Martellus Bennett may have won a Super Bowl, but he’s really more of a super hero.
His super power is creativity, and his literary and visual empire is just beginning.
“No one has ever taught me how to be creative,” says Marty. “It’s just who I am.”
His work as an author and artist has led to projects like Dear Black Boy and his acclaimed Hey A.J. series, which is now being developed into an animated series with Disney.
The acclaimed creator joined Mick for Episode 015 of ‘The MICK Show’ to discuss how his artistic process works, his multi-hyphenated career, and why Tom Brady’s flexibility is actually a metaphor for real world resilience.
Says Marty: “I don’t ever want to be remembered for playing sports. I want them to say, ‘Oh, and he played football.”
You can follow Mick (@mick) and Martellus (@martellusb) on Instagram.
New episodes of ‘The MICK Show’ (presented in partnership with @maximmag) are released every Wednesday!
MICK: Welcome back to The MICK Show. Man, we have a guest this week who I had the privilege of being on his podcast a year or two ago and it was a much better setup than this bullshit I’m putting you through using AirPods and like a USB mic, because we went to your studio in L.A., and it was just this most luxurious, like drinks were flowing. It was an amazing experience, Marty.
Martellus Bennett:
Those were my employees, like you can’t… or the people who worked with me. You know, I usually… I work with women mostly, because I just find them to be the most collaborative. Like sometimes when you work with men, they don’t really seem to be as collaborative. And I also think it’s partly because I spent my life working with men in the locker room. You know, like I don’t want to be around men no more.
MICK: No, that’s true. I know, I kind of made it sound like it was like the I Get Around video. It wasn’t.
Bennett: Yeah. You made it seem like it was Big Pimpin’, you know what I’m saying?
MICK: Yeah. We in the tub. We in the jacuzzi. But you know, whatever though, it’s all good.
Bennett: That shit’s funny.
MICK: So, I mean that is an interesting duality, though, because so… and that’s kind of what I think is fascinating about your career, is that you’re a man who’s done two different things, and that the most testosterone driven, Americana sport of football, and then you now do these beautiful, cultural, lovely, astonishing children’s creative projects and all sorts of other things, and how does that duality exist in your mind?
Bennett: It’s an interesting duality not for me, but for others, right? Because this is always who I’ve been, like I’ve always made things, and I always played sports. And I try to get people to understand that I’m… Sports were always secondary for me as a being, or like I just played sports. Someone had to teach me sports. No one taught me art. It seems like such a juxtaposition, to be someone who literally, physically manhandles things with their hands, right? Like I’m punching, I’m slapping, and you know, I’m catching the ball, stiff arming, throwing people around, slamming people to the ground, but then these same hands are trying to make beautiful things, right? Like whether it’s pottery, or whether it’s art pieces, colorful worlds, and it’s just like these hands have done lots of things.
But like to me, there is this duality of trying to exist, because I don’t really belong anywhere. The sporting world, I didn’t fit in, right? Just because of mindset, what I was about, what I was interested in, or whatever. But then also in the art world, I don’t really fit in because of my personality, my traits and things that came from being in the sporting world. So, like I usually end up being in the space all alone, because I could relate to people, but people can’t relate to me. I wouldn’t say that the art world has accepted me the way I would have thought it would. With the work that I put out, my body of work, and just my consistency in my work, and the same thing with football. I don’t really think I was ever really accepted.
MICK: I mean, that’s kind of like probably your secret sauce though for why you’ve been able to excel at both. Do you remember as a kid the first time you felt creative?
Bennett: I can’t remember a time when I didn’t feel creative. As a kid, like I always made. I was always making something or thinking about making something. It’s just who I am, so I can’t remember a time where I felt like I wasn’t creative. Like I’m the guy that if we played, like if something happened, say we’re friends as kids and something happened and somebody was telling a story, they’d be like, “Man, shut up. Let Marty tell the story.” Right?
Because I was that guy, so I’m like, “Yo, it was like such and such, such and such,” like I was always a griot of the neighborhood, and just telling stories, so any time there was a timeout in pickup basketball, or something happened on the court, something happened in school, I was always the one that people would like, “Yo, come tell us. Come tell us about what happened.” Because I always told the best stories.
MICK: That’s like doing all the voices, and like-
Bennett: Yeah.
MICK: Yeah.
Bennett: But it’s funny, because that became my role on a lot of teams, like I became that guy. Like in the huddle, I’d be like, “Oh, dang. Who’s your girlfriend with on the kissing cam?” I’ll use that same joke from time to time, but definitely on the Patriots my role was like not only to ball out, but I was the comedic relief, and for the coaches, for the equipment managers, for the entire organization, which was like a very buttoned up organization, so my role became like how can I lighten up the mood in here from time to time? And that was really cool.
MICK: Did they make you take all the Tom Brady supplements and the vitamins and all that stuff? The TB12?
Bennett: No. I didn’t take none of that shit. You know, I don’t… He’d be talking about being elastic and pliable and things like that. They just making up words and shit, but like-
MICK: He thinks he’s Mr. Fantastic.
Bennett: Tom is one of my favorite guys, though. He was one of my favorite quarterbacks to play with.
MICK: I mean, longevity in any industry is tremendous, and he’s had what, like four decades, six decades of being a quarterback.
Bennett: I know.
MICK: It’s pretty incredible.
Bennett: And the idea of him saying that the entire idea of his existence, to be able to play so long, is pliability, which is just being flexible, right? Like flexibility. And you think about your life in any job that you take, being flexible keeps you around much longer than anything else, right? if you have the ability to stretch your imagination, be flexible with positions, and roles, and things like that, that keeps you in a job, and I thought that was really… When I think about pliability, I think about it as a human being, how pliable am I in whatever environment that I am? How flexible am I in this environment? How flexible is the way that I’m working with others or the people that I work with?
MICK: That’s a really interesting point, actually. Have you found that your ability to adjust and be flexible has helped you in the last year with everything that’s went on?
Bennett: Oh, 100%, because my whole life has been adjusting. In football, the entire game is about adjustments, right? Something doesn’t go right, you hurt your ankle, you can’t run the same way, you have to adjust the way you run, you have to adjust the way you play. You just always have to make adjustments. I lived in a world where if they did something right, you have to adjust to beat whatever it is that they’re doing. And I do the same thing in life. I find that dealing with adversity on a large scale in front of millions of people, every single Sunday, it makes it a little bit easier for me to deal with adversity when it’s just me and dealing with whatever I have to deal with.
So, yeah. Because a lot of people don’t experience adversity consistently. They have adverse situations that come up in their life from time to time, but like how many people live in situations where they have to face adversity and overcome that adversity every single day? On the scale of where the outcome matters instantly. A lot of people right now facing adversity are people who probably haven’t faced this type of adversity in a really, really long time.
There’s a whole class of people facing adversity right now that hasn’t had to face adversity in quite some time. And they don’t know how to deal with it. And there’s people, and then it’s quite funny, because to them, wearing a mask is… People get up and complain about wearing a mask as being oppressed. I’m like, “Goddamn. Imagine that your form of oppression is someone telling you to wear a mask.”
MICK: Yeah.
Bennett: That’s just really funny to me. It’s like, “Oh, this is what you think being oppressed is?”
MICK: I don’t want to delve too much into the political side of this, but yeah, the idea that people who have dealt with very little struggle in their life are really upset about wearing a three by four piece of fabric on their face because science says it’s okay, there’s an interesting parallel to, in a positive way, about the people who wear masks and how it saves lives and a lot of the fictional characters that you and I are fans of as far as like comics and things of that nature, right? Like it’s really interesting, their job was to put on a mask and go save lives. And this is literally everybody’s chance now to be a real life superhero. You can literally walk out your house, put on a mask, and save a life.
Let’s zoom out on that and let’s talk about some of the creative… You have really, really excelled at combining creativity, and diversity, and beauty into one package with all of your art and your books, and I’m wondering, obviously the reaction for that I would assume has been overwhelmingly positive, but has anyone ever come up to you and told you how the work that you’re doing in these realms has just really impacted them and inspired them?
Bennett: So, my whole thing is escapism. I feel like a lot of the stories that are told about kids of color are stories that live right outside our door, right? We get Boyz n the Hood. We don’t get the Sandlot; we get Gridiron Gang. You know what I’m saying? Like you go to jail, then you play football. It’s not really just kids being wizards or kids being magical. Kids of all colors love the stuff I make, which is what I write for. I don’t really write… Because there’s a whole spectrum of Blackness. There’s kids who love comic books. There’s Black kids who want to be scientists. There’s Black kids who skateboard. There’s Black kids who want to do magic. There’s Black kids that want to live under the sea as mermaids. There’s like this whole form of Black imagination that is left off by what people allow the stories to be told. And it forces them to grow up. They gotta start thinking about racism at 9, at 10, or 11. You know, like why not just allow them to just excel at just being kids?
And that’s what my work is really about, is like how do I build worlds where kids can escape to these worlds to not have to deal with the realities? And when they go to these worlds, they’re not treated as second class citizens, because a lot of things that are created, if you’re a Black kid, you’re a second class citizen in America and you a second class citizen in most of these stories that are created. Right? So, how can you create worlds where you feel like you have ownership of that world, you belong to this world, and there’s several versions of it. You can find yourself in these worlds, right?
Because I do know Black kids who would be fit into Gridiron Gang. I went to school with some of them. But I also know Black kids who, that would just be so frightening for them, you know, going to juvenile to play. You know, that would be so frightening for them and so far left from where they are. You should be able to find yourself in these stories, right? Like who do I like? You should be able to pick like, “Oh, shit. I really like such and such because they have nunchucks.” Right? That should be the conversation you should be having, or I really like this character because man, they style is dope, and plus he has a sword. You know, like that shit’s tight.
It shouldn’t be like, “I watch these…” Like I watch movies. I saw my first… First time I saw myself in a movie was like two weeks ago. Right? I watch movies all the time.
MICK: Like in life?
Bennett: Like life. The first time I met a character in a movie that I felt like, “Yo, this is me.” Was like two weeks ago. It was this movie, Jingle Jangle, on Netflix. It’s a musical. Christmas musical. Forest Whittaker is in it and I’m watching this movie, so one of my biggest inspirations in my entire life of creativity is Willy Wonka. Right? Like I love Willy Wonka. I like the idea of having a chocolate factory. I like the idea of making something that everybody in the world wants. The boat that’s riding on chocolate. That’s how I see myself. I like the idea of like walking with a cane and making everybody think that you’re sick and then doing the front flip. I like everything about Willy Wonka.
MICK: I love that.
Bennett: My question to myself is like, “What is my chocolate?” Right? So, but this movie comes out, Jingle Jangle, and it’s this Black guy, and he’s a toymaker. And he has this factory, it’s really cool. He has this magic way of making things and seeing the world. And he has a daughter who is just as inventive and wants to be like her dad. So, that was like, “Yo, that’s me.” And the wife is very supportive, so I’m like, “Yo, this is my family on television.” That was my first time ever experiencing that. And I get excited, because I don’t really know… I know people tell me that, but I don’t know what people really feel when they say that to me about my work, but now I know. It’s like, “Dang, this is how people feel when they read my stories? This is a really good feeling to have.”
So, now it’s just made me increase my workload, because if I could give… If this is the feeling that I’m delivering, I want to deliver as much of this feeling as possible to every single person, because I love the way that felt.
MICK: I asked you earlier like how many, if you have two books coming out, and you wrote that number twice, you said 22.
Bennett: Yes.
MICK: Let’s talk about that, because based off the excitement and the exuberance of what you just said, obviously to pump out 22 pieces of content in any form is an incredible thing. To do 22 projects at the level of how you do it is a phenomenal feat. How do you manage all of that?
Bennett: Why, thank you. So, basically like the biggest thing I’ve been running into is like, “All right, I don’t want to do distribution anymore.” As far as like I don’t want to be in Barnes and Noble. I don’t want to sell my books on Amazon. I want to create a closed ecosystem. I want to do a subscription model. I want people to subscribe to the worlds I build. In order to do the subscription model, I have to be able to send them a book a month and have other things to offer them. So, it’s like all right, so if we’re gonna do that, that means that we have to pump out at least 12 books a year. Right?
But you want to get ahead. I’m my own publisher. I print my own stuff. And throughout that trial and error phase, I’ve figured out a way to be able to print, be more vertical, where I can get a book done in 60 days to be ready to ship out, when it used to take me 18 to 22 months before books came out. So, I want to be more consistent in my releasing of my work to build the words that I want to build so people can spend as much time and escape to these worlds as much as possible. Because right now if you order a book, most people order a book from Amazon online, et cetera, et cetera. People don’t really go to bookstores as much as they used to.
So, they order a book, and Amazon experience is a book comes to your front door in a brown box. You open it. You don’t really think about where the book came from, who’s shipping the book, or none of that stuff. It’s not really a experience, right? You read the book.
And then the thing that happens with most authors when you read a book is you have to wait a couple years before the next book comes out. So, I started researching, I was like, “Yo, what if I built a subscription model?” And the ability to write as fast as I write now and to create, so I had to develop a visual language that allows me to create things faster. I didn’t have a visual language. Over the last… I spent like eight months developing this visual language, right? And now, once I have the visual language developed, I could get things done faster because we do everything in the same style, and it doesn’t cost me as much because we’re working in a style that’s already created, so it cuts down some costs.
We played with pause. We had yoyos. We had these things, right? So, how do I integrate a brand that’s modern for today’s kids, but also takes that nostalgia of the ‘90s, where the parents want to share this experience with their kids? So, I had to create a character that felt like it was universal. Say like my book Dear Black Boy, Dear Black Boy is like a super, super niche, right? It’s not for everybody. It literally says Dear Black Boy on the title.
MICK: Right, right.
Bennett: And it’s usually for Black boys who have parents who think their kids should be interested in something more than just sports. So, all right, let’s open up the floodgates. What can we create that’s a universal character that I could translate in several different languages and several different places? That’s when I came up with the new character for my stories, Super Cake Boy. And basically, Super Cake Boy is a version of myself, because if I was a hero, obviously I’d eat cake, because cake is just delicious, and who doesn’t like cake? So, you know, I was listening, I was studying Sonic the Hedgehog and how Sega had to create a mascot to be able to compete with Nintendo, Mario.
So, I was like, “All right, I need to create a mascot, and then I could start shoveling in all the other stuff I want to do as well, once I get everybody hooked on this large mascot.”
So, I developed that, designing that, and then I was like, “All right, cool.” Keeping with the ecosystem, I was like, “If I can have a touch brand,” because I do feel like after the pandemic is over, kids are gonna want to play. Parents are gonna want kids to touch things, get off devices, read books and things like that. So, all right, so we have the books, so then I was like, “All right, what are our games going to be?” So, I started studying game design, and next year I have my first two games coming out, right?
MICK: Congrats.
Bennett: Thank you. I’m super excited about those. And then after I start doing game design, it’s like, “All right, I’ve been doing animation, so what is animation like for me?” And my big concept is I don’t need to be on Nintendo, because the iPhone is a Gameboy for every single person that owns one. So, how do I turn the iPhone into my Gameboy? And then if I want to develop a game which I want people to play on the screen, I still don’t need to be on Nintendo, Xbox, or whatever, because I could design it for Apple TV. Right?
MICK: Right.
Bennett: So, you’d have your controller right there, so that eliminates several steps for me in doing it this way. So, what if I could create books that are more like cartoons? What if I could put a cartoon in a book? Where you read it and it’s just like, “Yo,” so it creates re-readability. This 45 minute to an hour and a half experience of reading where you could sit down in an afternoon and make your way through it, and enjoy it, it’s funny, it’s engaging, you could just jump in at any point and it feels like you’re reading a cartoon. That’s what I’ve been doing, and I’ve been… I’m working on a subscription model.
So, people would subscribe and basically I would send you a book a month. You will get a book a month, but you could also get… You could also buy other books if you want to, as well, but the covers… If you’re part of the Adventure Club, your books have a different cover, as well. So, now you get these collector’s items that only people in the Adventure Club get. But if you want to buy the other covers that’s open to the public, you could buy those, as well. But the subscription model is that you get this book plus other pieces that are tied to the world that you get.
So, like now if I’m a kid, and once a month, I’m like, “I’m waiting by the door.” I want kids to be like when that box, and what does that box look like? So, when you see that box on your doorsteps or if your parents brought it in, it’s sitting on the kitchen table, you already know what it is.
MICK: Let’s fast forward this out five years. What’s the pie in the sky ultimate success story for all of this? Where do you want to see this?
Bennett: I keep having this dream, ever since we decided to move back to Houston, to my hometown, where I bought AstroWorld, which was our Six Flags. And basically, if I could rebuild AstroWorld into my own theme park with my characters, my own rides, and things like that, that would be really cool. So, that’s part of it, like theme park is kind of like part of what I want to do, but overall, I just want to tell… I just want to build a place where kids, people, just people want to spend time. I want to build a world that people want to visit my world, so like you know that everybody wants to go to the worlds I build. I don’t really want to be part of anyone else’s infrastructure. I’m spending the time to build my own infrastructure, to make my own rules, to do things that I want to do my way, and to have this infrastructure where it’s like I could build whatever I want to build.
MICK: Man, as we wrap up here, it’s just like knowing you for a year or two or wherever… We have a great story. We met on the beach in Cannes, sipping rosé. That’s an amazing… That’s a story for a different interview, but that’s how I like to meet all my friends, like 90 degrees, beautiful-
Bennett: Random. Hey, have a seat. You want a drink?
MICK: Have a seat. Would you like some rosé? We just sit there. That’s my point of entry for how I want my life to go from everything moving forward. But being serious, the Imagination Agency doesn’t even do you justice, man. After hearing all the things you just said, it’s like that’s… As bold as that name is for a company, and as dynamic as it is, it’s actually underselling the level of what you’re putting out there, man.
Bennett: So, that’s why I’m launching a new company with this philosophy called… and my new company is called Browniversal.
MICK: Love it.
Bennett: Because you’re right. What you just said is exactly how I felt about the Imagination Agency. I felt like my ideas outgrew the studio.
MICK: I meant it complimentary, like it’s a dope name, but like you just… I’ve never heard anybody with as much imagination as you. You’re like beyond imagination. You’re like… It’s next level shit.
Bennett: That means a lot to me, man, because I think imagination is a serious, serious thing.
MICK: When you figure that out, you let me know and I’ll pass that on to my kid and we will come show up. Yo, thank you so much for finding time today. I know you got a lot going on with your fam, and all your projects, and we’re very honored and blessed to have you on here.
Bennett: Thanks, bro.
MICK: Make sure you guys all follow Marty on all his socials. We’re gonna tag them all and everything for all the music, all the books, his amazing family, super dad, all of that shit. It’s a beautiful thing to see.
That was it for another episode of The MICK Show. Thank you so much for tuning in. Please rate and subscribe to The MICK Show wherever you like to listen and make sure to follow on Instagram @Mick and on Twitter @iamMICK. Let me know who you want to hear on a future episode, and we will see you back here next week.
The MICK Show is presented in partnership with Maxim. The show is produced by Lantigua Williams & Co. Juleyka-Lantigua Williams is our editor. Cedric Wilson is our producer and mixed this episode. Manuela Bedoya is our social media editor.
CITATION:
Batyske, Mick, host. “Imagine That: Martellus Bennett.” The MICK Show, Lantigua Williams & Co., February 10, 2021. https://mick.co/.