Writer/Artist: Brian Michael Bendis
Price: $14.95
Publisher: Oni Press
ISBN: 1-929998-06-6

As a film critic for my college newspaper, I go to the same downtown Chicago screening room that Ebert and Roeper often go to. I'll never forget the first time I saw Ebert come into the screening room - I'd pulled a rookie mistake by sitting down in a seat that I was quickly told to get out of, and then everyone in the room proceeded to wait for twenty minutes after the screening's scheduled start time for Ebert to arrive and take the seat that I had so naively claimed.

That first encounter was three years ago, however, so seeing Ebert and Roeper in person has lost its novelty for me. So when my girlfriend and I went to LA recently, who do we run into our first day there? Ebert and Roeper. They were getting into their car after having taped an Oscar segment for Access Hollywood. And they were the only "celebrities" we saw the whole trip. Naturally.

Everyone who's been to LA has probably got a story like that. But very few can tell them as entertainingly as Brian Michael Bendis, who presents his experiences with Hollywood and its ilk in FORTUNE AND GLORY: A TRUE HOLLYWOOD COMIC BOOK STORY.

F&G gives it to you like it is - Hollywood with all the tinsel and glitz taken away: studios that don't know anything about you, but want to option your material just so that no other studio can; the catch-22 of getting an agent so you can be considered a working writer, but not being able to get an agent if you're not a working writer; taking a meeting with development execs who think Rob Liefeld is "super hot shit"; and the misnomer that is "development hell."

Bendis usually relies on a cadre of talented artists to illustrate his stories these days, but for this more personal story - more an illustrated journal than comic - Bendis drew it himself. The art style is very cartoony, as opposed to the photo-referenced Bendis art seen in his comics JINX and GOLDFISH. Everyone has round heads and vague features, looking more like caricatures than real people - which is rather appropriate for Hollywood I suppose. As Paul Dini points out in his introduction, no one who works for the studios has their eyes open, showing how nonchalant and phony they all are. It's an art style that totally fits this type of story-humorous and light-hearted.

Like most Bendis books, this one is pretty heavy on dialogue, but he's able to break up the monotony of it all with some imaginative panel layouts and varying perspectives, such as cinematic reveals of keyboards or the inventive cropping of movie posters.

If you just read ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN or DAREDEVIL, there's so much you wouldn't know about Bendis. And of course that's true for a lot of creators' works, but Bendis is one of the more publicly open comic creators out there. And not just through his Web site or his message board (though aspects of his personality certainly do come out through both), but through his own comic books, such as this and TOTAL SELLOUT (published by Image). You haven't had the full Bendis experience unless you've seen him curl up in a fetal position in his wife's lap, using "fuck" every other word and poking fun at everything about his own life.

And it's bad enough Bendis is such an excellent writer; with works such as this, Bendis presents himself as a very likable person, or personality at least. You can't help but feel for the guy as he receives his very first paycheck for writing the screenplay, for the numerous drafts he has to rewrite, for the disappointment of meeting executives with no clue what Bendis is selling or why he's there. But Bendis never really lets things get serious for a second with his self-effacing humour and wit. FORTUNE AND GLORY above all is a comedy; one that comes with many sincere caveats, but a comedy nonetheless.

At this point, I think it is safe to say that Bendis is a master of the form. Once you get past all the hype surrounding him and how well his books do both commercially and critically, the fact remains that he's got one of the best grasps of how the medium of comics works and the ways in which it can be used. FORTUNE AND GLORY is one of many of his works that prove this. It makes as good an introductory point to Bendis' work as any, and serves as an excellent and entertaining work in and of itself, showing both what the medium is capable of offering in terms of genres, and what its talent is capable of producing.

Well, I mean, I guess so. I never actually read the thing.

Wil Moss is a freelance entertainment writer and editor currently working out of Chicago.

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