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Some comic creators fall into the industry at an early age, knowing exactly what they want to do and how to do it almost instinctively, while others have lives before their comics work that shape what follows in ways they couldn’t have imagined. Brian Michael Bendis, whose resume includes co-creating Ultimate Spider-Man, writing almost every single big-name character at Marvel, as well as DC’s Superman and Justice League, and his own creator-owned titles like Powers, Pearl, and Phenomena, is one of the latter… but even his comic writer origin story has a comic industry connection at its heart.

“For those that don't know, retailing is part of my origin story,” Bendis explained during his keynote address to the first annual Retailers’ Day at Rose City Comic Con 2025. “I got a job in college when I was going to the Cleveland Institute of Art trying to figure out who I was. I was lucky enough to get a job at the local comic store in downtown Cleveland, Super City Comics, where I worked with Jimmy Williams, who just recently hung up his spurs."

That’s necessary backstory to what followed: this year, Bendis continued, he was invited to return to Cleveland as part of a Superman celebration, which he described as “super magical."

"Cleveland was so into it, like crazy into it… And we did a signing with a bunch of creators that were there. And we did a signing and someone came up and said, ‘Oh, hey, I bought your book.’ And I go, ‘Oh, thanks.’ They go, ‘No, your first book.’ And I realized she was talking about, when I was working at the comic store, I was also going to art school, and for my independent study, I made my first comic book.”

The writer continued, “I’m like, ‘You did? You bought my first book?’ And then it all hit me what an incredible thing that was. I said, ‘Oh, why did you do that?’ and she goes, ‘You were the kid behind the counter and I wanted to buy your book.’ I got super emotional right in her face, and I had to spend the next two minutes not making it weird, because I was feeling very like, ‘You mean the world to me because no one ever did that before.’ It was the first time a stranger went and bought the book.”

To be clear, Bendis isn't talking about Quivers, his "official" first comic book from 1991 — that one was published by indie publisher Caliber Comics. He's explicitly referring to an untitled self-published comic produced when he was a student. (The customer in question should hold onto the book; it's not just rare, but a legitimate piece of comic book history.)

Without that woman — and without the young Bendis working in the store in the first place — the past 20 years of mainstream superhero comics would have looked very different. “That kind of magic moment is something we [creators] think about all the time,” Bendis said. “These moments that happen only in the comic book store."

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