Dennis Hopeless

Dennis Hopeless
Hopeless at the 2012 Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo
Born	Kansas City, Missouri
Occupation	Comic Book Writer
Nationality	American
Period	2007–present
Notable works	LoveSICK X-Men: Season One Avengers Arena Spider-Woman Vols. 5 & 6 Cable and X-Force
Website
dennishopeless.com

Dennis Hopeless is an American comics writer from Kansas City, Missouri who has written for Marvel Comics, Image Comics, Dark Horse Comics and Arcana Studio.^[1]

Hopeless has written multiple series starring teenage superheroes and has said that he "tend[s] to write about the challenge of growing up."^[2] He's been praised by critics for including a female point-of-view in his comics.^[3] After finding success with two creator-owned comics, Hopeless began writing for Marvel in 2011. In 2015, Hopeless wrote two limited series as part of Marvel's Secret Wars event.

Career

Dennis Hopeless worked in a comic store in the mid-2000s while trying to break into the comics industry.^[4] In 2007, he created GearHead (with penciller Kevin Mellon), a four-issue comic about a female auto mechanic searching for her lost brother. The series was published by Arcana Studio.^[5] His next notable work didn't hit shelves until 2011 when Hopeless reunited with artist Kevin Mellon to create LoveSTRUCK, a supernatural graphic novel inspired in part by Frank Herbert's Dune and Garth Ennis's Preacher that was published by Image Comics.^[6][7] That same year, Hopeless began working with Marvel Comics, writing the second volume of Legion of Monsters (with penciler Juan Doe). The series starred the titular Legion and monster-hunter Elsa Bloodstone.^[8]

While Legion of Monsters was still being published, Marvel tapped Hopeless (along with pencillers Jamie McKelvie and Mike Norton) to create a graphic novel called X-Men: Season One as part of a series of four graphic novels focusing on the origins of some of the company's biggest characters.^[9] While some publications were hesitant to embrace the Season One concept, Hopeless's novel garnered generally positive reviews,^[10][11] with Comic Book Resources calling it, "easy to understand, fun to read and still pretty wide in scope."^[12]

Hopeless's next work for Marvel was 2013's Avengers Arena, an 18-issue comic series in which the villain Arcade kidnaps 16 teenage superheroes and forces them to fight each other to the death.^[13] The series starred characters from Avengers Academy, the Runaways and Hopeless's newly created Braddock Academy and featured covers referencing Lord of the Flies, The Hunger Games series, the game show Survivor, and the Japanese film Battle Royale. The comic won Hopeless the 2013 Harvey Award for Most Promising New Talent. That same year, Hopeless wrote Cable and X-Force (with artist Salvador Larroca), a 19-issue series that ran concurrently and eventually crossed over with Sam Humphries and Ron Garney's Uncanny X-Force Vol. 2.^[14] Also in 2013, Hopeless co-wrote a 4-issue series called The Answer! with Eisner Award winning creator Mike Nolan for Dark Horse Comics.^[15] In 2014, Hopeless and artist Kevin Walker authored Avengers Undercover, a direct follow-up series to Avengers Arena with many of the same characters.^[16]

Hopeless's next project was the limited series All-New Captain America: Fear Him (with co-writer Rick Remender). Part of Marvel's Infinite Comics series, it starred Sam Wilson in his new role as Captain America.^[17] The following year, Hopeless began working on the fifth volume of Marvel's Spider-Woman comic with penciler Greg Land and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad (with artist Tigh Walker), an all-ages western adventure comic based on the classic Disney theme park attraction.^[18][19] That summer, Marvel began their Secret Wars crossover event and Hopeless wrote two books in the storyline, Inferno (with Javier Garron) and House of M (with Mark Failla), both based on both based on previous Marvel events.^[20][21]

Upon the conclusion of the Secret Wars event Marvel relaunched their Spider-Woman comic in January 2016 with Hopeless now joined by artist Javier Rodríguez who had worked with Hopeless on the previous volume after Land's departure.^[22] The relaunched series centered on Spider-Woman, Jessica Drew's newly announced pregnancy and impending motherhood. Critics praised the relatable, fun storytelling of the comic with IGN calling it, "laid back at times and outlandish at others" while scoring it an 8.6 out of 10.^[23] The following month, Hopeless served as writer for another relaunched series, the second volume of All-New X-Men, a comic starring the time-displaced original X-Men now traveling the country with three young Jean Grey School students.^[24]

Awards

• 2012 - Harvey Award—Most Promising New Talent (for Avengers Arena)^[25]

Bibliography

Arcana Studio

• GearHead (limited series) (April 2007 — May 2008) (with Kevin Mellon, Ed Herrera, Alexey Strakhov and Jessie Hopeless)
  • GearHead (tpb, 120 pages, 2008, ISBN 978-0976309598) collects: GearHead 1-4

Image Comics

• Hack/Slash: Trailers #2, story: "Too Cute" (with Kyle R. Strahm, Buster Moody and Chris Crank, November 2010)
• LoveSTRUCK (graphic novel) (with Kevin Mellon and Erik Jones, October 2011, ISBN 978-1607064473)

Dark Horse Comics

• The Answer! (limited series) (January 2013 — April 2013) (co-written with Mike Norton)
  • The Answer! Volume 1 (tpb, 120 pages, 2013, ISBN 978-1616551971) collects: The Answer! 1-4

Marvel Comics

• Legion of Monsters vol. 2 #1-4 (with Juan Doe and Will Quintana, December 2011 — March 2012)
  • Legion of Monsters (tpb, 96 pages, April 2012, ISBN 978-0785140573) collects: Legion of Monsters 1-4
• X-Men: Season One (graphic novel) (with Jamie McKelvie, Mike Norton, Matt Wilson and Clayton Cowles, May 2012, ISBN 978-0785156451)
• Marvel NOW! Point One #1 story "Forge in: Crazy Enough" (with Gabriel Hernandez Walta, David Curiel and Joe Sabino, December 2012)
• Avengers Arena #1-18 (with Kev Walker, Alessandro Vitti, Riccardo Burchielli, Frank Martin Jr. and Jean-Francois Beaulieu, February 2013 — N2014), Collected in:
  • Volume 1: Kill or Die (tpb, 144 pages, May 2013, ISBN 978-0785166573), collects: Avengers Arena 1-6
  • Volume 2: Game On (tpb, 144 pages, September 2013, ISBN 978-0785166580), collects: Avengers Arena 7-12
  • Volume 3: Boss Level (tpb, 136 pages, February 2014, ISBN 978-0785189282), collects: Avengers Arena 13-18
• Cable and X-Force #1-19 (with Salvador Larroca, Gerardo Sandoval, Cullen Bunn, Frank G. D'Armata, Angel Unzueta and Rachelle Rosenberg, February 2013 — March 2014), Collected in:
  • Volume 1: Wanted (tpb, 136 pages, May 2013, ISBN 978-0785166900), collects: Cable and X-Force 1-5
  • Volume 2: Dead or Alive (tpb, 96 pages, November 2013, ISBN 978-0785166917), collects: Cable and X-Force 6-9
  • Volume 3: This Won't End Well (tpb, 112 pages, February 2014, ISBN 978-0785188827), collects: Cable and X-Force 10-14
  • Volume 4: This Won't End Well (tpb, 152 pages, April 2014, ISBN 978-0785189466), collects: Cable and X-Force 15-19, Uncanny X-Force 16-17
• Avengers Undercover #1-10 (with Kev Walker, Timothy Green II, Tigh Walker and Jean-Francois Beaulieu, May 2014 — November 2014), Collected in:
  • Volume 1: Descent (tpb, 112 pages, September 2014, ISBN 978-0785189404), collects: Avengers Undercover 1-5
  • Volume 2: Going Native (tpb, 112 pages, November 2013, ISBN 978-0785189411), collects: Avengers Undercover 6-10
• All-New Captain America: Fear Him Infinite Comic #1-6 (with Rick Remender, Mast and Geoffo, October 2014 — November 2014), Collected in:
  • Volume 1: Descent (tpb, 136 pages, June 2015, ISBN 978-0785192589)
• Spider-Woman Vol. 5 #1-9 (with Greg Land, Javier Rodriguez, W. Scott Forbes, Jay Leisten, Natacha Bustos and Muntsa Vicente, May 2014 — November 2014), Collected in:
  • Volume 1: Spider-Verse (tpb, 112 pages, June 2015, ISBN 978-0785154587), collects: Spider-Woman Vol. 5 1-4
  • Volume 2: New Duds (tpb, 136 pages, February 2016, ISBN 978-0785154594), collects: Spider-Woman Vol. 5 5-10
• Big Thunder Mountain Railroad #1-5 (with Tigh Walker, Felix Ruiz, Guillermo Mogorron, and Jean-Francois Beaulieu, May 2015 — October 205), Collected in:
  • Big Thunder Mountain Railroad (hc, 128 pages, October 2015, ISBN 978-0785197010), collects: Big Thunder Mountain Railroad 1-5
• Inferno #1-5 (with Javier Garron, Chris Sotomayor and Joe Sabino, July 2015 — November 2015), Collected in:
  • Inferno: Warzones (tpb, 112 pages, December 2015, ISBN 978-0785198734), collects: Inferno 1-5
• House of M #1-4 (with Javier Garron, Chris Sotomayor and Joe Sabino, October 2015 — December 2015), Collected in:
  • House of M: Warzones (tpb, 120 pages, February 2016, ISBN 978-0785198727), collects: House of M 1-4, House of M (2005) 1
• Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 4 #1 story "What to Expect" (with Javier Rodriguez and Álvaro López, December 2015), Collected in:
  • Vol. 1: Worldwide (tpb, 144 pages, April 2016, ISBN 978-0785199427), collects: Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 4 1-5
• Spider-Woman Vol. 6 #1-ONGOING (with Javier Rodriguez, Joëlle Jones, Álvaro López and Rachelle Rosenberg, January 2016 — present), Collected in:
  • Shifting Gears Volume 1: Baby Talk (tpb, 120 pages, June 2016, ISBN 978-0785196228), collects: Spider-Woman Vol. 6 1-5
  • Spider-Women (tpb, 136 pages, July 2016, ISBN 978-1302900939), collects: Spider-Woman Vol. 6 6-7, Silk 7-8, Spider-Gwen 7-8
  • Shifting Gears Volume 2 (tpb, 112 pages, December 2016, ISBN 978-0785196235), collects: Spider-Woman Vol.6 8-12
• All-New X-Men Vol. 2 #1-ONGOING (with Mark Bagley, Paco Diaz, Nolan Woodard, Andrew Hennessy and Rachelle Rosenberg, February 2016 — present), Collected in:
  • Inevitable Vol. 1: Ghost of the Cyclops (tpb, 136 pages, May 2016, ISBN 978-0785196303), collects: All-New X-Men 1-6
  • Inevitable Vol. 2: Apocalypse Wars (tpb, 136 pages, October 2016, ISBN 978-0785196310), collects: All-New X-Men 7-12

References