spidey is properly cowed and reeling. Penciler Trevor Hairsine, inker Danny Miki, and colorists Dave Stewart and Ian Hannin do a fine job keeping monsters, pyrotechnics, property damage and dark faces clear and distinct. From start to finish, this is perhaps Bendis' most conceptually clean writing. Pacing is also uniformly lively, thanks to the artists' ability to spruce up the lulls and tide readers over the dead spots by making the comic interesting to look at if not read. Everybody gets threatened, things blow up admirably, body count rises, and in the end, things get back to normal, Stan Lee's very definition of a successful comic book adventure.

Splitting hairs, one weakness of the Ultimate Six is its muted characterization of the Ultimates, heroes with whom Bendis had had little prior experience. Back when the Ultimate line was first proposed, he was approached to write both of its flagship books, Ultimate Spider-Man and Ultimate X-Men. After some thought, Bendis turned the latter down, citing concerns about the challenges of a team book with its multiplicity of voices, angles and interactions. However wise, this likely was not a decision easily made. In his collision with Hollywood sensibilities in Fortune and Glory, Bendis disclosed "I always wanted to be the go-to guy." If the Ultimate Six justified initial misgivings over writing a team book, his original guest stint on Ultimate X-Men represented a strategic end-around accommodation.

His first X-arc (issues 34-39, 134 pages) focused principally on one cast member, Wolverine, with the rest of the team in cameo until finally, as cavalry, charging in late. Before that, the story seems a left-over "Team-Up" idea with Wolverine paired along the way with Spider-Man and Daredevil, two characters with whom Bendis was, at this point, very familiar. Thank to artist David Finch, the arc is filled with spectacular graphic violence... the X-Man is plucked and carried off by a air-to-surface missile, he takes four point-blank bullets into the head... that sort of thing.

It's something of a surprise to see Bendis precipitously revert to older form in this arc: frothy speech, stunning improbabilities, fantastical posturing, catastrophic devastation, a simple plot culminating in sudden death -- suicide -- that sidesteps reasonable disclosure and logical explanation. I have no idea what fans of Daredevil (or their parents) will make of him delaying his grand entrance until his fellow traveler gets those bullets to the head so as to provide the issue-ending dramatic cliffhanger (sez the hero stepping from the shadows after the fourth shot, "I've heard enough!!"). If called upon to account once again for such a comic, such writing, here one can at least suspect commercial considerations, job-related factors... that it was cobbled on request, rushed into some production breech, some scheduling hole, some creative jam... the go-to guy making good.

It took the "original" X-Men universe 19 years to come up with its New Mutants squad. In an Ultimate world it took three and a half. Bendis, the very guy who shied away from team books for crowd control problems, is called upon to introduce this new crew (those pesky licensees again?). In his second X-Men arc (issues 40-45, 129 pages), he once more proves his worth as a team player, dutifully trotting out the fresh faces, depositing assorted tics and quirks, wiring in the various checkered relationships.

On a mechanical level, this second arc is much more structurally sound than his first. Bendis additionally demonstrates a stroke of daring that makes him so attractive for genre-bound product lines: A young mutant is introduced, then summarily euthanized by a good guy because of his unwelcome special abilities. However much this cold death generates in drama and moral conflict, its impact is readily contrasted to the demise of a proper X-Man of standing. Oddly enough, the marked hero is largely absent once the arc gets underway, along with the opportunity to feel any connection, any empathy. The abrupt departure is distanced from a sense of narrative importance or emotional consequence, making it difficult to tell whether it represented an editorial decision or a creative one.

The Ultimate imprint was not the only Marvel brand Bendis helped launch. In 2001, Alias became the flagship title of the MAX line which aimed for another, at least categorically differentiated audience: readers "over 17." As for the title's high concept, Alias Investigations is run by one Jessica Drew, a former superheroine who sets up shop in the corner of the Marvel superhero universe that cusses. She has non-marital sex (an evidently painful variation of which occurs during the first issue) that is generally accomplished with less nakedness than some spandex costumes reveal. Celebrating other artistic liberties championed by the MAX imprint, the first word of the series is "Fuck!" as spoken in a scene lifted directly from the opening of the movie Chinatown.

Alias represents a mature flowering of Bendis' developed tendencies for both good and ill. It combines several aspects already touched on, such as a Jinx-like take-less-shit heroine, the prurient and supered-up plots of Powers, and the star wattage of Marvel heroes. In the concluding arc, the supervillain sums it up this way: "So this is Jessica's comic book? Subtle yet expressive artwork. Mainstream with just a touch of indy. Powerful color palette. (Interesting.) Seen worse." The demonstration of self-awareness may lack the thematic impact of, say, Grant Morrison's appearance at the end of his Animal Man run, but the assessment is not inaccurate. We've all seen worse.

The raised ante of this title is its use of Marvel characters, hovering on the fringes of Jessica's stage, slumming in a world of naughty language and sexual activity. Now, the smart writer is going to exploit the hell out of name recognition, hero history, automatic resonances, and the unique possibilities associated with brand loyalty (some of which, admittedly, is more important in marketing and advertising than in art). In this series Bendis makes excursions into backwoods Marvel. He forges inroads in unexplored territory of the company Universe, however much those initially intriguing paths wind up being dead ends in sterile country.

Yet Bendis does his level best to make his protagonist's history stand out from heroism-as-usual. Jessica appears as a traumatized soul, worldly-worn, superficially toughened. She's been around the block. Her shoulders slump and frumpiness persuasively cloaks her inner beauty. She's plagued by a sad past, self-worth issues and a refreshing drinking problem. Bendis risks making her unappealing, ineffectual and dim (In the introductory issue, immediately after dismissing a customer in a missing person case, Jessica confides to readers "Here's a couple of little secrets of the investigating trade. You ready? Firstly, I spend more time verifying that the client is legit than I do finding the person." So what do you think is the very next thing she expressly does not do in order to set the plot in motion? Who can be so dim as to go out of their way, to pointedly announce professional methodology like that, to attempt to sound like an insider, and then neglect to go ahead and actually do that very thing?). Alias features some of Bendis' best-formed and best-rounded characters. By way of overarching development, through the course of the series (28 issues, 609 pages) Jessica's past is revealed, her love life stabilizes, everybody survives the rough patches, and generally gets on with it.

Along the way, though, there's an unsavory freakshow aspect to the proceedings, of violation for the voyeur's sake, of degradation for curiosity and amusement. There's that -- what was it? Anal sex? -- with Power Man. Jessica's backstory includes a stint as a sexual slave to a supervillain. She sobers up in jail after drunkenly coming on to a small town sheriff. She masturbates to a poster of the Human Torch as an adolescent. She's caught masturbating as an adolescent. She's upbraided by Thor for her language ("Young maiden of Midgard, thy language leaves something to be desired."). She throws up on his boots. To be sure this is boffo material for a Marvel zombie having attained the age of 17, for someone who would be thrilled that the phrase "Captain fucking America" is used three times in the same panel, who has secretly longed for the righteous thrashing of Speedball, one of Steve Ditko's last and least characters ("you ugly-ass, gay-costume mutherfucker." That'd be a "sic" expletive and it's neither the first nor last time).

That flavor -- a Marvel Universe with an "R"rating -- is a major attraction of Alias. The plots of individual arcs are mostly way stations, pregnant with implication, along the longer ride of Jessica's larger "origin" story. Another missing-person case (during which the father proclaims "I didn't fuck my daughter" from the get-go) is "solved" by apparent clairvoyance; it additionally affords an opportunity for a ready soapbox for a righteous stand against discrimination and narrow-mindedness. A third-missing person job stirs up several instances of self-delusion that might have coalesced to make a bigger point but wind up, in the end, as more coincidence than meaningful amalgam. And anyone who doesn't unravel the who and why of a murder mystery involving Captain America's secret identity during a street-corner discussion can't read the broadside of a bus.

In this series Bendis offers his widest variety of narrative and visual devices yet and he is at his most successful at incorporating them. One issue, my favorite in all of Bendis' work, traces Jessica's employment under Marvel Universe stalwart, newspaper publisher J. Jonah Jameson. The comic is done entirely in dialogue (Bendis as playwright, Exhibit B) over watercolor illustrations. Its coordinated novelty sparkles for its immediacy ("I'm holding a bill for $600 for tapioca pudding!!"). Another highly favored half-issue also rests on Bendis' ease with conversation as Jessica squares up on Power Man after their liaison ("You're a big girl. You hit on me. You fucked me."). The rest of that issue offers coy first-date talk with a white superguy; it's saccharined and condescending yet shows marked improvement over the earlier tête-a-tête conducted between Jinx and Goldfish.

Artist Michael Gaydos was a crony of Bendis in art school (from remarks, interactions and collaborations, Bendis comes across as a loyal pal in the funnybook trenches). The Alias hardcover gives insight into their working relationship through the range of materials author provides artist. The script is streamlined. Its dialogue is virtually word-for-word as it will eventually appear in print. Descriptions are bare-boned and sprinkled with cinematic terms: "dollying in on her hand..." (The script appears here as hand printed on lined notebook paper ripped from its spiral binding. The writing betrays no corrections or improvements but the sheets sport dried rings from beverage cups. This may all be a warming, post-production, faux-folksy redesign, but if not it supports some of the suspicions one can harbor about Bendis' industry in reworking and refining material.) Bendis also sends along thumbnails sketches of pages, on lined paper too. These are so rough that they can require helpful notes with directional lines and proper identification, i.e. "hands."

Finally, Bendis submits a collection of photographs of actors chosen and posed for specific panel illustrations. This represents a retreat to the approach used in Jinx and Torso, only this time handed off to an independent artist. Would that Gaydos were more independent. Alias suffers from the save slavish stiltedness as its procedural predecessors: the same images repeated and reappearing, sometimes larger, sometimes smaller. We creep in on a face for a close up, back off for widened perspective, all without a sign of life, without a moving mouth, without a flicker in the eyes (this, along with her drinking, may explain why Jessica's windows of the soul are so often covered with sunglasses or set in a band of shadow so deep they resemble a racoon's). To willfully concede this degree of expressiveness is unfathomable, as if a goal of the comic was to attempt to capture the versatility of a photocopier. Later, as facial features begin to undergo slight alteration between panels, one is still left with the impression that near paralysis is imagined as a sign of subtlety.

In a text page from the final issue of Alias Bendis discussed his series conclusion: "I was like, 'Uh, I think I just wrapped up the series'... you know that we peaked. The point of the book has been examined, revealed, explained and dealt with in what I would call a satisfactory way." A sober, reasonable, forthright analysis.

He then goes on to report that Editor-in-Chief Quesada "said Marvel was toying with the idea of a CSI in the Marvel Universe kind of book, and that maybe I could take Jessica, who everybody already likes, and create something that worked all these ideas together. Very inspiring words." (I don't begrudge him his sources of inspiration but I can honestly say, even this far along, that Bendis has never lost his ability to amaze me.)

So peaked or no, wrapped up or not, Alias transformed into The Pulse after a brief hiatus. And on this ship, the salty talk, the MAX sensibility, and Marvel readers over 17 are given the heave-ho. "See, we can't have the kids picking up an issue of Alias looking for Wolverine and getting a mouth full of my potty, we just can't" even "though I like saying 'fuck' a lot (some might say too fucking much)." Instead, readers buying the first two issues of The Pulse (44 pages) have been treated to some of Bendis' most polite and plodding storytelling as genre-dictated plot points are being connected at a glacial pace. Jessica does not appear in the second issue at all, which further suggests that those qualities Alias had going for it pre-peak may be lost in the resurrection.

Bendis' writing on Daredevil represents another terrific example of what service he can provide mainstream employers. After an initial arc, he took over the reigns of the title in 2001 and is at it still (my tagalong has lasted 659 pages, largely through two hardcover volumes). Situated squarely in the Marvel Universe proper, with its %#@& notations for saucy language, Daredevil represents another smooth synthesis of genre convention, corporate concerns and Bendis' own developed abilities and interests. Here action superheroics is blended with crime fiction, cop stories, courtroom drama and perilous romance.

Even though the title was restarted and renumbered as of its relaunch by writer Kevin Smith and artist Joe Quesada in 1998, the series kept intact and acknowledged the prior 34-year history of the character. The memorable stories, established relationships and transforming events endured. In turn they were saluted and adapted by Bendis (who even allows harebrained material its place as a source of humor). No Ultimizing makeover here. Instead he taps into Daredevil's long saga, sifting through it for elements suited to purpose. On balance, the writing he has done for the character in this book is among his most skillful, his plotting most intriguing, my own sense of name recognition, automatic resonances, and brand loyalty having been duly invoked.

It's difficult, in light of the extended run that was to follow, not to see Bendis' first arc as a neatly circumscribed meet-and-greet project, an introductory audition where employer and employee feel one another out. It is relatively self-contained and necessitates, in contrast to his extended run, little accommodations within ongoing continuity. At the same time it goes out of its way to be mindful of an earlier stewardship. The obeisance represents, in Bendis' words, "a significant valentine to Frank Miller" or, alternately, "a couple of issues to kiss Miller's ass with."

The arc, called "Wake Up" (issues 16-19), is a conscientiously constructed tale of beginning, middle and end with the super doings suborned to plot maintenance and character transmutation. Daredevil is pivotal though not often on stage. Daring-do is overshadowed by the emotional turmoil of reporter Ben Urich and Timmy, a withdrawn and passive young boy traumatized by some unknown past event.

Through a well-executed conceit, Timmy communicates by childish drawings and the trite verbal lingo of superhero comics ("To be continued -- true believer"). Smarter still: He can function as a suitable vessel for the readers' sympathies while still operating beyond their ken. Inclined readers can simply feel for him, bad at the beginning, good at the end. Since he is "special," Timmy does not have to explain himself. This introduces, then prolongs, the book's mystery and suspense, additionally sidestepping certain problematic areas for Bendis -- like rationale and behavior -- for much of the story.

Timmy's role as sympathetic vessel rests in large part with the rank adorableness imbued by artist David Mack, who travels his own elaborate kit bag of special effects. Using non-traditional comic book art to depict the plight of an abused cherub has a direct antecedent in a 1982 issue of Moon Knight by Doug Moench and Bill Sienkiewicz. "Wake Up," besides being more uplifting and less emotionally conflicted than its predecessor, is definitely, needlessly longer (an under-examined consequence of the present trade paperback-mad age is that all tales for major publishers now look beyond monthly serialization and are projected to fill, usually through inflation, larger-scale bindable repackagings).The ramp-up to revelation is prolonged. Plucked emotional notes persistently repeat the same simple, earnest refrain. Small wonder then that by conclusion even the hardened newspaperman gets choked-up and preachy. Still, this tale stands out for its successes in aim, construction and execution.

Bendis took over Daredevil as a steady gig in issue 26. He again begins his tenure strong, quickly establishing his cast by effectively introducing his hero and arranging supporting characters both new and old. Soon convention, made-to-order conceits and personal mannerisms set in. A corpse isn't quite dead. Everybody gets chatty. Cinematic progressions inch along. Guest stars are ushered in, adding often distinctly differentiated and appreciated perspectives. Meanwhile, the main narrative itself careens back and forth through time, crisscrossing cause and effect, tarting up a straightforward tale as if there's a lack of confidence in the basic material; says its author: "I crave and am addicted to trying new things like that," suggesting more a question of engagement than confidence. Perhaps the same impetus accounts for a cheap hood quoting Roman history -- you can tell 'cause there are quotation marks in the word balloons -- all the better to affect classical classiness.

Things lead plausibly to the public disclosure of Daredevil's civilian identity as blind attorney Matt Murdock. (This corner was not turned easily; Bendis had to promise to remain with the title for a period to satisfy editor Quesada). Thereafter the complications in Matt's life are more interesting and better written than subsidiary superheroics. However much it will disappoint orthodox genre fans, the costumed-one is largely overshadowed, demoted to fact-finding, gymnastic exhibitions, clean-up and muscle work. One three-issue courtroom arc has Daredevil in uniform only in a pair of three-paged segments, once at conclusion where he acts the stern and spooky paternal figure (otherwise, the court's procedural drama suffers under the influence of superhero logic even before the subject of telekinesis is brought up under oath).

The relegation of genre thrills will continue to the point where the carefully set-up and justifiably anticipated showdowns with prestigious arch foes end up as dull, prolonged physical beat-downs. They lack the deliciously invigorating and creatively felicitous come-uppances that we come to believe the baddies so richly deserve. Along the way, some on-the-spot psychoanalytic profiles are boltshot into the proceedings. They read nutty to me, unsubstantiated and unpersuasive, crib-noted Freud from deep left field. Worse, they are superfluous, not adding to the story in an immediately worthwhile or enriching way, shine and dazzle of the psychobabble kind.

Once his protagonist has been wedged into tight new corners, Bendis nicely frames the shifts among friends and foes. Confidants lie for him; law partner Foggy Nelson relishes the instance where he, and not his superhero amigo, is the source of support in an hour of need; bodyguard Luke Cage reproaches the champion for duplicity. The tightest moral corner is provocative, original and poetically fit: Murdoch, in the course of denying his secret identity, brings a damage suit against the paper and publisher who outed him. The charge of libel is known to be false by the sued publisher and, of course, by the instigating lawyer. The sharpest edges of this moral dilemma are, unfortunately, pished away in a gruesome turn several issues later. (See there? That's how a severed head floats!)

Alex Maleev has been the principle artist for most of Bendis' run. Though his compositional sense is fine and his art strong enough on its own, his storytelling does not seem a fortuitous match for authorial tendencies discussed earlier. As ever, much of the visual time in Daredevil is consumed by talking heads. Maleev's reliance on photorealistic modeling and on the graphic manipulations possible with computers -- most prominently duplication -- tend to make warm-blooded characters appear cold and stiff. Panels wind up frequently resembling overwrought fumetti. Action sequences are stilted, wooden. Interludes are dotted with wandering glances and spatial disconnects. Passion is denoted by overacting and contortions up to the point of facial hysteria. While Maleev depicts a single panel's static scene well, Bendis' writing must supplement the sense of movement. His dialogue rises to the challenge better than usual, although interior monologues strain to supply necessary data as filtered through a blind man's unique perspective ("How do girls know how to smell just right? ...Her silky shiny hair. Her precious pale skin"). To my eye, the book is knitted together by Matt Hollingsworth's coloring, rotating sets of coordinated and muted palettes which perform a terrific job of establishing mood and focusing a wayward reader's attention.

In contrast to the ongoing title, the mini-series Daredevil: Ninja amply demonstrates just how little is required for raw genre fodder and how easily Bendis can churn it out. This trio of comics (2001, 66 pages) is largely divorced from the ongoing, soap-operatic elements of the main book. It operates outside or along side Bendis' Daredevil continuity, forfeiting its more enticing plots and elaborated relationships. Ninja employs little more than a bared hook, reeled rapidly back and forth, facilitating a lot of splashy martial-arts action (the ambush of ninja hordes at LaGuardia airport is particularly loopy, given the era and its color coded security warnings; I wonder how young a reader would have to be in order to escape being acutely and derisively attentive?). Bendis's demonstrated levels of scripting, characterization and verbal flair are similarly uprooted, scattered. He has his hero "wait for the other foot to drop" and incessantly declare a hatred for "this ninja crap."

Daredevil's ninja crap dates back, again, to Frank Miller's run, where it was incorporated with far more commitment. Miller's balletic combat was no more plausible, but his personal fascination inherently bequeathed it more consequence and sincerity. This story barely ties the fights together, peaks at that confusing airport melee (an athletic bag full of currency? Having passed through international checkpoints?), ends with a whimper and threatens a sequel. Penciler and inker Rob Haynes (listed on the credits as "director") and colorist David Self ("cinematographer") provided the art for Ninja. The whole shebang, in its trade paperback edition, is presented as a "Marvel Films Production." With far more candor and accuracy, Haynes says "Basically, I made a coloring book with a story" which Bendis wrote with concordant virtuosity.

Daredevil: Ninja tried to make a meal of the martial-arts ingredients Miller once used to spice up Daredevil. But Miller did not create that Eastern genre; he did Elektra, a character Bendis relaunched in her own series in 2001.

Elektra was (as is the current Daredevil) part of yet another company offshoot imprint, the "Marvel Knights,"a group of farmed-out funnies which permitted some leeway in editorial standards and practices. For instance, in the trade paperback of the first six issues (144 pages), Elektra gets to kill in especially cold blood. There's also a "nude interior art variant" of one early issue according to Wizard, who would know. Both elements identify this series as part of Marvel's concerted attempt to cash in on the "bad girl" comics so celebrated once upon a time, a trend epitomized by the series' covers cum masturbatory aides.

Bendis composes the initial arc "The Scorpio Key" as one would compose a wall against which things are thrown to see what sticks. It's part techno-thriller, part political intrigue, part military saga and part spy caper with superhero adventure and ninja fantasy all firmly grounded in the bedrock of realism which underlies greater cosmopolitan Marvel Universe.

Actual current events having overtaken the book, "The Scorpio Key" is likely an even weirder read these days ("America has a new enemy. Freedom has a new enemy. The face of evil has made itself known." Why, it's devilish Hydra... working with an Arab! The leader of Iraq, Saddam Somebody Somebody). In current context, deeds, particularly those of the good guys, appear surreally odious, starting with the deceitful, violent provocation and preemptive armed intervention that should not be tolerated even from a President of the United States. Plus it's been a long, long time since Bagdad looked this collaterally undamaged.

Reference is made to the complicated, compromised moral motivation of characters. In an effort to establish an otherwise undistinguished cast, Bendis compounds the slippery relationships among players through successive sneaky dealings, left turns, about-faces and ca-razy disclosures. The concluding resolution, which ties finish to start, is so preposterous and silly that it suggests any implications regarding morality and behavior might well have been chance, merely that which took longer to slide down the wall to the floor.

Art is provided by Chuck Austin, again forcing Bendis' dialogue to establish the most recognizable traces of verisimilitude and pertinent human characteristics. Interestingly enough, the trade paperback concludes with Elektra's "silent" issue, part of Marvel's company-wide program to release comics with no word balloons during a given month. Now this would seem to be the very definition of a crippling privation for Bendis but he accounts himself well, taking due care to move his simple story through its precise paces. The experiment implies that the old S/M adage "Through discipline comes freedom" may be truer for him in his creative capacity than for most.

More might be said. There's the matter of Bendis' employment of Elektra, a company property inextricably linked to Miller, which draws focus to licensing and fidelity with regard to law and respect (this incarnation has the humorless mercenary issuing orders though Hello Kitty stationary). Looking back over his Marvel work as a whole, I think Bendis may be involved in a revision of the basic requirement of "secret identities" that has dominated superheroes since the days of millionaire playboys. Along the way he may be weaning the hero from his dress-up role, lengthening the story lines extended to civilian personae. In so doing he might facilitate the next new thing for superheroes, changes along the lines of those that rippled from the successes of Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns from the late `80s onward. To those sufficiently interested in pursuing such possibilities and others in the wake of the Bendis dreadnaught, godspeed.

Me, I began unhitching my wagon from the rising star as of February 2004 when no fewer than seven Marvel comics written by Brian Michael Bendis were scheduled for release. Clearly he is more determined to compose than I am to read. Doing a bit more fatuous number crunching, to write seven standard-sized funnybooks in a 30-day month, he would be typing out with consistency over five pages of comics a day. Having seen his scripts -- heck, having read his books -- I know how such things can be done. That's pretty much all I want to know about them.

But after this stack of comics (1 foot 5 inches) I have determined to more than my own satisfaction where this author's priorities lie and how he intends to pursue them, allowing for some legitimate surprises and the perpetual hope for some sort of conversion on the road to funnybook Damascus. Otherwise it doesn't make much of a difference that he initiated (along with the Mark Millar, the other co-author of the the Ultimate universe) the next title for the imprint, the Ultimate Fantastic Four. Nor that he is writing, for the plain ol' Marvel Universe, a mini-series called Secret Wars, a direct allusion to a wretched pair of Jim Shooter-written miniseries. I am sure his will be superior to the originals. So?

Maybe a more pertinent question is what redemptive rehabs are next for Bendis and the wracked House of Ideas? Team ReAmerica? U.S. 2? A new "New Universe" for Spitfire and the Troubleshooters and Kickers, Inc.? Will Sleepwalker finally fulfill its destiny and become, as one Marvel P.R. flak put it, "Sandman done right?"

These would indeed be formidable challenges for Bendis and the fact that they are not worth doing hardly obscures the point that eventually he, like Great Alexander, is going to run out of Marvel domains to conquer. I can only hope there are some deeper artistic ambitions at play that have escaped my detection. Certainly the preponderance of evidence, both implicit (above) and explicit (autobiographical comics, creator notes and letter columns), indicates that the greatest success he can envision hinges on immediate concrete goals which are irrevocably tied to the dispositions of bosses and consumers.

So I'm pleased as punch to leave him, at the absolute top of the pops, happy, presumably, as a pig in shit (An apt if brute cliche. Please stress "happy" and "shit"). Tiny acorns have at last taken root in the major mainstream publisher, and if those seeds had imperfections, flaws, carried with them a virulent contemporary disease, they at least have found the soil best suited for them.

Following the lead of Bendis, I refer to a movie, The Candidate. At the very end, Robert Redford, as victor and looking utterly lost, repeats a question swallowed up by an adoring crowd: "What do we do now?" I do not envy Bendis any similar crisis of direction, especially if it holds a degree of artistic self-scrutiny, the matter of what merits doing, of what might be worth one's time in this too, too short life. Lord knows this article made the question painfully pertinent for me. At this point maybe for you too.

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