Superman #28: There’s Something Happening Here

And just like that, Bendis and Reis’ run on Superman is over. There were some bumps in the road here and there and misfortune of taking a legendary Big Blue Boyscout writer like Dan Jurgens off what was a very good run certainly hung over this run for many fans (myself obviously included) but still, the highs in this run were incredibly high.

This arc– “Mythological”– was not among those incredible highs, unfortunately. It was a fine arc for the most part. Something that would have made a good mid-run story perhaps. As a capstone for two years of storytelling, however, it falls short of the mark. It’s forgettable for the most part, bringing in a “villain” that feels disposable, an alien race we may never see again until Grant Morrison gets bored of the Silver Age, and very little devolopment to ongoing story threads. In this final issue, there is the added wrinkle of the dual track narrative in which we follow Superman’s exploits on Synmar while listening the narration from Lana Lang as she reads from Lois’ upcoming book about Clark. It’s… messy. I think, given more time, a stand alone story featuring this narration could be an exceptional issue but here, when you’re just trying to close out an arc that already felt rushed and slightly haphazard, it just didn’t work as intended. The epilogue on the final three pages was lovely but so out of place that I had to back up several pages to make sure I didn’t miss anything.

There is a definite feeling that DC Comics is on the verge of a major shake-up, particularly with a noticable focus on diverse, newer talents in all phases of comics. Perhaps this, coupled with massive changes throughout 2020, heralds the end of an era in terms of creative voices we’ve come to expect. Perhaps not but I can’t help feel like there was more Bendis wanted to tell here and got cut off. Maybe we’ll never know, and that’s okay as well, I suppose. The team on this book was a dream team from top to bottom, so even when it doesn’t work perfectly, Reis’ pencils and layouts with stunning finishes by Miki, color by the best in the business Alex Sinclair, and one of my personal favorite letterers in Dave Sharpe keep the book of an incredibly high quality. It’s a shame that, given all of that, the ending was as flat as it was.