Brian Michael Bendis is one of Marvel Comics‘ most important writers. He joined the publisher in the year 2000, making a huge splash with his work on Ultimate Spider-Man and Daredevil. He quickly became the hottest new writer in the comic industry, and would become the architect of the House of Ideas in the ’00s. During his tenure at the publisher, he created two of the most popular new Marvel characters of the 21st century: Jessica Jones and Miles Morales. These two characters have moved beyond the comics, gaining popularity because of their roles in adaptations on the big and small screens. However, they aren’t the only great characters he created.
Bendis wrote for Marvel for almost 20 years. He came up in a time when creators saved original creations for their own creator-owned work, but he still made a bunch of great characters during his tenure. These are the ten best Marvel characters created by Bendis who aren’t Jessica Jones and Miles Morales, heroes and villains that fans love.
10) Milla Donovan
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Bendis’s run on Daredevil is amazing, and he introduced a new love interest for the Man Without Fear. Milla Donovan grew up blind in Hell’s Kitchen and worked in the Hell’s Kitchen Housing Commission, eventually meeting Matt Murdock. In a lot of ways, she was quite similar to Matt and they hit it off immediately, getting married rather quickly. However, one of the hallmarks of Bendis’s run was Matt lying about being Daredevil, and that played a big role in their relationship. Milla and Matt were great together, and the drama of their relationship was one of the highlights of the later phases of the run.
9) Quake
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Bendis was known for writing event comics, but most people don’t really talk about his first event. Secret War was the beginning of the plots that Bendis would ride to stardom, and Daisy Johnson played an important role in the story. She was a favorite SHIELD agent of Nick Fury, and served as his eyes and ears on the group of heroes he formed to battle Latverian Prime Minister Lucia von Bardas. She had seismic powers, and would become Quake down the road in Jonathan Hickman’s Secret Warriors. She’d eventually make her TV debut, and became a favorite of fans of Agents of SHIELD. She’s a great character, but she’s been lost in the shuffle over the years.
8) Ronin
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So, on the one hand, Ronin isn’t technically an original character. The mantle was introduced on a variant cover of New Avengers #1, and the original plan for the character was that Daredevil was going to be wearing the costume, since at the time, he was dealing with secret identity woes. However, fans guessed this rather apparent plot line, and characters like Echo and Hawkeye were put into the mantle. So, yes, Ronin is not really new character, but also is, so we’re counting it.
7) Ultimate Green Goblin
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Marvel’s Ultimate Universes are two of comics’ great universes, each of them taking old characters and making them new again. An argument can be made, though, that since the new versions of the characters are different, they can be counted as new characters. With that in mind, I present Ultimate Green Goblin. Bendis took the building blocks of the original Norman Osborn and pushed them to new levels of evil and insanity. He was the main villain of Ultimate Spider-Man, driving the character in new directions that were quite different from the 616 Goblin.
6) Victoria Hand
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“Dark Reign” was the highpoint of Bendis at Marvel. In the aftermath of Secret Invasion, Norman Osborn took over SHIELD and the Superhero Initiative, remaking it in his own image. He needed a second in command for the intelligence arm of his operation and he recruited disgraced SHIELD agent Victoria Hand. Hand had to deal with the insane Osborn, the villains of the Dark Avengers, and help figure out ways to facilitate Osborn’s goals. She was a classic Bendis character – clever and acid-tongued – and she would go on to be the liaison between SHIELD and the New Avengers. She was basically the evil Maria Hill, and it worked like gangbusters.
5) Tempus
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Bendis wrote the Avengers for seven years, leaving the team after Avengers vs. X-Men and moving to the X-Men. Bendis’s time on the X-Men isn’t exactly well-loved for a lot of reasons, but he did create some cool new mutants, including Tempus. The time-controlling mutant was positioned as the star of Uncanny X-Men‘s new mutants, and she was a great character under Bendis. However, after she left the book, she faded away until the Krakoa Era, where she would become one of the Five, responsible for the resurrection of dead mutants. She faded into the background again, which is shame. Bendis set her up for stardom, but no one picked up the ball.
4) Maria Hill
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Maria Hill was introduced besides Quake in Secret War, taking over SHIELD at the end of the story. Whereas Nick Fury respected and worked with the heroes, Hill saw them as another problem she had to keep an eye on and treated them that way. She was one of the most important supporting characters of mid ’00s Marvel, her no-nonsense style making her someone that every Marvel reader had an opinion on. She stayed a somewhat important characters for years, and was put into the MCU (where she was quite different than the comics). She’s a cool character, and was one of the best additions to Marvel that Bendis made.
3) Ares
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There have been several versions of Ares in the Marvel Universe. Bendis created a new one for Mighty Avengers, using the Greek God of War to fill the spot of Thor on the team (who was dead at the time). Aries was quite an addition to Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. He was the team’s mouthy bruiser; he was great in combat but sassed everyone on the team whenever he disagreed with them. He’d become a part of Dark Avengers, helping keep the villainous members of the team in line and busting skulls. He was killed by the Void in Siege, but has since come back. He’s a simple character, but he was always a lot of fun to read about.
2) Veranke
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Secret Invasion was the culmination of numerous plots set up by Bendis, and introduced readers to a villain they never expected. Veranke was the Empress of the Skrull Empire, obsessed with a prophecy that said the Skrulls would take over Earth. She commanded their invasion, placing Skrulls all over the superhuman community and SHIELD, setting up for a strike she hoped would decapitate the defenses of Earth. She took the guise of Spider-Woman, joining the New Avengers and working against them from the inside. She was an excellent villain, excelling in her roles as a hero and villain, and is one of the most important Skrulls in Marvel history.
1) Ultimate Peter Parker
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Ultimate Spider-Man made Bendis a star on the back of this new version of Peter Parker. Bendis took the building blocks of the character and brought them into the 21st century. Gone was Steve Ditko’s budding libertarian, replaced by a teen that actually felt like a teen (you can say a lot of things about early 616 Parker, but he never actually seemed like a teenager). Bendis took the young hero on a journey, one that ended with him dying (well, he would be resurrected, but it was such a mistake most fans don’t think about it), and created an unforgettable version of the character. You can argue whether this counts as a new character, but much like Ultimate Green Goblin, the character is different enough that he was basically a separate version.
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