Brilliant

by Brian Michael Bendis, Mark Bagley (Illustrator)

Brian Michael Bendis, the New York Times bestselling, Peabody and multi-Eisner award-winning co-creator of Miles Morales, Naomi, Jessica Jones, and POWERS tells a modern science, superheroes, and power.

The first creator-owned book by Ultimate Spider-Man co-creators Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley, Brilliant tells the story of a handful of college-age geniuses who challenge each other to solve the mystery of superpowers. Can the best and brightest change science fiction into science fact? And if so, how will the world at large react? Brilliant is a thriller of the highest order. It is a story of how true power can either destroy or protect the strongest of friendships. It is the story of how the world will react when our true potential is finally unlocked.
 
Collecting BRILLIANT #1–#5.
 

168 pages, Paperback

Published December 27, 2022

About the author

A comic book writer and erstwhile artist. He has won critical acclaim (including five Eisner Awards) and is one of the most successful writers working in mainstream comics. For over eight years Bendis’s books have consistently sat in the top five best sellers on the nationwide comic and graphic novel sales charts.

Though he started as a writer and artist of independent noir fiction series, he shot to stardom as a writer of Marvel Comics' superhero books, particularly Ultimate Spider-Man.

Bendis first entered the comic world with the "Jinx" line of crime comics in 1995. This line has spawned the graphic novels Goldfish, Fire, Jinx, Torso (with Marc Andreyko), and Total Sell Out. Bendis is writing the film version of Jinx for Universal Pictures with Oscar-winner Charlize Theron attached to star and produce.

Bendis’s other projects include the Harvey, Eisner, and Eagle Award-nominated Powers (with Michael Avon Oeming) originally from Image Comics, now published by Marvel's new creator-owned imprint Icon Comics, and the Hollywood tell-all Fortune and Glory from Oni Press, both of which received an "A" from Entertainment Weekly.

Bendis is one of the premiere architects of Marvel's "Ultimate" line: comics specifically created for the new generation of comic readers. He has written every issue of Ultimate Spider-Man since its best-selling launch, and has also written for Ultimate Fantastic Four and Ultimate X-Men, as well as every issue of Ultimate Marvel Team-Up, Ultimate Origin and Ultimate Six.

Brian is currently helming a renaissance for Marvel’s AVENGERS franchise by writing both New Avengers and Mighty Avengers along with the successful ‘event’ projects House Of M, Secret War, and this summer’s Secret Invasion.

He has also previously done work on Daredevil, Alias, and The Pulse.

Reviews

[Alex E · Rating 2 out of 5]

When a group of brilliant teenagers make the ultimate breakthrough, the consequences of their actions puts their lives in danger.

So I picked this up because of the creative team. Both Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley are legends at this point, and have given us enough great content to take a chance on something that is more creator owned. And while there are cool aspects to the story, ultimately this kind of feels like something that we have seen before... from both of them.

Basically the group of kids find out how to achieve super powers in a human body. But, it turns out to be very unstable, killing the first kid who manifests them. Our protagonist, who has been away for some time, returns to find that the kids have already experimented on themselves and he has to find a way of stabilizing or curing his friends before another ends up dead. The volume ends on a "to be continued" but to be honest, I don't think I will be continuing on. Again, because this feels very much like stories that we have seen before by Bendis and Bagley, and I didn't really get anything new from it.

Overall, if you are unfamiliar with these creators, you might want to pick this up. It's them doing what they do best. However, if you are a fan of theirs, this might leave you a bit lacking, only because the story is ver much familiar.

[Andrew Ives · Rating 3 out of 5]

As it says in the blurb, this Brilliant book gathers the comics #1-5 together, telling the story of some college kids who discover a way to bestow superpowers onto themselves, included along with a few 'making of' notes and cover pictures from the variants. All of the artwork in the story, and the covers, is a little better than so-so, but hardly dazzling. The writing is rather too colloquial for me, a little sweary, a little over-long, so there are plenty of dialogue panels with rather less of action. Personally, I didn't find any of the characters interesting enough to care about whether they were distintegrated, went up in smoke, shot laser beams from their eyes, flashed multi-colours or walked out of the story. As the author says in the 'making of' section, this isn't so much a superhero story like Superman, but more like The Firm which is unfortunately true, exploring how commerce and capitalism would take over such a discovery and what would become of it. Perhaps there's some interesting mileage in one of those stories somewhere, but I didn't find this book particularly riveting, and it ended just as it was perhaps picking up. 3/5

[Ross · Rating 3 out of 5]

What happens when smart kids do smart kid things and experiment on themselves?
SUPERPOWERS??

This is issues #1-5 of Brilliant, an artist owned story by Bendix and Bagley (you remember those Ultimate Spider-Man guys, right?). It's not really a story about getting superpowers, as its more like how corporate greed and consumer culture interact with the scientific process. We're thrown into the 'fix me' phase quick and there isn't really a connection to any of these twenty-something college geniuses. They're just the delivery mechanism for in-fighting and scheming.

If science could create superpowers, how long until somebody tried to copyright it and own every last way to do it?

[Jipi Perreault · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not much to say here. It is a promising start that will likely not get a sequel.

[Robert C · Rating 3 out of 5]

Man, I wanted to love this, but it's only the start of a story that has never been finished and likely never will.