Brian Michael Bendis (; born August 18, 1967) is an American comic book writer and artist. He has won five Eisner Awards for both his creator-owned work and his work on various Marvel Comics books.Starting with crime and noir comics, Bendis eventually moved to mainstream superhero work. With Bill Jemas and Mark Millar, Bendis was the primary architect of the Ultimate Marvel Universe, launching Ultimate Spider-Man in 2000. He relaunched the Avengers franchise with New Avengers in 2004, and has also written the Marvel "event" storylines "Secret War" (2004–2005), "House of M" (2005), "Secret Invasion" (2008), "Siege" (2010) and "Age of Ultron" (2013). Though Bendis has cited comic book writers such as Frank Miller and Alan Moore, his own writing influences are less rooted in comics, drawing on the work of David Mamet, Richard Price, and Aaron Sorkin, whose dialogue Bendis feels are "the best in any medium."In addition to writing comics he has worked in television, video games and film, and began teaching a course on Graphic Novels at University of Oregon in fall 2013 and currently at Portland State University. In 2014, Bendis wrote Words for Pictures: The Art and Business of Writing Comics and Graphic Novels, a book about comics published by Random House, which shot to number one on its Amazon chart.In November 2017, Brian left Marvel for DC Comics where he has begun to shape an entirely new legacy with his work on Action Comics and Superman, as well as the newly launched Wonder Comics imprint with his latest creation, Naomi.