Comic book news website, CBR.com recently caught up with Brian Michael Bendis, who recently jumped ship from his longstanding job at Marvel to DC, causing horror and delight among fanboys in equal measure, and talked a little about the direction he plans on taking Superman in the coming months. It's an interesting interview that covers his time on the Avengers, in addition to some of the big changes he has coming to the Man of Steel's world, starting with a brand new antagonist.
Check out the first part of the interview below, the second segment of the interview will air next week.
CBR: Brian, the thing I’ve been thinking about in the buildup to Action #1000 is Avengers #500 – the last time you were writing a major anniversary issue as the new kid on the block. Do you reflect on that experience when working on Superman?
Bendis: In the sense of learning from things you’ve done before, yeah. It’s hard to look back a lot for guys like me. You’re trying to push forward and live in the moment. But you do when you’re launching things and cracking stories, you do tend to think, “What mistakes have I made? What could I have done better? What would I have done differently in launching?” I’ve been thinking about this [with Avengers #500] lately. Because when I was on Ultimate Spider-Man, it was announced with a lot of fanfare, and it was quite lovely. It was all really positive and a little over the top. And other people have experienced this too where you just know that you’re going to get your ass kicked when it’s all over. When the lovely moment is over, the beating will happen, and it’s up to you to decide what’ll happen after that.
My beating came around Avengers #500. That was where I thought it would be oh-so clever to blow everything up. Some fans liked it, and some hated it. There were a lot of arguments online, and a fan said to me, “We’re Avengers fans. All we buy is Avengers. And we have no idea who you are, but you came over and kicked all our toys over. You said, ‘Haha! This is fun, right?’ And we said, ‘No! We were enjoying that, and you kicked everything over!'” [Laughs]
I’ve thought about that a lot. They weren’t wrong. There was a criticism there that I take to heart. It’s not that I would have changed the story of Avengers, but the glee with which I did things, I could have been more cool with. So I thought about that a lot coming into this.
It’s tough when you’re coming on, but the book has been in a good place creatively. There’s nothing to blow up. There’s no reason to do that. I’m coming in strong, and big stuff is going to happen with Superman — but it doesn’t have that “Haha!” attitude.
CBR: You seem to be very enamored with Superman history coming into this. You’ve been talking a lot about great milestone issues of the past, and it’s not lost on people that you’re calling your six-issue series Man of Steel.
Bendis: We went back and forth on this. Dan DiDio wanted to call it Man of Steel, and I was hesitant. It harkens back to [John Byrne’s famed reinvention in the ’80s], which was it’s own thing. And it’s also the title of a movie that I was very critical of. So I said to Dan, “We have to be aware that I was bummed out by that movie.” I went back and reread everything I wrote. No, I didn’t delete all those comments where I was critical of DC. [Laughs] I knew someone was going to throw it in my face. So I went back and read it, and I felt like it was the impassioned plea of desperate Superman fan. I stand by it. But I was happy that I didn’t go back and read it until I already had a few issues of Man of Steel written. I looked at it then and felt, “Oh! I’m doing what I said!” I’m literally doing the thing I said I wanted to see in Superman. So my subconscious and my conscious mind were working in tandem, which isn’t always the case.
CBR: As you’re looking at Superman’s world, you’re starting with a new villain right away. How much of your story is balancing classic elements versus wanting to put new pieces on the board?
Bendis: A couple of things happened. It’s really funny; before I came to DC and was thinking about staying at Marvel, there were a couple of books I was looking at. One was Wolverine. A bunch of people have heard this story, but in doing that work, I downloaded a lot of Wolverine stuff. I opened up the files and saw three covers that repeated over and over. There was “Wolverine walks in to a dusty town.” Then there was “Wolverine fights ninjas.” And then “Wolverine schools a young ingénue into being a more hard-edged ingénue.” [Laughter] Out of the hundreds of issues of Wolverine, about two-thirds were those three covers. So I made a note that those were three stories you’d never see from me. It’s all been done.
I made that note to myself for Wolverine, and then when I came to DC, I did the same thing for Superman. What has been done to death? I went through everything, and there were certain elements I saw. One big one was that compared to his peers like Peter Parker or Bruce Wayne, Clark doesn’t have the same rogues gallery. It’s nowhere near as detailed. I just had this same issue with Iron Man as well. So #1 was adding in rogues – and characters that dig deep into the wounds of Clark Kent. I wanted someone that really gets to him or could physically beat him.
And so I thought about all of that and started developing some characters. [In Action #1000 you see] the first one, but there are others planted in DC Nation #0 that we’re not even saying who they are. It’s going to be a real mystery.
But going back to what I said about Wolverine, no matter what Superman storyline I saw, Lex Luthor was somehow involved. Every single big storyline – even if it was not a Lex storyline – in the second-to-last issue there came Lex Luthor. I just thought, “Let’s do some stories that don’t involve Lex sometimes.” So I’m going to take a break from him.
For those that love Lex Luthor, he’ll be front and center in the Justice League book – you can have your cake and eat it too. But meanwhile, we’re going to challenge Superman in some new ways with some new characters. And eventually, when it’s time to bring Lex back, we’ll bring him back. But sometimes it’s an albatross around writers necks that they feel they have to use him.
I also have this memory of listening to the Howard Stern show like 15 years ago where he was saying, “Why is every Superman movie about Lex Luthor? Every one! Where’s Brainiac?” And that is a very good note! There are more stories to be told. But the mass populous, all they know of Superman is Lex Luthor. So now, between the SyFy show Krypton and what we’re going to do, we’re going to really get a chance to build that up. And from what I’ve gathered from people, this is what they’ve been looking for too.
