Bendis On New Superman Villains, No Lex Luthor, Clark Kent's Importance

With last week's release of Action Comics #1000, DC not only celebrated 80 years of Superman, the publisher also kicked off a new era for its greatest hero -- an era with Brian Michael Bendis at the lead.

But while the story by Bendis and DC Co-Publisher Jim Lee lit a fuse on a startling revelation about the Man of Steel, that hook is only the tip of the iceberg for both Superman's future and Bendis' tenure with the publisher. Not only does the story continue in future issues of Action Comics, the entire Superman canon will get a new look later this spring with the six-part Man of Steel series by Bendis and a string of A-list artists like Ivan Reis and José Luis Garcia-López.

CBR caught up with Bendis recently for an in-depth chat about his move to DC. In the first half of a two-part interview, the writer goes into detail about his take on the Last Son of Krypton. Below, Bendis explores the lessons his Marvel years have offered to his DC transition, the idea of playing with an iconic legacy and why Clark Kent will always remain the heart of Superman.

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?

Brian Michael 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.

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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.

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.

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?

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.

The story continues in Action Comics #1001, cover by Pat Gleason.

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.

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Every time a writer of your stature comes onto a character with Superman's stature, I think it allows us to reexamine the "conventional wisdom" around the characters. The thing people always say about the difference between Marvel and DC is that the former are characters with feet of clay while the latter are more iconic. Do you think about those kinds of distinctions, and does it change the way you write at all?

That's a very good question. The elements of story and truth of character and theme – that job is the same job. My job is to get to the heart of the character and tell as honest a story as I can tell that is fun and exciting and worth your money. That's all the same.

What's interesting is that the machines of Marvel and DC are so very different and very unique. There are pluses and minuses on both sides, and from those pluses and minuses on how the machines work, the audience sees the characters in a different way. That's been my experience at least. It does seem that DC has pushed the icon, the symbol of the character of Superman, more than the person behind it. And they have pushed the character behind it! To say they haven't is incorrect, but the icon has been so big.

It's been different at Marvel. Again, this is a huge generality. You can find five characters that are symbols there in a minute. But in Marvel, you're often digging into the heart of the character. It's always "Poor Peter Parker," whereas nobody says, "Poor Clark Kent."

But I say "Poor Clark Kent." As great as he is and as much as he can do, there's still stuff he can't do and things he can't have -- and that's very relatable. So I am going to take some of my Marvel training and apply it to DC work...but not at the sacrifice of what DC is at its core. But when I started coming over, I noticed – and I don't mean this to sound like a compliment to myself – that the whole time I was at my first meeting, I always referred to Superman as Clark. I was saying, "Clark would feel this," or, "Clark would do that." And after a while, I see the editor of Superman looking at me, and I said, "What?" and he just went, "No one calls him Clark! But that's right. He's got a name!" And I think that's right.

Clark and Bruce need to be addressed as well. Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman all get taken care of, but we've got to make sure they're all given their due as characters. Which is not to say that the people who have been writing the books haven't done a lot with Clark. It's just an adjustment.

Stay tuned for more with Brian Michael Bendis on the future of Jinxworld and his DCU imprint on CBR!