FORTUNE AND GLORY: THE MUSICAL! CHAPTER 1! RIGHT HERE! RIGHT NOW!
FORTUNE AND GLORY: THE MUSICAL! CHAPTER 1! RIGHT HERE! RIGHT NOW!
A JINXWORLD GRAPHIC NOVEL
Hey everybody! Here it is. As promised. Years in the making! Decades in the making!!! This is the official first chapter of Fortune and Glory: The Musical!
Fortune and Glory was a graphic novel I did years ago, pre-Marvel, about my first adventures in Hollywood as a young independent comic book creator. It was one of the books that got me where I am. I always wanted to do a sequel. Many of you have asked for one over the years. I loved doing an autobiographical comic book. I always thought I would do another one, or a bunch of them, but Spider-Man kept getting in the way. :-)
But really, I never thought I would have stories crazier than the ones I told in the original Fortune and Glory. Everything happening to me in comics was fun and fun to talk about, but was it autobiography-worthy? Then I got called to be the writer of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, a now notorious infamous Broadway musical that you can Google about right now. The story I'm about to tell you happened years before the show’s debut. Only my closest pals knew any of this happened at the time. I’ve only hinted at parts of this in past interviews. Now, it gives me a GREAT excuse to go down memory lane and share my favorite moments of coming up in comics with you.
A lot of the stories in this GN mean everything to me. They are the most defining moments in my life. A lot of them happened before the Internet, so there's not a lot of archive about this time in our lives and in comics. I know a lot of people reading these newsletters are creators and writers themselves. I hope my journey, and my pain, brings you some personal solace. If anyone reading this had anything to do with Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, I hope reading this brings you some peace knowing that someone somewhere was trying to stop it from happening years prior.
This part of our newsletter will come out weekly for the first couple of weeks, and then we're going to shift to biweekly to make room for Creation and the Masterclass which we have been doing all year. If you've just hopped on to check out Fortune and Glory, I am very excited to tell you that by subscribing, you are also getting access to all our Jinxworld material, including our Masterclass, which is now eight classes deep— 16+ hours of some of the best conversation I've ever put on record. You also have access to multiple chapters of Creation, our ongoing multimedia look at the messy art of creating things from scratch. Feel free to look around Jinxworld on Substack. We are very very happy with this space and we love sharing it with you.
Also, those of you who subscribed to the Powers or Phenomena levels can have access to our private Jinxworld Discord. This is as close as we have come to reviving the old Jinxworld message boards from back in the day. This is a very lively, vibrant and friendly space for us to discuss life.
Back to Fortune and Glory, I am also very happy to report to you that this entire graphic novel is completed. Bill, Wes, Dan and I have been working on this aaaaaall year. Ever since we got the call from Substack. In fact, now that we're done with the graphic novel, I am putting the excellent Bill to work on some extra chapters. I have more material about comics that I thought you would enjoy, but doesn't really fit into the narrative of this Fortune and Glory. So, by the time you're done with this graphic novel, we're gonna have a couple extra chapters for you with some surprising revelations.
While you're taking a look at these pages, I hope, like me, you take a moment to really appreciate what a wonderful cartoonist Bill Walko is. We were introduced to each other through our friend George at The New York Times. Bill drew my obit tribute to Stan Lee that we posted here a few newsletters ago. Once I realized I wasn't gonna be able to draw this GN myself in a timely fashion, Bill was the only cartoonist I called. Calling someone and asking them if they want to draw your bald head 700 more times is a weird phone call... But he was up for it and did an AMAZING job. It's hard to ask someone to draw the most personal moments of your childhood. He did an amazing job.
I also want to take a moment right here and publicly thank Griffin and Ethan who run the Jinxworld Substack. They also run a couple of the other Substacks in the comic space. They are part of the ingredients of why the space has been so fun for so many of us. Also, big high-fives to editor Daniel Chabon. Daniel is our editor at Dark Horse and came on board to edit this project as well. So if you're wondering why it all seems so professional… Well, that’s probably Josh Reed as well. Josh is the master letterer of so many Jinxworld titles. Lettering me is not the easiest gig. I pick. A lot. He handles it with such style.
So here we are, it's really happening. Fortune and Glory: The Musical. After you're done reading, feel free to stop by the Discord and discuss. Also, we will be posting all kinds of extras. I've been creating reference folders of stuff to share with you over the next few weeks.
If it isn't clear from my every word, THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart for allowing us to continue this amazing journey. Your subscription and support means everything. Enjoy!
BENDIS!
From the official FORTUNE AND GLORY: THE MUSICAL Press Release…
The Long-Awaited Sequel to the Multiple Eisner Nominated Graphic Novel Premieres Today Exclusively Through The ‘Jinxworld’ Substack Newsletter.
PORTLAND, OR – Substack’s expansive comics program adds another exclusive series with the introduction of Fortune & Glory: The Musical, a new weekly original comic bringing together Peabody award winner Brian Michael Bendis and cartoonist Bill Walko, with colors by Wes Dzioba and lettering by Josh Reed to tackle the stranger-than-fiction events behind the curtain of the pre-production of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.
Brian Michael Bendis says “Years ago I did an autobiographical graphic novel called Fortune and Glory. It was about my earliest adventures in Hollywood as an independent comics creator. I neeeeever thought I would have crazier stories to tell. Then I got a call to write the now infamous Spider-Man Broadway musical. It didn’t go great. This is that story.”
In the midst of the unprecedented success of Brian Michael Bendis’s character-defining run on Ultimate Spider-Man, and the box office record-breaking Spider-Man films, the writer received a phone call that no one could have predicted. Spidey was going to Broadway, and Bendis was being tapped to collaborate with rock royalty to help the webslinger “find his voice” on stage. Could he overcome his own ignorance about musicals, or would he exit stage left before production began?
Brian Michael Bendis, the New York Times bestselling, Peabody, and multi-Eisner award-winning co-creator of Miles Morales, Naomi, Jessica Jones, and POWERS teams with cartoonist Bill Walko (The Hero Business) for the second chapter in his celebrated and award-winning autobiographical tell-all graphic novel that proves there really is “no business like show business” (thank god!).
Installments of Fortune and Glory: The Musical will be released weekly, in multiple formats! Find this first 15 pages in both .cbz and .pdf formats below!