We Talk With Brian Michael Bendis On Jessica Jones, Powers, Marvel Films, And Video Games

From his work with long-running series like Ultimate Spider-Man and Daredevil to his work on T.V. series like Jessica Jones and Powers , Brian Michael Bendis is a man who has a lot of irons in the fire.

, Brian Michael Bendis is a man who has a lot of irons in the fire. In addition, Bendis is a part of the creative vision behind the wildly successful Marvel Cinematic Universe, which started in 2008 with Iron Man .

With Jessica Jones proving to be yet another bona fide hit for Marvel on Netflix and Powers season 2 hitting PlayStation Network in 2016, we caught up with the enigmatic writer to get his thoughts on Jessica Jones ’ success, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the narrative-driven approach many video games take today.

It’s been a pretty big month for you with Jessica Jones . How’s the wave coming at you?

Honestly, and I don’t want to jinx it, but it’s the best wave ever. It was material that means a great deal to me. It isn’t just something I wrote; it’s part of me. I kind of went on record that a bad version of the show would have just been my personal nightmare that I’d never recover from. But even if it’s a good show, it’s about touchy subjects and, you know, social [media] being what it is, I wasn’t sure what the reaction was going to be. I saw it months before and I was like, “Oh good, I’m not embarrassed! I’m really happy!” and that’s not my usual state.

When it came out it’s sort of funny… they debut it at like midnight on a Friday. I work at night, and at like two in the morning, my social [media] blew up like it was Wednesday afternoon and comics came out and it was just insane!

I was a huge fan of Daredevil when that hit and it seems like you followed a lot of the same tone for Jessica Jones , which is a different tone from what we see in MCU on the big screen.

When I was writing Jessica [ Jones ’ comic], I was writing [the comic] Daredevil at the same time and had a similar thought in that these could all be in the same level of Marvel Universe, but we really went out of our way to make a different noir-ish template and they did the same thing. It’s so gorgeous and so exciting. I was like, “Well we don’t want to follow that!” The showbiz whore in me was like, “You don’t follow the best show that Marvel ever put out,” but we were lucky that people connected with it so well.

So now we’re getting this wave of people who don’t know comics and are just hearing that there’s this show that they’ve got to see and we’re getting a response from them that way, and now they’re reading the comics!

And it’s interesting because Daredevil had the name recognition in mainstream unfortunately because of the Ben Affleck thing.

Daredevil had the beautiful experience of being the show that the movie was supposed to be! For people whom all they knew was the Ben Affleck thing and not sure what they felt about it – to reinvent their concept of Daredevil – and for die-hard fans of Daredevil , that is our concept of it already. For fans, you got what you were supposed to get, and for people who are just watching stuff, they were like, “Oh wow! What a different take!” I think I’ve equated it to what it must have felt like to watch the first Tim Burton Batman if all you knew was the T.V. show. Not to be mean to the movie, but you know what I mean.

On the next page, we talk with Brian Michael Bendis on the topics of why he’s so effective at relaunching beloved series, as well as what Powers enables him to do that Marvel series don't.