I’m all about giving credit where it’s due, and Rich Johnston over at Bleeding Cool has a nice and to-the-point retrospective of Mark Millar and Brian Michael Bendis’ careers, marking their upward trajectories as tastemakers at the House of Ideas, as well as where they might go in Hollywood.

Here’s an excerpt, about Millar, who apparently is talking about teaming up with Kick-Ass director Matthew Vaughn to pursue his personal unicorn — a Superman movie:

[W]ith every step of the last twenty years that’s what Mark Millar has done, from Sonic The Hedgehog to Swamp Thing to Superman Adventures to occasional JLA projects, to Authority, to Ultimate X-Men to Ultimates to Wanted to Civil War to the Wanted movie to the Kick Ass movie. And his name is about to be able to greenlight anything. He’s Frank Miller without The Spirit.

While I’d say that last sentence might be a little over-the top — I’d argue that the success or failure of Kick-Ass will help cement (or debunk) Rich’s claims — there’s no disputing that Millar has been moving upward and onward in both comics and Hollywood, really helping pioneer the “widescreen” epics that are so popular nowadays. If the new Avengers film doesn’t feel at least somewhat like Millar’s Ultimates, I’m going to be mightily surprised.

Yet the thing that really stood out to me was Rich’s look at Brian Michael Bendis’ career — it’s certainly more focused, but at the same time, could there be drawbacks to that?

While Mark Millar has performed more parachuting into projects then leaving fairly shortly afterwards, Brian has stuck with projects, from Ultimate Spider-Man to Avengers to Powers. Which has probably given him less opportunity to take advantage of “promotion”, and has stymied him from switching companies, often the best way to be offered the next step up in any career. But as a result he has a more dedicated fanbase. And he’s doing more comics. And he’s the creative “brain trust” of Marvel, his opinions matter more than anyone, outside of Joe Quesada.

Love Bendis or hate him, he’s an absolute workhorse over at the House of Ideas — I doubt there are any writers that Joe Quesada trusts more in that company, and I think we’re going to see that in spades whenever we see the revamped New Avengers team post-Siege. But Rich is right in this regard — as awesome as it is to work with the major icons of Marvel in comic book form, is there a wider and more lucrative platform for Bendis to shoot for? Apparently on Twitter Bendis expressed his interest in writing the Spider-Man 4 script, which is currently might be delayed due to issues deciding the villain — what say you? Is this something you’d like to see?

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