This Artist is Good - Brian Michael Bendis

Brian Michael Bendis is currently a very popular writer, but one significant drawback in the volume of his work output these days is, in my opinion, the decrease in the amount of art he is doing...a decrease from "drawing all his work" to "drawing nothing," which I think is a shame.

Bendis' early work in comics is admittedly a bit rough.

Looking at his pieces here from some of his early comics, you can see that they can be a bit more polished...





But what each piece possesses is a remarkable sense of storytelling abilities.

An artist can always polish his or her work, an artist cannot always learn how to be a good storyteller.

Bendis achieves this in his work, and adds a nice sense of drama to the pieces.

In addition, he works well with shadows, which always impresses me.

As his dramatic work progressed, Bendis began to work with photographs for his work, which I think helped a LOT.

Think about it...he already had the storytelling and the mood down, so all he needed was to polish his characters...well, one way to do that is to import the characters from photographs.

This was used by Bendis is perhaps his greatest work to date, Torso....





Aren't those pieces striking?

Finally, Bendis also has a very entertaining cartoon style, as seen here in his Fortune and Glory story.



So while Brian Michael Bendis might be a popular writer, I also think he is a good artist.

Read More