Superman #28 (2018)

This is a review for Bendis' time on Superman overall. Starting back with Man Of Steel, there was reason to be wary. First, you have to compare it to John Byrne coming on to Superman with...Man Of Steel. He changed up a bunch of Kryptonian history. Superman had been around for over 50 years. He wasn't broke and he didn't need fixing. Unlike his work on Spider-Man Chapter One, MOS had great changes, and worked them into the Superman mythos effectively. He successfully brought Superman into modern comics times...of the 80's.


Cut to Rebirth. Superman had ALREADY been brought into modern times again, and grandly, by Peter Tomasi, Patrick Gleason, and Doug Mahnke. It was the best run of Superman since Byrne for sure, and maybe better than that depending on your tastes. Every bit of darkness from N52 Superman had been drained, replaced with every bit of boy scout that could be crammed into an issue. All of the corn-fed corniness that people say no longer works for Superman was back, and guess what? It worked. All of it. The alien who gives humanity something to aspire to was finally doing that again. Superman is working. Superman is selling. But...Bendis is leaving Marvel. He knows who he wants to work on. He knows he wants to change the history of why Krypton was destroyed, and he's going to add a new, talkative Doomsday style character to do it. Raise your hand if you groaned.


The groans had a bit of merit. Rather than be both creatively successful and monstrously ordered, after previews DC heard a mix of "Eh...I don't know, man" and "I don't have as many orders for it as Superman." Pre-orders were not good and DC made the book returnable to get retailers to drive up their initial numbers. Anyone who was skeptical after issue one had their head in the right place. Anyone who was skeptical after issue six had their head screwed on wrong. Bringing a mix of a noticeably darker Metropolis combined with a 100% bright blue Superman, there was a soup of Bendis style crime dialogue, Bendis style upbeat heroism, and Bendis long term planning. It was delicious. "Rogol Zaar blew up Krypton? Nonsense." became "Superman and General Zod have teamed up to stop Rogol Zaar because Clark bet on Zod to work for the good of all surviving Kryptonians and won!?!". They were thrilling, engaging comics. Unlike many Bendis stories, they had ends. They were BEAUTIFULLY illustrated by Ivan Reis, channeling the best of Neal Adams with a modern flair. Reis' Superman, at times, felt like he was cut out of old comics and pasted into these new ones. At almost every turn, it worked. Cue the next big bads- an alien trained to destroy Superman, and AT+T.


Just as Bendis was getting ready to introduce a new threat, a threat that had successfully neutralized Superman, there was confirmation that DC was looking at their next reboot, and was going to happen in the summer/fall of 2020. That reboot was successfully neutralized by a series of events- the firing of Dan DiDio, DC taking over distribution of their own books, another wave of firings, followed by ANOTHER wave of firings.


Also, there was a full blown pandemic for the first time in a century that had some moderate total global impact. So there's that, then.


With these small giant changes, DC scrapped their reboot plans. 5G (as it was known) was dead. With its death came the death of the top creator contract, and word correctly spread that Bendis was leaving the books with the most recognizable logo in comics. That has to be taken into account when looking at the endings of his time on Action and Superman. Superman has the better finale. While its unlikely this was the intended end, the one you get can be considered a litmus test for if you're able to feel. While some of us have been looking up the whole time, looking for that example of what we can be, Bendis reminds us that goes both ways in an epic-ly effective cosmic conclusion, followed by an intimately effective Earthly one.