25 years ago, Brian Michael Bendis’ comic career took a big step forward with Jinx

In its article recalling the comics of 10/25/50/75 years ago, CSBG highlights the March 1996 debut of Brian Michael Bendis’ Jinx.

This is “Look Back”, a feature that I plan to do at least for all of 2020 and possibly beyond (and possibly forget about it in a week, who knows?). The concept is that each week (I will probably skip the four fifth weeks of the year, but maybe not) of a month, I will highlight a single issue of a comic that came out in the past and talk about that topic. (often in terms of a larger scale, like the series in general, etc.). Each week there will be a look at a comic from a different year that came out the same month X years ago. The first week of the month look at a book that came out this month ten years ago. The second week looks at a book that came out this month 25 years ago. Week 3 looks at a book that came out this month 50 years ago. Week 4 looks at a book that came out this month 75 years ago. The occasional fifth week looks at books from 20/30/40/60/70/80 years ago.

Today, we go back to March 1996 for the release of the first issue of Jinx by Brian Michael Bendis (NOTE: The cover of the first issue is just the word JINX with blood, so I used the cover of Jinx’s first commercial paperback to featured image, instead).

Brian Michael Bendis is the perfect example of the proverbial “overnight sensation that has been around for years,” as he had a huge hit in 2000 with Ultimate Spider-Man for Marvel Comics, leading to a long time. and successful at Marvel for Bendis. with his work playing an important role in shaping the Marvel Universe, as well as the Marvel Cinematic Universe. While Ultimate Spider-Man was the BIG deal for Bendis, his profile was already rising prior to that series, with work for Image Comics such as Torso, Sam, and Twitch and Powers.

However, Bendis had been making comics since the early 1990s, working at Caliber Comics. In 1993, Bendis made his first crime comic for Caliber, Fire, followed by AKA Goldfish in 1994. Then came the 1996 release of Jinx, which co-starred AKA Goldfish’s Goldfish. Jinx was a huge step forward for Bendis and after seven issues at Caliber, Bendis brought Jinx to Image, as well as his new projects. Jinx was such an important job for Bendis that it remains the name of their website to this day. Jinxworld. So it’s a big problem.

And rereading it now, wow, Jinx A. holds up really well and B. was a breath of fresh air at the time.

I still remember first seeing the explosion of dialogue in the opening game scene in Jinx. It was a shock. This was how people actually spoke and it was somehow being translated into a comic in a way that amazingly WORKS.

The opening sequence introduces us to Columbia, and he’s instantly such a compelling (albeit extremely annoying) character. The guy is pushing the guys on the dice and HE IS NOT USING LOADED DICE! I love that. Of course, when he loses, he just steals their money and they chase him and start beating him until the police show up … or is he?

Bendis, as a comic book artist, when working in his photorealistic style, he tends to lose a bit of fluidity (the same goes for most artists who work in that style), but hey, he used the devilish shadows. in this comic and when does Goldfish come out of the shadows? That is an excellent revelation.

Really, the book is filled with three excellent reveals (not to mention the flash-forward that starts the book), from Columbia to Goldfish and finally, the main character, Jinx Alameda, whom we first heard having a conversation with her. new partner about something to be tried, and then we see her visit a woman and appear looking for the woman’s boyfriend, very visibly pregnant …

Of course, it is a scam for the woman to call her boyfriend and take him there, at which point we find out that Jinx is a bounty hunter. The moment the boy realizes what he just got into? That’s just a great Bendis time-lapse narrative …

Jinx is also easy to love in this sequence as she tells the woman that she did her a favor here in the long run by cutting this boy out of her life.

Columbia and Goldfish have an argument about their future when the trouble ends when Goldfish first sees Jinx, who we know he ends up with via flash-forward, but seeing her for the first time as him is still a good way. to end a first number. I liked AKA Goldfish, but it was great to take Goldfish and add Jinx to the mix as she’s a much more interesting character and seeing Goldfish connect with her made Goldfish a more interesting character in her own right. I really felt that Bendis had something special here and thankfully it helped start his career in comics in earnest, but that of course would still be a few years away, but this was an amazing start.

If you guys have any suggestions for the April (or any month after) comics from 2011, 1996, 1971, and 1946 to make them stand out, drop me off at [email protected]! However, here is the guide to book cover dates so that you can make suggestions on which books were actually published in the correct month. Generally speaking, the traditional amount of time between a comic’s cover date and a comic’s release date throughout most of comic book history has been two months (sometimes it was three months, but not for the times we are discussing here). So the comics will have a cover date that is two months before the actual release date (i.e. October for a book that came out in August). Obviously, it’s easier to know when a book from 10 years ago was published, since there was book coverage on the internet back then.

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