I'm very tempted to make this page a companion to what comics are discussed on Fox's The O.C.. Well, hopefully it will be more than that, but, like Seth in last night's episode, I feel the need to also confess my love for writer Brian Michael Bendis.

If you aren't a fan of The O.C., Seth screws up meeting his girlfriend Summer's dad over lunch by talking on and on (and on) about Brian Bendis (the dad is trying to make Summer break up with him as a penalty - coldblooded). In between all the fanboy talk, Seth mentions that Bendis is like "the old school Stan Lee" but also with the more modern approach of Alan Moore.

Good point, but let's go back to the beginning. Bendis was a true independent artist, writing and drawing comics such as Goldfish, Fire, Jinx and Torso (w/ Marc Andreyko). These are all black and white noir comics that out-do flashier noir of Miller's Sin City. Bendis isn't doing these as an excerise in style (like Miller does in the earlier Sin City) - he has a love for the genre and a approach that bring across the same effects as any 50s film (or 60s French New Wave pillaging of Noir for that matter).

The art he uses there is a mish-mash of photocopies, dark shadows, and outlines which create a dark paranoid atmosphere. His writing down the columns gives the reader the experience of reading a newspaper - that ultimate noir convention. He shows a lot more creativity in page outlining than people are willing to give him credit for. For new fans, I'd suggest Jinx, and if you like that Torso.

Bendis is approached first by movie companies who want to make a movie adaptation of Goldfish, one of his noir comics. He writes and draws about his experiences dealing with agents and the hollywood machine in Fortune and Glory, a long-since sold out four issue story that has since been collected in one nice volumn. The art is simple and over the top cartoony, as if he wants you focus more on teh dialogue than anything else. The tone is informal and humorous in the way that brings to mind some of the better magazine writing you'll find. And the story reflect the point of view of someone who has dealt with Hollywood, and as he has no real interest in more, tell it more or less like it is.

Around this time Bendis goes big time. Image, who had been putting out his Noir stuff, puts him on Powers, the comic he's best known for. As well he should be, it's obviously the most personal month the month comic he writes and the one he has most creative control over. Powers is a story about two cops who investigate superheroes in a city where superheroes function more as celebrities. The comic is in many ways about comics, something that works better than almost all of it's companions in the field. Many people try to draw out a line of exposing superheroes as flawed people in the comic as having it's main influence as Alan Moore's The Watchmen.