Brian Michael Bendis’ JinxWorld
Nov. 11th, 2025 02:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroGoldfish – A modern-day noir tale. Former con artist “Goldfish” is back in town to exact revenge against his ex-partner, a mobbed-up woman who runs a casino. He tries to pants it and it goes very badly, and so he digs himself in even deeper and pretty much everybody involved winds up dead. (I’ll admit, when it opened with Goldfish being a con artist, I was hoping that the twist at the end would be a long con. But nope, it’s just an extensive fuck-up on everybody’s parts.)
Brilliant – A group of genius nerds at an unnamed college make an amazing discovery: A process they can use on a person’s brain to unlock superpowers. And they immediately fail to keep it under wraps and alert the FBI and then the world about what they’ve done. I have to hope this is a prelude to some other series, because otherwise it’s a first volume that goes nowhere.
Takio – Taki and Olivia, two elementary-school-age sisters get superpowers (specifically, “kung fu telekinesis”) and have drama as they attempt to become the superhero duo “Takio.” It’s a cute little complete story and most of the entertainment value is from the sisters bickering.
Pearl (Volume 1) – The albino daughter of a Yakuza family discovers she’s very good at killing people. This is has a bunch of cute ideas (Pearl is covered in tattoos that only appear when she flushes; there’s a big twist in her family history) and some entertaining dialogue, but it never really comes together for me into a story I care about. Two more volumes were in the bundle, but I skipped them.
Cover – The strange and exciting life of a comic artist, who gets tricked into working for a possibly-CIA spy at a comic convention in Istanbul, and then pulled into several more jobs that mostly involving him showing up at conventions and knowing things about Jack Kirby. It’s an interesting little story (that ultimately resolves nothing) that I’m sure started as a self-insert thought experiment and got interwoven with some pretty painted artwork.
Jinx – Further adventures of Goldfish, this time his attempting to romance a woman named Jinx while pissing off his partner-in-crime and assorted local mobsters. It became clear over the course of reading this that I don’t actually care about the “Jinxworld” connected series of books; possibly because they seem to be an excuse for ambling dialogue and characters being stupidly incompetent. Though to be fair, I feel like Bendis got bored halfway through writing this and decided it needed some random extra scenes and a completely unrelated giant flashback sequence. Frankly, if the actual book centered around Jinx’s inner life more and didn’t have Goldfish or the stupid lost money plot, that would have been the book Bendis seems to have wanted to write...and probably a better read.
Masterpiece - A teenage girl discovers her parents were legendary thieves and she’s stuck in the machinations of two billionaires. This was going for a “heist movie” vibe, but it clearly wasn’t written all at once, which means both the pacing and the foreshadowing are a mess. Early on it’s implied you need nine people for the heist team, but at the end a bunch of slots are still blank (with both the old person never mentioned and the new slot never filled). The resolutions they manage in the last issue are never hinted as possible before they happen; and Emma several times claims she’s figured out what they’re doing but then forgets about it in the next issue and they’re arguing something else.
Joy Operations (Volumes 1-2) – In a sci-fi future full of jargon, Joy is an “en.voi,” which seems to be a head of security role for a CEO/billionaire/head of state. She starts hearing a voice in her head who claims to be working for the rival country/company/fiefdoms that says she needs to kill her boss. She takes this badly. Fortunately, at the first sign that Joy is compromised, her boss tries to have her killed, which removes any possible moral dilemma. The ideas here are interesting (and the fact Joy is in a poly marriage with kids is a nice LeGuin-esque note), but the pacing remains an issue as the story shifts directions rapidly and it ends up feeling like there was a lot of hand-wringing for no reason. Volume 2 picks up with the powers-that-be trying to figure out why Joy’s mental passenger worked and everybody else goes nuts; but that doesn’t really matter because there’s a political land-grab going on and Joy has to solve everything with extreme violence. Again, there are a lot of plot threads that don’t really resolve into the ending that happens. There are some cool sci-fi ideas and potentially something to be said about politics and capitalism, but it gets lost in the incoherent plot tangle and need to fill half the pages with sci-fi violence.
Fortune and Glory - The drawn-out and clearly deeply frustrating autobiographical story of Bendis attempting to get his comics made into Hollywood movies. This would be the perfect gift if you know someone who thinks that Hollywood will recognize their genius as a screenwriter and want to hit them with a reality check.
The Ones (Volume 1) - A group of completely unrelated “chosen ones” are gathered together Justice League-style to deal with a prophecy of Satan incarnating on Earth. (And they are completely unrelated—it’s like Conan, Buffy, Green Lantern, Tim Hunter, the baby from Willow, and Steve from accounting all get pulled into this.) This might have been my favorite book from this set because it’s entertaining but not completely over-talked and decently paced.
Murder Inc. (Volume 1) – In an alternate history where the mob was responsible for the Kennedy assassination and basically took over chunks of the US, we follow Valentine in his first week as a “made man,” which goes incredibly poorly but not due to anything he did. This has the same problem as a bunch of the other comics in this bundle, in that the protagonist doesn’t actually drive the plot so much as run from one part of it to the next. (Jagger Rose, the insanely-competent assassin, actually accomplishes some things, but she’s the girl so at best she gets equal billing.) This is another case where there were more volumes in the bundle but I wasn’t feeling it.
Powers – The Supergirl expy gets killed and we follow the cops assigned to investigate (who clearly have superhero-related secrets of their own). This has half a dozen volumes in this bundle (and is apparently still ongoing, rivaling Groo for the number of publishers it’s gone through). The thing is, though, despite ostensibly being something I should like, it’s yet another example of what I don’t like about Bendis: He writes like the stories are whodunits, but can’t actually tie up a climax with any of the clues he tosses out, so it’s never satisfying, it’s always, “Well, that happened.” It’s procedural at best; but it’s not even well-foreshadowed procedural in those cases. So I read the first arc of this and then stopped.
I skipped Torso and Scarlet given my feelings on Goldfish and Jinx. I realize Bendis made is name with indie crime comics, but I don’t actually like them.
Overall: This bundle has taught me that Bendis has some great ideas and a talent for banter-style dialogue, but without an editor sitting on him, he’s clearly pantsing his stories and doesn’t give a crap about protagonist agency.
Brilliant – A group of genius nerds at an unnamed college make an amazing discovery: A process they can use on a person’s brain to unlock superpowers. And they immediately fail to keep it under wraps and alert the FBI and then the world about what they’ve done. I have to hope this is a prelude to some other series, because otherwise it’s a first volume that goes nowhere.
Takio – Taki and Olivia, two elementary-school-age sisters get superpowers (specifically, “kung fu telekinesis”) and have drama as they attempt to become the superhero duo “Takio.” It’s a cute little complete story and most of the entertainment value is from the sisters bickering.
Pearl (Volume 1) – The albino daughter of a Yakuza family discovers she’s very good at killing people. This is has a bunch of cute ideas (Pearl is covered in tattoos that only appear when she flushes; there’s a big twist in her family history) and some entertaining dialogue, but it never really comes together for me into a story I care about. Two more volumes were in the bundle, but I skipped them.
Cover – The strange and exciting life of a comic artist, who gets tricked into working for a possibly-CIA spy at a comic convention in Istanbul, and then pulled into several more jobs that mostly involving him showing up at conventions and knowing things about Jack Kirby. It’s an interesting little story (that ultimately resolves nothing) that I’m sure started as a self-insert thought experiment and got interwoven with some pretty painted artwork.
Jinx – Further adventures of Goldfish, this time his attempting to romance a woman named Jinx while pissing off his partner-in-crime and assorted local mobsters. It became clear over the course of reading this that I don’t actually care about the “Jinxworld” connected series of books; possibly because they seem to be an excuse for ambling dialogue and characters being stupidly incompetent. Though to be fair, I feel like Bendis got bored halfway through writing this and decided it needed some random extra scenes and a completely unrelated giant flashback sequence. Frankly, if the actual book centered around Jinx’s inner life more and didn’t have Goldfish or the stupid lost money plot, that would have been the book Bendis seems to have wanted to write...and probably a better read.
Masterpiece - A teenage girl discovers her parents were legendary thieves and she’s stuck in the machinations of two billionaires. This was going for a “heist movie” vibe, but it clearly wasn’t written all at once, which means both the pacing and the foreshadowing are a mess. Early on it’s implied you need nine people for the heist team, but at the end a bunch of slots are still blank (with both the old person never mentioned and the new slot never filled). The resolutions they manage in the last issue are never hinted as possible before they happen; and Emma several times claims she’s figured out what they’re doing but then forgets about it in the next issue and they’re arguing something else.
Joy Operations (Volumes 1-2) – In a sci-fi future full of jargon, Joy is an “en.voi,” which seems to be a head of security role for a CEO/billionaire/head of state. She starts hearing a voice in her head who claims to be working for the rival country/company/fiefdoms that says she needs to kill her boss. She takes this badly. Fortunately, at the first sign that Joy is compromised, her boss tries to have her killed, which removes any possible moral dilemma. The ideas here are interesting (and the fact Joy is in a poly marriage with kids is a nice LeGuin-esque note), but the pacing remains an issue as the story shifts directions rapidly and it ends up feeling like there was a lot of hand-wringing for no reason. Volume 2 picks up with the powers-that-be trying to figure out why Joy’s mental passenger worked and everybody else goes nuts; but that doesn’t really matter because there’s a political land-grab going on and Joy has to solve everything with extreme violence. Again, there are a lot of plot threads that don’t really resolve into the ending that happens. There are some cool sci-fi ideas and potentially something to be said about politics and capitalism, but it gets lost in the incoherent plot tangle and need to fill half the pages with sci-fi violence.
Fortune and Glory - The drawn-out and clearly deeply frustrating autobiographical story of Bendis attempting to get his comics made into Hollywood movies. This would be the perfect gift if you know someone who thinks that Hollywood will recognize their genius as a screenwriter and want to hit them with a reality check.
The Ones (Volume 1) - A group of completely unrelated “chosen ones” are gathered together Justice League-style to deal with a prophecy of Satan incarnating on Earth. (And they are completely unrelated—it’s like Conan, Buffy, Green Lantern, Tim Hunter, the baby from Willow, and Steve from accounting all get pulled into this.) This might have been my favorite book from this set because it’s entertaining but not completely over-talked and decently paced.
Murder Inc. (Volume 1) – In an alternate history where the mob was responsible for the Kennedy assassination and basically took over chunks of the US, we follow Valentine in his first week as a “made man,” which goes incredibly poorly but not due to anything he did. This has the same problem as a bunch of the other comics in this bundle, in that the protagonist doesn’t actually drive the plot so much as run from one part of it to the next. (Jagger Rose, the insanely-competent assassin, actually accomplishes some things, but she’s the girl so at best she gets equal billing.) This is another case where there were more volumes in the bundle but I wasn’t feeling it.
Powers – The Supergirl expy gets killed and we follow the cops assigned to investigate (who clearly have superhero-related secrets of their own). This has half a dozen volumes in this bundle (and is apparently still ongoing, rivaling Groo for the number of publishers it’s gone through). The thing is, though, despite ostensibly being something I should like, it’s yet another example of what I don’t like about Bendis: He writes like the stories are whodunits, but can’t actually tie up a climax with any of the clues he tosses out, so it’s never satisfying, it’s always, “Well, that happened.” It’s procedural at best; but it’s not even well-foreshadowed procedural in those cases. So I read the first arc of this and then stopped.
I skipped Torso and Scarlet given my feelings on Goldfish and Jinx. I realize Bendis made is name with indie crime comics, but I don’t actually like them.
Overall: This bundle has taught me that Bendis has some great ideas and a talent for banter-style dialogue, but without an editor sitting on him, he’s clearly pantsing his stories and doesn’t give a crap about protagonist agency.
