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The "Ultimate Spider-Man" comic book and its writer -- Cleveland-native Brian Michael Bendis. (bottom left).

(Marvel/Watson Guptill)

CLEVELAND, Ohio - Comic book writer and Cleveland native Brian Michael Bendis remembers a time when Marvel wasn't atop the pop-culture universe.

"When Marvel hired me, they had actually just declared bankruptcy," recalls Bendis. "They had sold the movie rights of Spider-Man to Sony and sold X-Men to Fox to pay the bills."

"When I first visited the company, there were filing cabinets in the office with Post-it notes saying 'Sold.' I thought I was writing the last Marvel comic book."

Fortunately for Bendis, he became a big part of the solution. Bendis and other new Marvel creators like Joe Quesada, David W. Mack and Garth Ennis injected new life into some of Marvel's biggest franchises.

Bendis was given the keys to Spider-Man, Daredevil and, later, The Avengers, helping lay the foundation for the boom that was to come. Marvel began producing its own films beginning with 2008's "Iron Man" and signed a deal with The Walt Disney Company a year later. Sales of comic books skyrocketed.

"Age of Ultron" Book One, written by Brian Michael Bendis.

Bendis has been along for the entire ride, with several stories of the films' storylines taken directly from books Bendis wrote. In fact, the forthcoming "Avengers: Age of Ultron" takes its title from Bendis' 2013 book of the same name.

We recently caught up with Bendis, just weeks after he announced a new exclusive contract with Marvel. The 47-year-old talked about two new television series he has on tap, Spider-Man joining The Avengers and his upcoming trip to Cleveland:

How does it feel to have the next "Avengers" film named after a comic book you wrote?

I was quite happy, because I knew my sales were going to explode. [Laughs] The only bummer is my story is basically the final Ultron story. Where as [the movie's] story is, I assume, the first. I'm sure people will read my book looking for an adaption of the movie. Hopefully they're pleasantly surprised that it's different.

Is it cool seeing something you created used in films and on TV?

I've had this weird run of luck where a lot of my contributions to Marvel are seeping into the movies and the TV shows in ways that I didn't have to campaign for. Maria Hill from "The Avengers" movies first appeared in our "New Avengers" book. We created Quake, a character that has been on "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." It's lovely that so many writers and directors and producers have gravitated toward it.

Two television series based on characters you created are debuting this year. You have "Powers" debuting on the PlayStation Network next month and "A.K.A. Jessica Jones" coming to Netflix later this year.

Bendis' "Powers' comic book.

It's all very exciting. Thankfully, I'm not the showrunner. That's a more than full-time job. As an executive producer, I'm here to shepherd the flock and be a guide in the writers' room. It's hard to call it work. It's a lot of fun to make a TV show based on this thing you created in the basement.

You also recently signed a new contract with Marvel.

Usually I don't make a big parade when I re-sign a contract. It's kind of no one's business really. In this instance, I'm at a crossroads where Jessica Jones is going to debut later this year and Powers is going to debut next month. When I announce I'm leaving the X-Men franchise or this or that, it becomes, "Oh he's leaving." I'm not leaving Marvel and I'm not leaving comics. It's very important to me almost on a religious level to let people know that I'm not leaving comics. Comics was always the goal. Comics was the thing I loved the most. I wanted people to know where my head was at.

Marvel is getting ready to publish its new "Secret Wars" comic book series in May. It seems like it's going to be a superhero free-for-all.

Anything could happen and almost anything is happening. It's like a one-time deal where you can go bananas. I can say that we're taking full advantage of the freedom of the series.

Sony and Marvel have reached an agreement to bring Spider-Man back to the Marvel movie universe. Some have speculated that the new version of Spider-Man could be based on your "Ultimate Spider-Man" series.

I signed a giant nondisclosure agreement, so there's not much I can say. I will say that when they made that announcement, the character Miles Morales, the African American/Hispanic Spider-Man we created for the "Ultimate Comics" series, was trending worldwide on Twitter for a day and a half. We love that character so much. Introducing a new Spider-Man to the world is one of the hardest things you can do in comics. To see that fans embrace that character so much means a lot.

"The New Avengers" Issues 24, written by Bendis.

The idea of Spider-Man joining The Avengers goes back to when you created "The New Avengers."

It's funny because when I got The Avengers, my biggest contribution right away was that we took Spider-Man and Wolverine and put them on the team. The idea was why isn't The Avengers a big bag of the coolest stuff ever? Wolverine is in X-Men. Why can't he be an Avenger? That was very controversial among the fans at the time. People were screaming and yelling, saying Spider-Man is a loner. Then I sat back and enjoyed how much people wanted him on The Avengers after the movies came out. It's the same people screaming at me 10 years ago. That felt good, like we made our point.

Do you think a time will come when we reach overload on comic book movies?

Well, we don't' know what the DC Comics movies are going to look like when they're out there. But there's always been this weird thing where some people have been screaming, "Screw superhero movies" since the second X-Men movie came out. In comics there are always people screaming, "Screw superheroes" and behind the scenes they're actively looking for superhero work. I can see if you're a filmmaker and you're trying to make a serious biopic and you look at the popularity of superhero movies as the reason your movie isn't getting made. But that's not actually the case. These movies are good movies and people are always hungry for good movies. They're hungry for the mythology and the stories about these heroes. It's hard to argue we're at a tipping point when "Guardians of the Galaxy," a book I've worked on that was as cult classic as they come, became the highest grossing movie of the year.

You're coming back to Cleveland in May to deliver the commencement speech for the Cleveland Institute of Art.

That's a sentence I thought I'd never hear. I went to Cleveland Institute of Art for five years but didn't graduate because I got into comics.

What's your speech going to be about?

It's mostly me reading a list of people who did me wrong in college. No. I spend a great deal of my time in education and I have a book out called "Words for Pictures" that really focuses on what I'll be talking about. It's going to be about the realities of what's coming next. You think when you graduate it's going to be a no-brainer and you're going to pop into your dream job. Then it starts to seem impossible and you don't know what you're going to do next. I'm going to talk about the positive things that come when you stick with your dreams.